Ever since the 80s Tory leaders have dreamed of creating a ‘property-owning democracy’. But selling off social housing has left millions of Britons in grotty privately rented accommodation
‘It feels like a way to change your fortunes – that’s the British dream,” says the writer and housing rights campaigner Vicky Spratt on right to buy. When she began researching Tenants, her new book about Britain’s dysfunctional private housing market, she knew that Margaret Thatcher’s flagship policy, which has seen 2m homes bought by council tenants at massive discounts since 1980, was important.
By the time she finished it, Spratt realised it had “entered the public consciousness like no other policy, and in that respect it’s one of the most successful of all time”.
