Right to buy in England ‘fuelled housing crisis and cost taxpayers £200bn’

Many ex-council homes are now rented privately to tenants on housing benefit that costs taxpayers £20bn a year. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian

Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy scheme has cost UK taxpayers almost £200bn, according to a report into the policy’s contribution to Britain’s housing crisis.

In its report into the sale of millions of council homes to their tenants at steep discounts since 1980, the Common Wealth thinktank said the policy had fuelled vast shortages in social housing and turbocharged inequality.