Carrying on from my previous post about what is social housing?, I'm doing this follow up on how social housing has developed over the years.
A whistle stop tour of social housing
Social housing has existed in England since 1890’s, in fact much longer before then in one form or another. It really took off with the Housing and Town Planning Act in 1919 making it law for Local Authorities to provide council housing. The Liberal Democrat government at the time initiated the first sustained effort to provide low cost affordable housing. They set a highly ambitious target to build 500,000 homes and failed miserably building only around half this number during their time in power. The subsequent Conservative and Labour governments shifted the focus on to private housing. Home building didn’t stop in the period up to the second world war with another 580,000 homes built, but it was after the second world war that social housing really soared with over a million homes built, four fifths of which were ‘council housing’(Shapely, n.d.; Wheeler, 2011).
The subsequent decades saw a shift towards replacing slum housing, rehousing people into ‘gleaming’ high rise towers and out of town overspill estates spurred on by the lack of land available in the central council areas. This new promised land turned out to be pretty bleak with problems rooted in poor design and substandard construction, as well as a lack of consultation about what people wanted by the town planners (Shapely, n.d.; Wheeler, 2011).
This changed in the late sixties, with council tenants becoming frustrated with the poor housing conditions and with their opinions overlooked began to organise themselves. Tenant groups sprang up in different parts of the country to object to the housing conditions being imposed on people, with limited success. Ultimately the Local Authorities realised that they were losing public confidence and as a result, a few began to develop tenant participation schemes with the very first tenant participation handbook developed in the mid seventies (Shapely, n.d.).
The Eighties ushered a resurgence in social housing, with the Conservative government, exploring alternatives to council housing, supporting initiatives with grants and encouraging private finance in the sector. This was the ideal opportunity for not for profit housing associations to invest into the sector by tapping into finance not traditionally available to the government This period also saw ‘right to buy’ take off with over 2 million council homes sold to tenants from the 1980’s to the present day. This sale of council housing highlighted the need for increased social housing, with housing waiting lists feeling the strain. The 1998 Housing Act helped create the present system, supporting housing associations in attracting investment and making it easier for them to collect rent for people entitled to housing benefit (Heywood, 2010).
The two decades since have seen local authorities transfer council housing to large scale voluntary trusts to attract private finance to improve stock. In this period Housing associations have attracted finance to develop new homes and improve existing ones (Heywood, 2010).
The sector has experienced frequent changes in its regulatory regime over the past few years with the introduction of a new regulatory framework and the decommissioning of two principle housing bodies; the Audit Commission and the Tenant Services Authority by December 2011. This affects how RSL’s will be regulated in the future, “with the arrangements for housing inspections still unclear” (Inside Housing 2010).
The announcements in the comprehensive spending review announced in October 2010 have also affected the sector, with RSL’s capital budgets for affordable house building reduced by 60%. This means that 7,000 less homes will be built over the next four years (Inside Housing 2010; Ropke 2010). Changes to the housing benefit system coming into force in 2013 are also expected to affect RSL’s incomes because a high number of social housing tenants are economically disadvantaged and in receipt of housing benefit (Audit Commission, 2010; Parliament UK).
Like i said this was a brief look at social housing has developed to what it is today, feel free to discuss. You may want to have a look at one of my previous posts social housing 2.0, which outlines the direction I think the sector should be looking to move towards to improve its image. See you next time, when I'm starting my series of continuous improvement posts starting with customer intelligence.
References
AUDIT COMMISSION, 2010. Housing Inspections. [online] Available at: <http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/housing/inspection/pages/default.aspx> [cited 30 October 2011].
HEYWOOD, A., 2010, Investing in Social Housing, A Guide to the Development of the Affordable Housing Sector, The Housing Finance Sector [online] Available at: <http://thfcorp.com/investing/THFC%20-%20Investing%20in%20Social%20Housing%20230510.pdf> [cited 30 October 2011].
INSIDE HOUSING, 2010. The year that changed social housing forever. [online] Available at: <http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/> [cited 30 October 2011].
PARLIAMENT UK. 2010. Impact of the changes to Housing Benefit announced in the June 2010 Budget. [online] Available at: <http://www.publications.parliament.uk/> [cited 30 October 2011].
SHAPELY, P., N.D., Social housing and tenant participation. [online] Available at: <http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-71.html>
WHEELER, B., 2011, What future for social housing?, BBC [online] Available at: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14380936> [cited 30 October 2011].
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