Selling the state: what Britain privatised, what it raised, who owns it now, and what came back

Shares closed the first day 33 per cent above the full offer price. Sale costs were 6.8 per cent of proceeds, against an average of 3.3 per cent for earlier sales.

A first day premium of 9 per cent on the fully paid price.

Before the sale, about £5.0 billion of debt was written off and £1.5 billion injected by the Exchequer. Net proceeds were about £3.6 billion.

Shares rose 37p and 40p above the 175p offer price after the first day and first week. The NAO attributed this largely to Japanese demand; 12p of the opening premium was a market rise after pricing.

Sold for about £1.8 billion, plus about £800 million taken out before the sale. The NAO valued them at £2.9 billion in public hands, and at £2.0 billion to £2.5 billion from a buyer's view. Porterbrook was resold within months for 56 per cent more, Eversholt for 40 per cent more and Angel, in December 1997, for 58 per cent more.

Priced at 203p; the shares fell on first dealings. In a later report the NAO recorded that in September 2002 the company could no longer clearly meet its liabilities and the government gave it a credit facility of up to £410 million.

£758 million initial proceeds; the company's debt rose from £330 million to £733 million, covering the sale proceeds. A 2003 refinancing needed £130 million of new money: £65 million from the taxpayer, matched by BAA.

Ten senior managers' shares were worth £107 million at flotation from an investment of £537,250; the NAO said their returns exceeded what was necessary to incentivise them. The Department said the returns reflected the growth in value.

Sold at 330p; the shares closed at 455p on the first day, 38 per cent higher, a £750 million gain to the new owners on the stake sold.

The 40 per cent stake sold for £585.1 million against a government valuation of £305 million, plus £172 million for the preference share. The NAO noted total taxpayer investment in Eurostar and its predecessors of about £3 billion.

£1.7 billion raised; the NAO estimated £604 million of future repayments were given up.

A bank rescue stake, not a privatisation. The government reported a £0.9 billion gain; once the cost of financing is counted, the NAO put the outcome at £3.2 billion to £5.9 billion short.

The ten water authorities of England and Wales were floated in 1989 after £5.0 billion of debt was written off. Today the companies owe £76.3 billion between them and declared £4.8 billion of dividends in the five years to 2024-25. No official total of dividends since privatisation exists; University of Greenwich researchers, working from company accounts, estimate £57 billion at 2018 prices for the nine English water and sewerage companies from 1991 to 2018. The government is to remove the limits on how many shares it can hold in them. Scotland and Northern Ireland kept their water in public hands.

British Gas (1986, £7.7 billion), the regional electricity companies (1990, £7.7 billion), National Power and PowerGen (1991 and 1995), the Scottish companies (1991) and British Energy (1996) were all sold. On Companies House filings, 8 of the 14 electricity distribution areas are now owned from abroad, by companies based in France, Spain and the United States. EDF, owned by the French state, runs the former British Energy nuclear fleet. National Grid, listed in London, paid £22.3 billion in dividends between 2012 and 2026, a figure that includes its US business and a £3.2 billion special dividend in 2017-18. The ten groups that own the electricity and gas distribution networks paid about £6.5 billion in dividends to their parent companies over their latest five reporting years, on their own accounts; Ofgem does not publish a total. NESO, which runs the system, became publicly owned in October 2024.

British Rail was split up: track to Railtrack (floated 1996 for £1.7 billion), trains to three leasing companies, services to 25 franchises. The leasing companies were resold for 40 to 58 per cent more within two years. Since 2016-17 the six rolling stock leasing companies, which include the three sold in 1996, have paid £2.4 billion in dividends, and franchised train operators £2.1 billion since 2015-16 (both in 2024-25 prices, ORR). Network Rail has been public since 2014, and operators return to public ownership as their contracts end.

BT was sold in three tranches for £14.3 billion gross. Shares rose 33 per cent on the first day of the first sale. BT paid £11.3 billion in dividends in the twelve years to March 2026. Its largest shareholder today is India's Bharti, with 24.95 per cent.

Floated at 330p in 2013, it rose 38 per cent on the first day. It paid £1.9 billion in dividends from 2014-15 to 2025-26 and was bought in 2025 by EP Group, controlled by the Czech businessman Daniel Kretinsky, at a price valuing the shares at 370p. The government kept a golden share that stops the headquarters and tax residence moving abroad without its consent.

BAA was floated in 1987 for £1.2 billion; its airports are now separately owned. Heathrow paid £3.6 billion in dividends to its shareholders between 2012 and 2025, and 56 per cent of it is now owned by investment funds of the Qatari, Saudi, Singapore and Chinese states. Stansted belongs to Manchester Airports Group, 64.5 per cent owned by ten Greater Manchester councils. Air traffic control was part sold in 2001 and needed new public money in 2003.

British Steel was floated in 1988 for £2.4 billion; its successor company, latterly owned by China's Jingye, was taken into public ownership in July 2026. Rolls-Royce, nationalised in 1971 and sold again in 1987, is listed, and the government holds a special share in it. QinetiQ, the defence research agency, was sold to the private equity firm Carlyle and then floated.

Associated British Ports was sold for £97 million in 1983 and 1984, and five trust ports in 1992. ABP is now owned by Canadian pension funds and the state funds of Singapore and Kuwait.

The state bought into RBS and Lloyds in the 2008 crisis and nationalised Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley. It put £45.5 billion into RBS and got £34.98 billion back by the final sale in May 2025. On Lloyds, the government reported a small gain, while the NAO found a shortfall once financing costs are counted.

England's tenants bought 2,052,813 homes from 1980 to March 2026, Scotland's 494,580 to 2014-15, Wales's about 139,000 to 2015 and Northern Ireland's 123,119 to 2025-26. The homes were sold at a discount. Official figures for England record £17.2 billion of receipts and £10.8 billion of discounts on 445,310 council sales between 1998-99 and 2010-11, and £13.0 billion of pooled receipts from 2012-13 to 2025-26. We found no official series of receipts before 1998-99, or for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. The UK Housing Review, compiling the government returns, puts receipts from council and new town house sales in Great Britain at about £60 billion between 1980-81 and 2022-23. Scotland has since abolished the Right to Buy, under the Housing (Scotland) Act 2014, and Wales under an Act of 2018.

A Cabinet Office programme recorded £5.2 billion from 2,206 land and property receipts between 2015 and 2020, including £1.46 billion for Network Rail's railway arches. Under the Public Land for Housing programmes, the 2011 to 2015 round released land for 109,590 homes against a target of 100,000, and the 2015 to 2020 round land for 61,302 homes against a target of 160,000; some of these sites moved within the public sector rather than being sold. On a different definition, central government recorded £2.0 billion of property disposal receipts between 2022-23 and 2024-25.

After the Forestry Act 1981 the Forestry Commission sold 37,299 hectares by October 1984, and its cumulative sale receipts reached £123.3 million by March 1989. A further 65,865 hectares of forest land were sold between 1989 and 1997, when the programme was suspended.

The Department for Education's register records 246 approved disposals of school playing fields in England between November 2001 and April 2010, and 325 between May 2010 and September 2026, with 7 refused.

The state does not sell the airwaves but auctions licences to use them. The 3G auction of 2000 raised £22.5 billion, the 4G auction of 2013 £2.37 billion and the 2021 auction £1.38 billion.

14 prisons were privately run on 31 March 2025, under PFI and other contracts, and held 17,943 of 85,858 prisoners on 30 June 2026. Three of their PFI contracts expired during 2026, and a Lords answer in 2025 counted 16 privately managed prisons. HMPPS paid £587.5 million for them in 2024-25.

In 1993, 20 per cent of care home residents funded by English councils were in independent sector homes, run by companies or charities; by 2008 it was 91 per cent. In 2016 the CMA found 82.6 per cent of UK care home beds were run for profit.

85.4 per cent of children's homes in England were privately run in 2026, up from 73.2 per cent in 2018. About 40 per cent of fostered children are placed through independent agencies, and councils paid private providers £874 million for fostering in 2024-25.

The NHS in England spent £14.1 billion with independent sector providers in 2024-25, about 7 per cent of DHSC's day to day budget, up from £8.1 billion in 2014-15 on the restated basis.

Under the Private Finance Initiative, private companies built and maintain schools, hospitals and prisons in return for annual payments. 654 projects were still running in March 2025, with an original capital value of £49.6 billion and £128 billion of payments still to make; payments peaked at £10.7 billion in 2024-25.

Buses outside London were deregulated from October 1986 and the National Bus Company's 52 operating companies were sold by 1988, 36 of them to managers and staff. By 2008-09 five groups took 71 per cent of local bus revenue. Greater Manchester had franchised all its local bus services by January 2025, setting routes and fares itself; the operators remain private companies.

Carillion, the sixth largest supplier to central government, held about 420 public sector contracts when it collapsed in January 2018. The Cabinet Office estimated its loss at £148 million and the NAO said the full cost to the taxpayer would be higher.