Ex-council flat for sale for £1.2 million

Britain's most expensive ex-council property has gone on sale - and it's certainly no longer low-cost housing.

The two-bedroom flat in London's Covent Garden is up for sale for £1.3 million - a far cry from the £170,000 it went for under the Right to Buy scheme 20 years ago.

Back then, the 950 square foot flat in Odhams Walk was a three-bed, but it now has just two, with an extra bathroom added during a recent refurbishment. It also has a state-of-the-art open plan kitchen and living area.

"The property is in a prime Covent Garden location close to the theatres, restaurants and shops; with good transport links via the Central and Piccadilly lines from Covent Garden and Holborn Underground stations," agents Hudsons say.

It's situated above the Rockit fashion store, part of a block that was built in 1981 and which later won a design award.

And it's by no means the first of the flats to move into private hands - as many as 40% of the flats in the block are believed to have been sold on by their original owners. Residents of the other 121 properties in the block include former Coronation Street star Amanda Barrie.

It's by no means the only ex-council property to go on sale for an eye-watering amount. In 2014, a former council house in Chelsea was slapped with a price tag of just under a million. And last summer, a three-bed flat in Covent Garden sold for £1.2 million.

The Right to Buy scheme has been blamed for taking millions of low-cost properties out of the public housing sector. It was revived in 2012 with discounts of up to £75,000 for council tenants who wanted to buy their homes, with the money - in theory - going to build more.

However, according to the University of Cambridge, because many of these new properties are to be sold under shared ownership schemes rather than rented, there will be there will be 75,000 fewer low-cost homes available to let over the next five years.