Yet Margaret Thatcher is also responsible for one of the most popular policies in Scotland of the past three decades: the legislation which gave people the right to buy their council houses. Now Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon says it has had its day. The number of houses left in the social-rented sector, compared with demand, suggests she may be right.
Almost half a million people north of the border have taken advantage of the right to buy since it was introduced in 1980. That means millions of people in today’s Scotland are from families who, otherwise, might never have been able to afford their own homes. The chance to buy their house at a big discount was the most significant, socially liberating policy ever introduced by any government, according to senior Tories.
An overstatement, but even the Labour Party, originally vehemently opposed to the plan, had to alter its stance pretty quickly when it saw how popular it was. Labour knew that to argue against it would be a vote-loser. Houses in good schemes were attractive purchases for their tenants – not because they wanted to sell them at a profit but because their mortgage was often cheaper than their rent and they had the pleasure, as well as the responsibility, of owning their own property for the first time. Nor had these new home-buyers suddenly become upwardly mobile. Most still live in the houses they bought so they were not motivated by a quick profit.
Another consequence of the sell-off is that large tracts of the remaining housing stock are in run-down areas, a factor which can stigmatise people living in them. Mrs Thatcher’s policy was always going to run out of steam because of its popularity. There is a finite number of houses to sell and, though the money from sales went to the local authorities, they used the cash generated to reduce their debts rather build more homes.
The councils lost commercially and socially valuable assets at below market value. The result is a social-rented housing stock that has been depleted much faster than it has been replaced.
A recent report by Shelter Scotland shows the number of council and housing association homes for rent is at its lowest for 50 years, with 142,000 households on the waiting lists for council homes.
There were just under 600,000 homes for rent last year, a drop of 18% in 10 years. It is a situation being made worse by the banking crisis and the credit squeeze. With mortgages more difficult to come by, more people are looking for rented accommodation and many would rather it was backed by the security of a local council or housing association than a private landlord.
During the last parliament, under the Labour-LibDem administration, councils in Scotland built just six houses – a shameful figure. Can it be that the SNP government, which claims 5000 new houses last year and is pledging 1300 will be started this year, may have more of a socialist conscience than the People’s Party?
When Ms Sturgeon announced at the SNP conference on Sunday that she was taking another step towards the abolition of right to buy, by
banning the sale of social-rented property to first-time tenants and anyone returning to the sector after a break, she forecast it would retain 18,000 homes which, otherwise, probably would have been sold off.
When Mrs Thatcher’s Environment Secretary, Michael Heseltine, spoke of right to buy 30 years ago, he said it was laying the foundations for one of the most important social revolutions of that century.
It was a revolution of rising expectations and almost 500,000 Scots benefited from it – even though most had no time for the woman responsible.
The question now is: what kind of housing revolution has Ms Sturgeon started and will it have the same success at a time of major projected cuts in public spending?
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