Voluntary Right to Buy Midlands pilot annual data release
Updated 23 February 2023
Applies to England
© Crown copyright 2023
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1. In this release:
- 44 housing associations took part in the Voluntary Right to Buy (VRtB) Midlands pilot, of which 42 completed at least one VRtB sale.[footnote 1]
- There has been a total of 1,839 completed sales under the pilot.
- £118.8m has been spent by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities on funding the discount amount from sales that is paid to the pilot housing associations.
- The net receipts that housing associations have received from VRtB sales, and which will be spent on replacement homes, totals to £192.2m.
- A further £35.8m of Recycled Capital Grant Funding has been retrieved from VRtB sales and is available to be spent on replacement homes.
- All 42 housing associations that completed at least one VRtB sale during the Midlands pilot have plans to develop replacement homes.
- The first VRtB sales took place in early 2019 and 616 replacement homes have been started on site at 30 September 2022.
- 183 of these replacement homes have been started in 2021-2022.
This data was correct at 30 September 2022. Any revisions will be incorporated into the next annual release. This release includes revisions of previous data.
Release date: February 2023
Date of next release: February 2024
Contact: vrtb@levellingup.gov.uk
Media enquiries: 0303 444 1209 / NewsDesk@levellingup.gov.uk
2. Introduction
The 2015 government manifesto included a commitment to ‘extend the Right to Buy to tenants in housing associations to enable more people to buy a home of their own’. In September 2015, the National Housing Federation (NHF), on behalf of its members, put forward a proposal for the government to extend the Right to Buy to eligible housing association tenants on a voluntary rather than statutory basis. This proposal was accepted by the government in October 2015.
An initial pilot of the Voluntary Right to Buy (VRtB) ran from 2016 to 2017 with 5 housing associations in England. A further larger regional pilot, the Midlands pilot, was confirmed in the government’s 2017 Autumn Budget, which would be opened to participating housing association tenants in the East and West Midlands. This pilot was launched in August 2018, with 44 housing associations taking part. The pilot was not open to other private registered providers (PRPs).
The tenants of participating housing associations in the East and West Midlands were given the opportunity to apply to purchase their homes at Right to Buy level discounts (up to a maximum of £80,900). Successful entrants were selected by a ballot system. A total of 9,146 tenants registered their interest and 6,000 were successful in the ballot. To be eligible for the scheme, tenants needed to have accrued at least 3 years of public sector tenancy, and to hold an un-demoted secure tenancy, an assured tenancy, or a Localism Act fixed term tenancy. Housing associations were fully compensated by the government for the cost of the discounts.
The Midlands pilot is testing all key aspects of the 2015 voluntary agreement with housing associations, including the portable discount and one for one replacement of homes, under which housing associations said that they would deliver an additional home through new supply nationally for every home sold. Housing associations have the flexibility to make a start on replacement homes within 3 years of the homes being sold under the VRtB. The first sales under the Midlands pilot completed in early 2019.
This Data Release provides management information data on homes sold and replacements started on site under the Voluntary Right to Buy Midlands pilot, as well as other pilot data, for the period until 30 September 2022.
The Data Release uses data collected from housing associations using the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) DELTA system (see technical note). This data has in some cases also been collected by Homes England’s Investment Management System (IMS), which has been used for quality assurance purposes.
In May 2018, DLUHC provided detailed guidance to all housing associations participating in the pilot, outlining details on the operation of the scheme and data reporting requirements. Housing associations are reminded of their data reporting requirements as part of the annual management information data collection.
3. Overview of Voluntary Right to Buy data
Details of homes sold
The pilot entered its final phase in 2020-21, resulting in lower sales for the 2020-21 reporting period and no sales for the period after September 2021. The total number of homes sold under the Voluntary Right to Buy Midlands pilot on 30 September 2022 therefore remains 1,839 across 42 housing associations. £118.8m was spent in total by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities on funding the discount amount from sales that was then paid to the pilot housing associations. These discounts were between 35-70% of the value of the home sold, depending on the length of tenancy (up to a maximum of £80,900).
Net receipts for the homes sold, which will be used toward the replacement of homes, total £192.2m. A further £35.8m of Recycled Capital Grant Funding (RCGF) has been retrieved from VRtB sales and is available to be recycled into replacement homes.
The figures below cover all 1,839 sales concluded during the Midlands Pilot.
Table 1: Details of homes sold
| Categories | Oct 18 – Sep 20* | Oct 20 – Sep 21 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number of sales | 1,772 | 67 | 1,839 |
| Discount compensation | £114,482,153 | £4,306,855 | £118,789,008 |
| Recycled grant | £33,952,064 | £1,837,966 | £35,790,031 |
| Net Receipts | £186,124,202 | £6,096,772 | £192,220,974 |
*Between October 2018 and September 2020 there were revisions to financial data which cannot be allocated to specific 12-month periods.
Figure 1: Homes sold by ownership category
1,585 of the homes sold were freehold houses. A further 55 properties were freehold flats, and the remaining 199 properties were leasehold flats. Leasehold houses were excluded from the scheme.
Figure 2: Homes sold by number of bedrooms
The majority of homes sold were 3-bedroom, with 970 sales completed. A further 633 sales were of 2-bedroom homes, 111 sales of 1-bedroom homes and 101 sales of 4-bedroom homes. Properties with 5 or more bedrooms accounted for just over 1% of homes sold, with 24 sold in total. The final sale under the pilot completed in 2021.
Figure 3: Number of homes sold by property type
Terraced and semi-detached houses accounted for the majority of homes sold, with 871 and 661 sales respectively. Flats and maisonettes accounted for 254 sales, with the remainder of sales comprising of detached houses (42 sales) and bungalows (11 sales).
Figure 4: Number of homes sold by location (county)
More homes were sold in the West Midlands metropolitan county rather than any other county, accounting for 38% of all sales. The West Midlands metropolitan county is the largest county by population in the Midlands, and incorporates the cities of Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton. It also has the greatest level of Private Registered Provider (PRP) stock compared to the other counties.
Table 2: Number of homes sold compared to Private Registered Provider stock in each county with sales
| County | PRP Stock 2022* (no. of self-contained units/bed spaces) | Homes sold under the Midlands pilot** |
|---|---|---|
| Derbyshire | 34,125 | 156 |
| Herefordshire | 11,401 | 41 |
| Leicestershire | 28,489 | 199 |
| Lincolnshire | 25,526 | 23 |
| Northamptonshire | 30,695 | 90 |
| Nottinghamshire | 30,081 | 145 |
| Rutland | 1,836 | 1 |
| Shropshire | 28,772 | 50 |
| Staffordshire | 54,734 | 138 |
| Warwickshire | 19,879 | 122 |
| West Midlands | 121,925 | 707 |
| Worcestershire | 36,059 | 167 |
*Figures cover the whole of 2022. Not all PRP stock was included in the pilot. They are included for comparative purposes only.
**Figures cover the totals for the whole pilot which concluded in 2021.
Live table 115 provides data on Private Registered Provider stock.
4. Progress of replacement homes
Housing associations are expected to make a start on site for a replacement home in the 3 years following a Voluntary Right to Buy sale. The first sales under the pilot were completed in early 2019. Of the 42 HAs that completed at least one sale in the pilot:
- All 42 housing associations that completed at least one VRtB sale during the Midlands pilot have plans to develop replacement homes.
- 41 intend to invest their receipts into replacement homes which they will develop themselves. The remaining housing association intends to transfer some or all of their receipts to another housing association to invest in replacement homes on their behalf.
- 1 housing association is developing replacement homes through the exceptional circumstances provisions. These provisions allow homes to be purchased off-plan from a developer, or for empty properties to be brought back into use in limited circumstances. For exceptional circumstances provisions to be used, a business case must be agreed by DLUHC, where a housing association must demonstrate that they are not able to deliver a replacement home through new supply.
On 30 September 2022, 616 replacement properties have been started on site by 17 housing associations.
Table 3: Details of replacement homes
| Location (County) | Oct 19 - Sep 20 | Oct 20 - Sep 21* | Oct 21 - Sep 22 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cambridgeshire | 6 | 6 | 0 | |
| East Sussex | 0 | 0 | 9 | |
| Herefordshire | 0 | 127 | 0 | |
| Hertfordshire | 0 | 0 | 43 | |
| Lincolnshire | 0 | 7 | 0 | |
| Norfolk | 0 | 0 | 7 | |
| Northamptonshire | 0 | 0 | 20 | |
| Nottinghamshire | 0 | 9 | 0 | |
| Shropshire | 0 | 26 | 0 | |
| Staffordshire | 0 | 20 | 27 | |
| Surrey | 0 | 39 | 0 | |
| West Midlands | 2 | 196 | 59 | |
| West Sussex | 0 | 50 | 0 | |
| Worcestershire | 0 | 53 | 18 | |
| Total | 8 | 433 | 183 | |
| Type | Oct 19 - Sep 20 | Oct 20 - Sep 21* | Oct 21 - Sep 22 | |
| Bungalow | 0 | 11 | 29 | |
| Flat/Maisonette | 6 | 63 | 72 | |
| Terraced House | 1 | 225 | 36 | |
| Semi-Detached House | 1 | 134 | 45 | |
| Detached House | 0 | 0 | 1 | |
| Total | 8 | 433 | 183 | |
| Size | Oct 19 - Sep 20 | Oct 20 - Sep 21* | Oct 21 - Sep 22 | |
| 1 Bedroom | 0 | 57 | 23 | |
| 2 Bedrooms | 6 | 174 | 119 | |
| 3 Bedrooms | 0 | 175 | 38 | |
| 4 Bedrooms | 2 | 27 | 3 | |
| Total | 8 | 433 | 183 | |
| Rent Level | Oct 19 - Sep 20 | Oct 20 - Sep 21* | Oct 21 - Sep 22 | |
| Affordable Rent | 6 | 285 | 101 | |
| Social Rent | 2 | 30 | 64 | |
| Shared Ownership | 0 | 111 | 18 | |
| Other | 0 | 7 | 0 | |
| Total | 8 | 433 | 183 | |
| Receipts invested to date | Oct 19 - Sep 20 | Oct 20 - Sep 21* | Oct 21 - Sep 22 | |
| Total | £438,127 | £40,887,886 | £24,172,526 |
*These figures have been revised due to corrections made to the data.
5. Technical notes
Please see the accompanying technical notes document for further details.
Information on Official Statistics is available via the UK Statistics Authority website.
Information about statistics at DLUHC is available via the Department’s website.
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Two associations had no completed sales, as tenants withdrew from the process. ↩