Council Housing stock has been declining for years, most notably following the right
to buy from the grim Thatcher eras.
But this trend may now be in reverse....
Somerset Council has just finished 54 new council homes - the first the town’s seen in about thirty years. While this is a very tiny number, it is still a reversal of a very long standing trend!
The Long Shadow of Right to Buy
Many people loved the right to buy. Millions bought their own places. But as a result social housing stock dropped, fast. Since 1980, more than two million council homes have been sold, according to the government.
Selling homes wasn’t the only problem. For ages, councils weren’t allowed to reinvest all the money from those sales into building new homes. Most of it went elsewhere.
So, the result? Fewer council houses, more people needing them.
Why Local Councils Struggle to Build
Even now, councils want to build, but they run into the same old problems.
One big headache is historic housing debt. Local authorities still owe money from earlier building projects, and that debt makes it hard for them to borrow for anything new.
Plus, building isn’t just about money. It takes land, up-front investment, and a sense that the rules won’t change halfway through and Britain’s housing policy hasn’t exactly been steady or predictable.
Lately, some reforms have tried to fix this. Councils can now keep more of the money from Right to Buy sales, and there’s new government funding for affordable housing. Big promises have been made—tens of billions for new social homes, aiming for tens of thousands of new builds.
A Small Project with Big Implications
The 54 homes in Minehead won’t fix Britain’s housing shortage. Experts say the UK needs about 300,000 new homes a year just to keep up.
But this little project does prove councils can still build—something people said they’d forgotten how to do and it reminds policymakers that public housing isn’t some thing of the past.
Final Thoughts
Council housing used to give millions of people a safe, affordable place to live.
Hopefully Minehead is the start of a trend towards more of this sort of thing!