Right to Buy... time to move?

The consequences of the Right to Buy legislation, introduced in the early 1980s, have been studied intensively. One stated aim of the Right to Buy was that it was expected that freeing up the housing market, by removing the debilitating effect of public housing, would help to reduce constraints on inter-regional mobility. This would give people more freedom to move between regions for family, environmental and, especially, labour market reasons. Despite this clearly stated goal of the Right to Buy policy, there has been no research on whether council tenants became more mobile over long distances after buying their house.

This research is the first study to examine rigorously whether the Right to Buy legislation did indeed 'free-up' people to move inter-regionally. Initial results from studying the effect of the Right to Buy on mobility in the last 25 years using complex longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) will be presented.