Guidance

Guide to the Social Housing Bill

Updated 14 May 2026

Applies to England

The Social Housing Bill will protect much-needed social housing stock, give affordable housing providers the clarity and confidence they need to build more social homes, and better protect tenants who are victims of domestic abuse by providing them with greater security and stability. This guide explains the individual measures within the bill and how they will deliver these core objectives.

Background

Everyone deserves to live in a decent, safe, secure and affordable home. Yet far too many families in need of a social rented home are languishing on local authority waiting lists, forced to struggle in the private rented sector or in expensive temporary accommodation, driving up rents and housing benefit costs in the process.

At the same time, the ability and willingness of social housing providers to invest in the building of new social rented homes is undermined by the steady and significant loss of existing stock through Right to Buy alongside ongoing bureaucratic impediments.

The Social Housing Bill will protect much needed social housing stock, give affordable housing providers the confidence they need to build more social homes, and better protect social tenants who are victims of domestic abuse by providing them with greater security and stability.

The bill builds on the funding and regulatory certainty that the government has already provided to the sector through the £39 billion Social and Affordable Homes Programme and supports the 5-step plan to deliver a decade of renewal for social and affordable housing, published in July 2025.

The Social Housing Bill has 3 core objectives:

• protect existing social housing stock and incentivise the building of more social homes
• protect social tenants who are victims of domestic abuse by providing greater housing security and stability
• clarify the statute book and reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, so providers can invest in new and existing homes with confidence

This guide sets out more detail on each measure within the bill, and how they will deliver these core objectives.

What does the bill do?

Reforming the Right to Buy scheme

At the heart of the bill are comprehensive reforms to Right to Buy, to deliver a fairer, better value and more sustainable scheme.

The Right to Buy scheme provides an important route for social housing tenants to own their own homes. However, many of the homes sold under the Right to Buy have not been replaced. This has depleted much-needed social housing stock and reduced the motivation and confidence of councils to build, and restricted broader investment into council housing.

Following a public consultation in 2024, the bill will reform the scheme to better protect social housing stock and give councils the confidence to scale-up the delivery of new social housing supply, while maintaining a route to homeownership for longstanding tenants. These reforms will enable more households overall to have access to social housing, including those on waiting lists and those who are homeless.

The measures in the bill build on the steps the government has already taken to date, including reducing Right to Buy discounts to their pre-2012 levels. Councils are also now able to keep 100% of the receipts from Right to Buy sales, with increased flexibilities in how these receipts can be spent on replacement homes. 

Measures in the bill are:

• Increasing the minimum tenancy required to be eligible for the Right to Buy from 3 to 10 years. This will better ensure that it is tenants who have lived in, and paid rent on, their social homes for many years that are able to own their home through the scheme. 
• Reforming discounts so they start at 5% of the property value and go up to a maximum of 15% or the cash discount cap (whichever is lower). This will ensure that longstanding tenants benefit from a bigger discount.
• Exempting newly built social and affordable homes for 35 years. This will have no impact on existing tenants wanting to buy their current homes. The key benefit is that it will increase councils’ confidence to build.
• Exempting rural properties from the scheme, which will include homes in National Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and areas designated as rural, given that homes in these areas are particularly hard to replace due to land, planning and supply constraints.
• Exempting council homes for market rent from the Right to Buy, which will allow more cross-subsidy for the building of social and affordable housing.
• Preventing tenants who have previously benefitted from the scheme from exercising the Right to Buy. There will, however, be exceptions for victims of domestic abuse and in cases of irretrievable relationship breakdown.
• Increasing the period of time for which the council has the right to ask for repayment of all or part of the discount on the sale of property from 5 years to 10 years. This is designed to encourage people buying under the scheme to retain the property and discourage profiteering.
• Extend the period in which a local authority has the right of first refusal when a property previously bought under the Right to Buy is sold so that it applies in perpetuity. This will give councils more opportunities to buy back homes previously sold under the scheme..
• Supporting councils with the administration of Right to Buy applications by:
  • increasing statutory timescales for issuing notices confirming the Right to Buy from 4 to 8 weeks (and from 8 to 12 weeks where the applicant has had a tenancy with another public sector landlord), and for notices which set out the landlord’s offer, increasing timescales from 8 to 12 weeks for houses and from 12 to 16 weeks for flats and leasehold houses
  • allowing for the suspension of standard timescales for up to 6 months to allow councils to investigate fraud.
• Allowing the Secretary of State to determine the rules governing the spending of Right to Buy capital receipts through issuing a determination. This will result in administrative efficiencies for councils and central government, as it will no longer be necessary to issue a revised receipt retention agreement for all stock holding councils whenever the rules are changed.
• Aligning the Right to Acquire scheme with the reforms to Right to Buy. This will ensure broad consistency between the schemes. Discounts under the Right to Acquire will remain unchanged, with discounts for eligible tenants of £9,000 to £16,000 depending on the location.

The measures in the bill strike a fair balance between protecting and increasing social housing stock for those in need and maintaining a route to home ownership for longstanding tenants. More homes will be retained as social housing stock as a result of the government’s comprehensive package of reforms to the Right to Buy scheme. The reduction in cash discounts that was implemented in November 2024 is expected to reduce Right to Buy sales by c.25,000 over 5 years, meaning that those homes will stay within the social rented sector.

Through exempting newly built stock and making changes to eligibility and discounts, the reforms will increase the confidence of councils to build new social homes and will enable more households to have access to social housing, including those on waiting lists and those who are homeless. 

Requiring notifications of disposals

There is currently no statutory requirement for private registered providers of social housing to notify local authorities or other bodies in advance of selling a social home outside the social housing sector. Although in practice some providers already choose to engage with local authorities or other social landlords ahead of disposals as a matter of good practice, this approach is not applied consistently across the sector.

To build on and embed this good practice, the bill will establish a requirement for private registered providers to notify the relevant local authority and other private providers in their area before the disposal takes place, thereby giving these organisations the opportunity to consider whether they have any interest in purchasing the property. By improving transparency and providing earlier visibility of proposed disposals, this measure will help to maximise opportunities to retain homes within the social housing sector.

In practice, there will be a 4-week period after the notification has taken place before the sale of a property can be completed. During the notification period, providers will remain free to market properties, engage with potential buyers and progress disposal plans in the usual way.

Tenancy reform for domestic abuse victims

Current housing legislation has few protections for social housing tenants who are victims of domestic abuse that wish to remain in their home without their abuser.  Landlords can evict perpetrators but only in cases where the victim has already left their social home. This means that too often, victims are forced to choose between staying in danger or losing their homes.

The bill will create a robust framework to enable landlords to take possession action against perpetrators of domestic abuse. In doing so, the bill closes a longstanding gap in housing law that has left victims of domestic abuse with no safe way to keep their social home. Victims in social housing joint tenancies will be able to remain safely in their home where possible, with the perpetrator removed through the courts. Where it is not safe or appropriate to stay, courts can ensure victims are offered suitable alternative social housing where available, without loss of security.

Protections include:

• stronger powers for landlords to enable them to take possession of a property where domestic abuse has taken place without the requirement for the victim to leave
• a new mechanism to facilitate the transfer of the joint tenancy into the sole name of the victim, where a victim wants to remain in the home as a sole tenant
• powers to enable the courts to make an order to provide the victim with suitable alternative accommodation, where it is not appropriate for the victim to remain in a home and the landlord has this accommodation available
• a safeguard to ensure that perpetrators are unable to unilaterally end a joint tenancy in retaliation against possession action until proceedings have been concluded

Streamlining housing consents

There are currently too many legal provisions requiring councils to obtain the consent of the Secretary of State before disposing of, or redeveloping, their housing assets, even when that requirement serves no clear policy purpose. In some cases, these requirements even apply to private owners of former council homes, slowing sales and obstructing the private market.

In 2 cases, the bill will remove the requirement for the Secretary of State to consent to the disposal of dwellings that have previously been owned as local authority housing. This consent has never been refused in practice, and only slows down the housing market in these cases. The bill will also use ministers’ powers to broaden the existing exemptions to requirements to secure Secretary of State consent for the redevelopment of councils’ housing assets.

These changes will make it easier for councils to develop social and affordable housing on land they own, or to dispose of land to other bodies who will do so, thereby removing unnecessary barriers and freeing up councils to play a larger role in housing supply.

Repealing unimplemented provisions from previous housing legislation

The bill will repeal unimplemented provisions from the Housing and Planning Act 2016 that would not work in the interests of tenants or providers, and in so doing, will provide certainty for councils that these policies will not be taken forward now or in the future and clarify the statute book.

The bill contains 3 repeals:

1. Repealing provisions requiring the sale of high-value social homes

These provisions would have required councils to sell their highest value homes as they became vacant, and return some of the funds to central government.

In the Right to Buy consultation of 2024, the government committed to taking forward this repeal. This followed a similar pledge from the previous government in the 2018 Social Housing Green Paper.

The original provisions would have made it harder for councils to plan investment in new and existing homes as they would no longer have been able to rely on future rental incomes from these properties and would equally not have retained all the capital generated from selling the homes. Additionally, analysis showed that this policy would have led to a net loss of social homes.

2. Repealing provisions requiring local authorities to grant fixed term tenancies

The bill will also repeal unused rules that would have required councils to give most new tenants fixed-term tenancies, instead of lifetime secure tenancies – phasing out lifetime tenancies for most new tenants.

The bill will not abolish fixed-term tenancies and councils will still be able to offer fixed-term tenancies where appropriate. The government continues to encourage landlords to make the best and most effective use of their homes to meet housing need but it does not support prohibiting lifetime secure tenancies, which provide much needed security for many households and support social mobility.

In repealing these uncommenced provisions on flexible tenancies, the bill will additionally remove requirements for mandatory fixed term tenancies through succession. The bill also moves across measures to the Housing Act 1985 and 1996 to ensure that the legal position for successions pre-2012 aligns with the post-2012 legal position for lifetime tenancies, introductory tenancies, demoted tenancies and voluntary fixed term tenancies.

3. Repealing the requirement for mandatory pay to stay policies

The bill will repeal mandatory ‘pay to stay’ rules, which if commenced would have required councils to charge higher rents to social tenants with higher incomes.

This change will help keep rents affordable for social tenants, especially those on lower and middle incomes, and ensure that tenants are not penalised for improving their circumstances. Councils and housing associations will still have the option to run voluntary pay to stay schemes if they wish, but there will be no mandatory requirement.