Reform UK says it will breathe new life into the Right To Buy policy whereby social housing tenants can purchase their homes at a discount.

The policy has been scrapped completely in parts of the UK while in England the eligibility criteria have been tightened under successive Labour and Conservative governments.

It’s estimated that over 40% of Right To Buy former council properties have now entered the private rental sector with many onward sales going to private landlords.

Now Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice says: “It was a great success in the 80s and 90s, but the mistake was not building more [to replace those sold]”.

He made his comments as his party unveiled plans to overhaul the social housing system in the UK by prioritising British-born tenants over foreign nationals and asylum seekers.

Tice says British-born workers under 35 will be “placed at the front of the queue”, with priority given to married couples with children.

Preference will also be given to veterans, and social housing will be prioritised for British nationals who are in work, on the basis that social housing should “not be a reward for welfare”.

Tice says: “We’ve ended up with a desperate shortage of affordable housing, council housing, and it’s got worse and worse.

“Our ambition is to stop the rot. We need to turn it around. And so from a construction point of view, a Reform Government will build an extra 50,000 affordable social homes every year for a decade.

“That is more than has been achieved for decades. Not only do we know it’s the right thing to do, but it’s also the fair thing to do. But it’s absolutely essential.”

And on Labour pledge to build more council homes as part of a broader policy to create 1.5m new homes by mid-2029, he comments: ”They’re missing all their targets by a country mile and the Labour Party, supposedly looking after workers, are actually doing exactly the opposite.

“They’re literally withdrawing from a Right to Buy programme. They’re making it so restrictive, almost nobody will buy it.”