According to figures from HMRC, local authorities received £1.06bn from the sales, which were used to fund 5,089 replacement properties.
Of the replacement properties, local authorities started or acquired 4,788 existing properties and Homes England or the Greater London Authority started or acquired 301 properties.
Receipts from sales rose 66 per cent compared to 2020-21 and 19 per cent compared to 2019-20. The average receipt in 2021-22 was £97,796. The total receipts received in 2021-22 were the highest since 2016-17.
Since the year ending March 2017, there had been a downward trend in the number of eligible sales and there was a particularly sharp decline in 2020-21 due to the restrictions introduced as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic when there were 6,865 sales, a decrease of 35 per cent compared to 2019-20.
Sales reported in 2021-22 represent the first year-on-year increase since 2016-17 and breaks the trend of decreasing sales, however it is unclear yet if these represent a permanent increasing trend or if sales in 2021-22 were a catch-up of those missed during the pandemic in 2020-21.
In 2021-22, sales increased 313 per cent compared with 2011-12, the last year before the reinvigoration of Right to Buy, but are still 19 per cent below the peak in 2016-17.
Since the start of the scheme in 1980, up until 31 March 2022, there have been over 2,003,239 sales to tenants.
The average receipt per dwelling was £97,796, an increase of five per cent compared to 2020-21 and 58 per cent from £61,805 in 2012-13.
Of the 10,878 eligible sales in 2021-22, 10,521 were Right to Buy, 46 were shared ownership and two were other eligible sales. There is no sale type information on the remaining sales.
Sales in London had a higher maximum discount of £112,800 in 2021-22 compared to other English regions where it was £84,600.
Number of bedrooms reduced
On 31 March 2021 there were 1,577,000 local authority owned social homes held within a Housing Revenue Account.
The number of eligible sales per 1,000 stock was highest in the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber and the East Midlands.
The Local Authority Housing Statistics collects data on the number of bedrooms of properties sold through Right to Buy and from 2012 to 2013 and 2020 to 2021 it also collected data on the number in the replacement properties, both acquisitions and completions.
In the two periods, 14 per cent of sales were one-bedroom properties, 33 per cent had two bedrooms and 53 per cent had three or more bedrooms.
Compared to acquisitions and completions between the two periods; 30 per cent of completions were one-bedroom properties, 46 per cent had two bedrooms and 24 per cent had three or more bedrooms; while 19 per cent of acquisitions were one-bedroom properties, 39 per cent had two bedrooms and 42 per cent had three or more bedrooms.
This shows that, on average, homes sold through the scheme are generally being replaced by homes with fewer bedrooms.
Qualifying tenants
The scheme was introduced in 1980 and gives qualifying social tenants the opportunity to buy their rented home at a discount.
The scheme is open to secure tenants of local authorities and non-charitable private registered providers (PRPs), and to those assured tenants of PRPs who have transferred with their homes from a Local Authority as part of a stock transfer.
To qualify for the Right to Buy scheme, a social tenant must have accrued at least three years public sector tenancy.
In April 2012, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) reinvigorated the Right to Buy scheme by changing the maximum cash discount available for sales to a new higher level of £75,000 across England.
In March 2013, in recognition of the increasing property prices in London, the Government further increased the maximum discount available for tenants living in London boroughs to £100,000.
As part of the reinvigoration of the Right to Buy scheme, local authorities were allowed to keep the receipts from additional sales, that is sales which are above a baseline taken from before the reinvigoration in 2010-11.
The government’s target is that, nationally, every additional property sold through Right to Buy will be replaced by a new affordable home for rent under the one-for-one replacement policy.
Between 2011-12 and 2020-21, local authorities were given three years to spend these receipts to fund up to 30 per cent of each replacement home, before the receipts were handed to the treasury to fund replacements through Homes England or the Greater London Authority.
Extending Right to Buy
Last month the government said it was extending Right to Buy to housing association tenants and changing rules to allow certain people to direct housing benefit towards a mortgage could allow four million people access to the property ladder.
In a speech given in Blackpool, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that 2.5 million tenants renting from housing associations would be given the opportunity to buy them outright.
He said the government would work with the housing association sector to design the scheme and it would also commit to building replacement homes for each one sold.
