The right’s way to more council housing

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

England should be building 100,000 new council houses a year, says a new report out this week.

It’s a call that would be routine if it was being made by one of the usual suspects, but this time it comes from, of all places, Policy Exchange.

The right-wing think tank was the incubator for the ideas that dominated the Conservative agenda in the 2010s and its alumni played a key role under successive Tory-led governments. 

Among its greatest hits in the glory days of the coalition were calls for all social homes to be nationalised, with most sold off to tenants and only a rump left for the most vulnerable.

That was followed by proposals to sell off all ‘high-value’ social housing and fully commercialise housing associations.

True, the ideas were usually justified as ways to generate more affordable homes overall but the underlying agenda seemed to be that, far from tackling social exclusion and poverty, social housing was a cause of them

In the wake of the 2024 election, Policy Exchange is playing a less partisan tune and this report comes with endorsements from Labour as well as Conservative politicians.