England Right to Buy reforms explained for tenants
On Tuesday 28 April 2026, the government said it plans to tighten Right to Buy in England. If that sounds technical, the basic story is not: ministers want fewer council homes to leave the social housing system too quickly, while still keeping a route into home ownership for some long-standing tenants. These plans build on a consultation response the government published last year. Every time a social home is sold, councils have to find a way to replace it. When ministers talk about housing stock, they simply mean the total number of homes available. According to the government, these reforms are meant to help councils protect and rebuild that stock after years of pressure.
Right to Buy is the scheme that lets eligible council tenants in England buy their home at a discount. For some households, that discount has offered a chance to move from renting into ownership. But the scheme has also been criticised because, when homes are sold faster than they are replaced, the number of properties available for social rent can fall. So this is not only about individual buyers. It is also about what happens to the wider supply of affordable homes. If you are trying to understand why the rules are changing, that is the central issue to keep in view.
The first major reform is the waiting period. Under the current rules, tenants can usually apply after three years. The government now wants to raise that minimum eligibility period to ten years before a tenant can buy. **What this means for tenants:** if you are a newer council tenant, the route into buying would become much longer. The government is signalling that Right to Buy should be aimed at people with a long record in social housing, rather than working as a relatively quick route out of it.
The second reform is about discount levels, and this is where the numbers matter. Ministers say discounts would begin at 5 per cent of a property's value, then rise by 1 percentage point for each extra year, up to a maximum of 15 per cent of the property's value or the cash cap, whichever is lower. In plain English, that means smaller discounts than many people associate with Right to Buy. Even if a tenant qualifies after many years, the discount would still be tightly limited. For councils, that is meant to reduce the scale of public subsidy leaving the system when a home is sold.
The third reform focuses on newly built homes. The government says new social homes would be exempt from Right to Buy for 35 years after they are built. That is a long protection period, and it tells us quite a lot about what ministers are worried about. **Why this matters:** building social housing is expensive and slow. If a council manages to add new homes, the government does not want those properties sold off soon afterwards. A 35-year exemption is meant to give councils more confidence that building programmes will genuinely increase supply over time.
There are also other changes already in motion. The government says maximum cash discounts have already been reduced to between £16,000 and £38,000 depending on the area. Councils can now keep all of the money raised from sales and combine those receipts with grant funding to build or buy more homes. Another protection, called the cost floor, has already been extended from 15 years to 30 years. This rule allows landlords to limit discounts so the sale price does not fall below what has been spent on building, repairing and maintaining a home. The government also says it is doing more policy work on fraud prevention, especially where vulnerable tenants may be pressured into buying, and on how Right to Buy works in rural areas where replacement housing can be harder to secure.
There is still no exact start date. The government says the new measures will be brought forward when Parliamentary time allows, which means the direction is clear even if the timetable is not. That is important if you are a tenant trying to work out whether the current rules or future rules are more likely to apply. The Chartered Institute of Housing has welcomed the announcement. Its chief executive, Gavin Smart, said the reforms are a positive step towards tackling the long-running gap between homes sold and homes replaced. **What to watch now:** if you are a council tenant, the immediate question is whether you would still qualify under a ten-year rule and what discount would remain. If you are looking at the bigger picture, the test is simple: do these changes help England keep more genuinely affordable homes in the system?