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Housing will define the London Mayoral election

Housing was one of Ken Livingstone’s success stories. Despite starting with very few housing powers and responsibilities, Livingstone skilfully used his planning powers and his leadership to promote housebuilding, especially on the major sites in the east of the capital, and to raise the proportion of homes built that are affordable.
Policies such as the target that 50 per cent of all homes built should be affordable; development should wherever possible be mixed tenure; there should be a larger share of family-sized homes – were allied to growing influence over central government’s housing capital expenditure leading to London’s biggest ever affordable housing budget.
Although the recession had a serious impact on private sector output, by 2008, when Boris Johnson took over, the prospects for housing in London were better than they had been for a generation.
Johnson’s policies, like those of the government, are highly ideological and damaging. There will be virtually no new social rented housing and the existing social rented stock will be reduced.
What little money is left after 60% cuts will be channelled into the so-called ‘Affordable Rent’ programme at rents of up to 80% of market rents. Johnson’s revised London Plan removes many of the policies that were most effective.
There has been no mitigation of the “Kosovo-style social cleansing” – to use Johnson’s own words – that will result from their housing benefit policies and the total benefit cap.
The prospect is that, were he to win, a new Livingstone mayoralty will spend three of its four years under the coalition, so the approach will have to be a mix of pragmatic policy and campaigning.
There are things the new Mayor can do to relieve the situation and champion London’s interests. A detailed report from the newly-formed London Labour Housing Group sets out what they might be.
For example:
• Limited funds can be identified to start a programme of social rented housing again, especially using public land;
• The 50% affordable rule – supported by the inspectors who assessed Johnson’s new plan – could be re-introduced;
• More pro-active planning with an emphasis on mixed communities and not
ghettoisation would challenge developers;
• A London-wide empty homes strategy could bring thousands of homes back into use;
• A new charter for private renting could engage tenants and landlords in a serious attempt to professionalise the sector and improve standards;
• The Mayor can push financial institutions into better mortgage policies for first time buyers and mortgage deposit guarantee schemes that could make a big difference for a lot of people;
• A new monitoring unit could track households being forced by the housing benefit changes to move across London, using the information to make sure poor and vulnerable people do not lose contact with essential services, social services support, schooling, and so on;
• A much bigger emphasis on co-operative and mutual solutions to housing needs, including Community Land Trusts.
Another vital role for a new Labour Mayor, were he to win, will be to prepare for a new Labour government in 2015, were Ed Miliband to be elected prime minister.
Livingstone has good relationships with Miliband and Ed Balls and a lot of preparatory work could go in to a new housing programme which should be at the centre of Labour’s economic, health and community re-building agendas as well as housing.
He should champion London’s interests through high-profile campaigning for a better housing deal – more genuinely affordable homes, less draconian benefit policies, mixed communities throughout London, the idea of a London Living Rent to match the London Living Wage.
There are a lot of ideas around at present for Livingstone to build on for the campaign to beat Johnson – from the Green party’s Jenny Jones AM, the Pro-Housing Alliance, the London Assembly Housing and Planning Committee, and now London Labour Housing Group have all produced serious proposals that deserve to be taken up.
Livingstone’s housing record was a good one; Johnson’s is dreadful. The task for progressives is to convince Londoners they can vote for a better way next May.
This post has also been published on Left Foot Forward.
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The Politics of Land Value Tax

Steve posted a few weeks ago on Land Value Tax – saying it’s ground we shouldn’t let the Lib Dems capture.
It’s now ground that we shouldn’t let the Tories capture.
In addition to Lib Dem support for greater property/land tax, Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home as well as Tory MP, Mark Reckless have come out in favour of such a tax, arguing for a move to tax wealth rather than income.
Admittedly, Secretary of State Eric Pickles has come out very firmly against, as a standard bearer of the Tory right would.
Then again, the Tory right also hate the 50p tax rate and if this is the lever to get the Lib Dems to back its abolition, they may just put up with the introduction of a new tax. Indeed, Tim Montgomerie is not known for being on the left of the Tory party and this is clearly the calculation he is making.
There are some things Tories can do easier than the Labour Party: can you imagine the onslaught Labour would face, in government or in opposition, if we proposed the introduction of a new tax? But since it’s the Tories who’ve let this particular genie out of the bottle, we should seize it.
There is a perfectly good social democratic argument for a Land Value Tax – in taxation and housing terms. Check out Toby Lloyd’s evergreen ‘Don’t Bet the House on It’ for some of the housing reasons.
The taxation case is simpler – It raises money by taxing the unproductive and in many cases unearned wealth of the rich, rather than doing so from the income earned from everyone’s productive activities. That’s hard to argue with.
And we can outflank coalition in a way that will chime better with the mood of the nation and support people far more deserving than those paying the 50p tax rate: the revenues could be used to support first-time buyers, invest in more genuinely affordable social housing or maintain a comprehensive housing benefit safety net.
Or since I’d like to see Labour trusted on taxation and not face an onslaught if we were to propose tax reform: tax cuts for lower and middle earners whose standards of living are being squeezed ever tighter.

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Power in planning goes to the powerful

The letters page in the Daily telegraph is not a place I go often. But in the last week or two, since the paper launched its ‘Hands off our land’ campaign, the correspondents have reflected the mood of insurrection in the shires.
The Government’s draft National Planning Policy Framework is the cause of the deep rift in the Conservative Party.  Two great Tory traditions have collided – conservation of the countryside versus making lots of money from development.
The government has dug this deep hole for itself and Pickles/Shapps/Clark and co deserve no sympathy for their plight.  When they came to power they made constant attacks on Labour’s national targets, its regional planning approach and regional plans, which in my view had quite carefully balanced the need to build homes with the need to protect heritage and beautiful places.
At that time the Tory talk reflected the extreme version of localism, where local people would dictate what would get built and where, with just a few incentives, like the New Homes Bonus, to encourage them to build.  It felt like a nimby charter and that the net result would be very little development.  Indeed, some councils reduced their development targets massively and a few declared what was a virtual moratorium on new homes, especially new affordable homes.
It’s not clear when the penny dropped and the government realised that its approach was incompatible with building more homes.  This realisation was encouraged by some developers who increasingly, according to the Telegraph and others, fill the Tory Party’s coffers with rather more than pennies.  Anyway, they now seem to have swung right round to the opposite extreme.  There are accusations that government inspectors are ‘pressurising’ district councils into changing their core strategies to get more homes built.  The Telegraph says that they have ‘identified a number of rural councils which have been instructed to make changes to their core strategies by planning inspectors that will see them giving up countryside for development. The rulings have created deep tensions at some key Tory run councils with many councillors feeling frustrated at the centralised
interference.’
For the anti-development lobby, the NPPF is wholly unacceptable because it says that planning must not act as an impediment to growth (i.e. development) and that there will be a presumption in favour of ‘sustainable’ development.  Those that genuinely believed in localism, and thought this government would be the conservationists’ friend, feel betrayed and outraged at this new centralised imposition.
Although there is little doubt that the planning system could be streamlined and some of the fussier rules removed, Labour’s structure for planning is beginning to look like a well-oiled machine: national assessments of how many homes are needed, some strict central policy guidance like the target for building on brownfield land and protecting the green belt, a regional assessment of land capacity and the setting of targets for each area,
balanced by local influence over sites and specific developments.
The excellent Highbury Group on housing delivery has submitted comments on the government’s plans which seem to be the height of common sense.  They argue that the planning system needs to be plan-led and not led by desires of developers or even the general needs of the economy.  Plans need to be evidence-based, taking full account of demography, geography and the natural resources available.  They point out that sustainability is a subjective consideration and not a market phenomenon, and should be contextualised by the preparation of a proper hierarchy of national, regional and local plans.
Most studies of the capacity of areas to support housebuilding find more developable brownfield land than was previously believed, although that land is often harder to assemble into good prepared sites than the greenfield option.   Some greenfield (NB not Green Belt) land will be required but not so much that it will concrete over the countryside – far from it.  With imagination and determination, the development planning process can deliver the homes we need without ruining the countryside and the natural heritage.
The truth is that Labour was right all along, or at least a lot less wrong than the Tories, and the Party should be taking this opportunity to say so to the 3.8m members of the National Trust, the 1m members of the RSPB, and the 600,000 members of the Woodland Trust.
As the National Trust says: ‘We believe strongly that any development must meet the needs of people, the environment as well as the economy.  The Government has failed to do this in its reforms. It has put short term financial gain ahead of everything else. It has failed to protect the everyday places that communities love. Power in planning goes to the powerful.’  Spot on.

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Worrying trends in homelessness

All the conditions were there and it was only a matter of time before the homelessness figures start to grow again.
All of the critical indicators of homelessness have now turned upwards after many years of decline.
The number of households accepted by local authorities between April and June 2011 was 11,820, a rise of 17% from 10,100 in the same quarter last year.  This is a very significant change in trend.
The rise in acceptances feeds through slowly into the number of households in temporary accommodation, but even this figure has started to rise again – up in the last quarter after 26 successive quarters of reduction, during which it fell from a peak of over 100,000 to less than 50,000.  In London, 35,620 households were in temporary accommodation at the  end of June 2011, just under three quarters of the total for England.
For those of us who lived through the bed and breakfast crisis of the 1980s, it is extremely worrying to see the numbers increasing significantly again.  From a low of 1,880 at the end of 2009 it is now back up to 3,120.  The number of families with children in B&B, which troughed at 400 at the end of 2009, is now back up to 1,210, a rise of over 60% on the year.  The consistent success in bringing this figure down, from a peak this century of
14,000 in 2002 (of which nearly 7,000 were families with children) has been brought to a halt.  One reason is that the use of private sector leased accommodation is declining.
With regard to the reasons for homelessness, the increase between 2009/10 and 2010/11 of 4,140 in the number of households accepted (40,020 to 44,160) is largely explained by two factors: relatives and friends (other than parents) being no longer able or willing to provide accommodation, which increased by 960 (5,000 – 5,960) and the ending of an assured shorthold tenancy, which increased by 2,050 (4,580 – 6,630).  Given the increasing reliance on private rented accommodation, the latter increase is a sign of things to come.
The apparent success in tackling homelessness since 2004 has not always been what it seems.  There were huge changes in policy and approach which put much more emphasis on managing demand.  This was a mixture of excellent practice – in the development of housing options services and homelessness prevention work – and the less excellent practice of diversion – securing private rented accommodation for households before they even registered as homeless, thereby keeping them out of the statistics.
Of the 164,000 households where action was successful in preventing homelessness in 2010/11, more than 82,000 were assisted in obtaining alternative accommodation, predominantly private lets.  This was the precursor of the current government’s policy to allow councils to discharge their homelessness duty by securing private rented accommodation against the wishes of the applicant.  Despite the best efforts of councils, many suspect that the policy of placing homeless households into private lets will lead a revolving door of insecurity and repeat homelessness.
Detailed homelessness statistics (live tables) are available here.

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Jumping jack flash, it's a (blog about) gas!

The safety of our homes has been highlighted a number of times in recent months and years, with fire safety problems being identified in tower blocks and a wide range of health and safety issues being identified in the private rented sector.  Gas safety has also come
under scrutiny with the reporting of a number of deaths being caused by poor gas installations leading to carbon monoxide poisoning.
However, looking over a longer period of time, gas safety is an example of good regulation and there have been significant reductions in the number of life-threatening incidents.
A new report on carbon monoxide trends from the Gas Safety Trust analyses information obtained from the CO incident database for the lengthy period from 1996 to 2010.  Fatalities have reduced from 21 in 1996/97 to 4 in 2009/10 and non-fatal injuries have reduced from 142 to 115 in the same period.
This is a success story.  But even so 4 deaths is 4 too many.  The report outlines a number of areas where further improvements could be made.  First, the highest risk group is those over 70 years of age, who are 5 times as likely to die as a result of a CO incident as others.  Secondly, although the risk faced by private tenants has reduced substantially over the period, it is still 50% greater than that faced by either owner occupiers or social tenants.  Thirdly, the proportion of incidents involving older central heating boilers (over 20 years old) has been rising steadily and is now around half of all incidents.
The report sets out a clear agenda to be followed.  Elderly gas users and those with older
systems should be considered for concessionary measures to help them (occupiers or landlords) to replace and/or maintain their gas appliances.  Mandatory annual safety checks and certification on appliances has plainly been hugely important in improving the record of the private rented sector, but the report recommends that the next target should be a requirement not just for an annual check but for annual servicing.  The report also recommends that more should be done to prevent unregistered operatives from undertaking gas work as ‘the number that have been cited by incident investigators remains stubbornly high’.
Effective regulation, setting high standards and rigorously enforcing them, has achieved
a huge amount in this field in the last 15 years.  It is an excellent example to use to rebut
those who constantly complain about ‘health and safety’ and ‘red tape’ being too burdensome.  It is also an excellent model to use in tackling other serious hazards in the home.
The report concludes that the ‘industry’s continued efforts and vigilance in promoting best practice and safe gas usage in the domestic sector should therefore be rigorously maintained.’  Indeed, but there may also be a need for further action by government to
finally crack the remaining issues.
(with apologies to the Rolling Stones)

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When housing policy was truly ambitious: in memory of William Barnes

Quite by chance, yesterday I came across a copy of a wonderful tribute to William Barnes,
who died in July age 92, written by his son Peter. In my first public sector job, as Housing Research Officer in Camden from 1977, William was my ultimate boss as Director of Housing for the borough, a job he had held since 1971.
It was a different era, when housing policy was truly ambitious and people not only aspired to achieve the end of housing need but believed it was within grasp. I will let
Peter take up the story from the date of William’s appointment as Camden’s Housing Director.

“The challenge was to provide adequate social housing for a rising population of claimants, in a borough already densely populated, while taking account of other residents. My father addressed himself to the challenges with imagination and energy.
First, he set the goal of a ‘comprehensive housing service’ for the whole borough. In other words, he was concerned not just with social tenants but with housing issues for the borough as a whole. Second he pushed for a vigorous programme of redevelopment and rehabilitation of the borough’s housing stock. And third, he pursued a policy of ‘municipalization’, compulsorily purchasing unoccupied houses for conversion into council flats.
This approach was undeniably controversial. Middle class homeowners did not always welcome council tenants living next door. And the price tag was high.
The Thatcher Government, elected in 1979, cut funding for Camden and ordered the sale of council houses. Cuts and sales made a comprehensive housing service untenable and my father resigned.
Nonetheless, in my father’s decade in Camden, he made considerable progress towards his goals. He had professionalized the housing service, recruiting talented graduate staff. He was adding 3,000 new homes a year to the housing stock, and had almost eliminated the housing waiting list. Thousands of families were moved into safer, healthier, more modern accommodation. And municipalisation created mixed communities, limiting the ghettoization of housing between rich and poor, and reducing the need for building bespoke housing estates. Even thirty years on, my father’s work is still discernable in the streets and communities of Camden.”

William Barnes was a life-long pacifist and a conscientious objector during the war, serving on the front line with the Friends Ambulance Unit. He later served in the Ministry of National Insurance when the welfare state was being built, and as Principal Private Secretary to the President of the Board of Trade. Before his career jump into housing, he was the Secretary to the Board that established the London Business School. As a civil servant of the old school, he nevertheless seemed to rub along well with Camden’s Labour councillors: during his time Frank Dobson and Ken Livingstone had stints as leader and chair of housing respectively, and I suspect he quietly shared many of their objectives
if not their style.
The number of homes being provided during William’s time at Camden is almost beyond
imagination now, despite the country being so much richer. William was a modest
and self-effacing man who worked with good committed politicians to build an
extraordinary department that achieved so much, until Thatcher came along. He
demonstrated what could be achieved if the will exists, and I would be delighted if I qualified as one of his ‘talented graduate staff’.
William Peter Ward Barnes, 1919-2011
Tribute by his son Peter, Church of St John the Evangelist, Newtimber.  26 July 2011.

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Boris Johnson's sleight of hand. Smoke and mirrors (part 2)

Nicky Gavron, Labour’s London Assembly housing and planning spokesperson, has called on Mayor Boris Johnson to come clean over claiming credit for 16,000 affordable homes that will never be delivered.  Nicky has today written to Richard Blakeway, the Mayor’s housing adviser, to explain why he has apparently double counted around 16,000 affordable homes.
Blakeway said this week that “around 54,000 completions” are expected over the “next four years” (2011-15), apparently including 16,000 affordable homes that will already have been counted towards the Mayor’s target of 50,000 homes by 2012.
Nicky wrote: “I am extremely concerned at the way the mayor’s office has apparently
double counted this information. At best it is a lazy, yet very important, error. At worst you have blatantly misled Londoners on your housing delivery.”
She went on to say that the misuse of statistics “undermines the challenges we face, and this apparent sleight of hand does nothing to reassure Londoners we are delivering what the city needs.”
Nicky commented: “The mayor needs to be beating targets, not cheating them. He’s already broken his election pledge to deliver 50,000 homes by 2011. It now looks like he’s trying to claim credit twice for thousands of extra homes.”
Richard Blakeway wrote in the Guardian on Thursday 1 September, “the mayor is on course to deliver 50,000 affordable homes by April 2012 …. The pipeline of affordable
housing for the next four years is also strong, with around 54,000 completions expected”.
In April, Alan Benson, head of housing at the Greater London Authority, told the London
Assembly’s housing and planning committee: “About 28,000 homes … are in the pipeline to be delivered. We will deliver about 16,000 of them by 2012. The rest will be delivered in the following year, 2012/13. There is a substantial pipeline of homes in development currently, on site, which will deliver over the next couple of years, which the Government is committed to funding and which are an entirely social rent/intermediate mix as we know it.”

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Boris Johnson’s housing strategy: it’s all smoke and mirrors

When you strip away the froth and the gimmicks, the more Boris Johnson publishes about his housing strategy for London the more it looks like a plan for the gentrification of large areas of the capital.  No more social housing funded from his London pot, just ‘affordable rent’ at much higher rents.  An end to the ‘50% affordable’ target in housing development.
No social rent targets set for the boroughs.  No mitigation of the government’s Local Housing Allowance caps and the cap on total benefits, which even he fears might lead to ‘Kosovo-style cleansing’ of poor people from some parts of the city.
Johnson’s recently published London Plan, which will determine development over the next decade, has been well critiqued by Labour’s Nicky Gavron in the Guardian. She shows how the plan’s overall housing target is inadequate to meet London’s needs, but reserves her strongest criticisms for his policies for social housing and Johnson’s decision to remove Ken Livingstone’s planning policy that 50% of new homes should be affordable
and that, of those, 70% should be for social rent.  These policies were based on detailed
assessments of housing need and the capacity of sites to deliver, and were beginning to have real effect.  They were also supported by the independent Inspector responsible for
investigating Johnson’s proposals.  All the inspector’s key recommendations have been ignored or over-ridden by Johnson and Eric Pickles, it appears on ideological grounds.
Why smoke and mirrors?  Well, Johnson talks the talk but he walks a very different walk.  He may be a card, but he is at heart a highly ideological Tory.  Just like his fellow Bullingdon boy, David Cameron, the compassionate talk and the occasionally progressive idea hide the harsh market-driven policy.  For example, despite saying that he didn’t want London to become like Paris “where the less well off are pushed out to the suburbs” his plan proposes building market housing in areas where there is a lot of social housing to provide a better mix but then fails to ensure that social housing will be built in areas of mainly market housing to create more mixed communities everywhere.  It seems nowhere
is appropriate for social housing.  He gives the go-ahead to his friends in the boroughs to remove social housing in so-called regeneration schemes, homes that will not be adequately replaced.  Taken together with the government’s housing benefit policies, we now have a fully fledged policy of removing social housing, failing to build any more, and encouraging the social segregation of the city.  His policies will make London like Paris but
worse.
Why smoke and mirrors?  Well, just published, his latest consultation document – Initial Proposals for a Revised London Housing Strategy continues to claim credit for the delivery of social rented homes as if he really cares about having a balanced housing programme.  Housing development is a very long process and the social rented homes he’s talking about are mainly the completion of those that were started under the programme for 2008-11 that was set by Ken Livingstone and the Labour government before leaving office.
Why smoke and mirrors?  To understand the mayor’s real housing policy we have to look at his first unfettered decisions – the new programme for 2011-2015 – which virtually excludes funding for new social rented homes.  Any new social rented homes that get built in future will either be subsidy-free (for example as a result of s.106 agreements) or will be built with local borough subsidy (eg through free land) or directly by the councils themselves.  Johnson replaces homes for social rent with housing at ‘affordable rent’ levels (up to 80% of market rents).  He claims in his document that this is a great achievement – providing ‘affordable’ homes with far lower levels of public subsidy.  Magic.  But the truth is that the rents are not affordable, the cost is transferred to the occupier or, if the occupier is eligible, onto the housing benefit bill.  It is a less direct and less efficient way of providing homes.  Despite the government’s protestations that it wants to make it easier to get into work, the scheme’s high rents make it harder.
Throughout, the real aim, to ‘marketise’ housing and remove social housing as a concept, is hidden from public view.
And the man with a shock of white hair, a top hat, a few jokes and a droopy magic wand, releases the blue smoke, flashes the bright lights and deploys the mirrors.  The trick is complete.
Cue applause.  Or catcalls – because he’s been rumbled.

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A tale of two rioters

Picture the scene.  Two 15 year olds caught up in the riots.  Both enter a building and steal something, no violence involved but it’s clearly burglary.  Both are caught by CCTV, arrested, charged, and brought before the Courts. Both are sentenced to 6 months in jail.  The justice system has worked.
But there is one difference between the two children.  One lives with his parents in a small terraced house that they bought 25 years ago and have brought their three children up in.  No-one in the family has been in trouble before.  The other lives with his parents in a small terraced house that they got from the council 25 years ago and have brought their three children up in.  No-one in the family has been in trouble before.
What does justice have to say about this?  Both have been dealt with, punished seriously for their crime.  Both will have the blight of a criminal conviction and prison sentence hanging over them for years to come.  But it’s fair treatment.
The first boy, when released, will return to his family in their family home and try to take up his life.  There is some security and stability as he rebuilds.  It’s hard but possible.
The second boy, when released, finds that his family has been evicted by the council from the family home because of his crime.  They were declared intentionally homeless, so they won’t be rehoused.  They have taken two private rented rooms in a shared house at a cost of nearly twice the council rent they were paying.  Dad thinks he can’t afford to keep working.  The youngest child is bedwetting, a result of the trauma of eviction say the medics.  Mum is suffering from depression and is struggling to keep her job.  They are not able to take the oldest boy in.  He drifts off to stay on someone’s sofa.  There is no security and stability from which to build.  It’s very hard and it feels almost impossible.
What does justice have to say about this?  None of this is fanciful; anyone involved in housing knows that this story reflects the reality.
There is no doubt that the mood is about retribution.  Polls show that more people want tenants evicted than don’t.  But neighbours who are home owners or private tenants probably don’t want anyone convicted of a serious crime living next to them either.  And the determination of some councils to evict, and the government’s determination to make it easier for them, will not apply more generally to your common or garden murderer or rapist or burglar.
It may allow politicians to sound tough.  It may be what people want.  But it isn’t justice.   It’s double punishment, it’s guilt by association, it’s discrimination on the grounds of tenure, pure and simple.
Labour, nationally and locally, should have nothing to do with it.

This post by Steve Hilditch follows previous posts on the riots and the aftermath by Steve and Tony Clements here here here here and here.  We are keen to see these issues debated as widely as possible.  This post has also appeared at LabourList where there are also a number of comments and a bit of debate.
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Is it a council's job to promote homeownership?

 I do a bit of moonlighting on the blogging page of the MJ, with more of a local government focus. Here’s my latest post for them:
Is it a council’s job to promote homeownership?
A report by the National Housing Federation yesterday argued that the rate of homeownership is likely to fall to the levels last seen in the mid-eighties.
The lack of homes, high prices and difficulty of getting a mortgage (even if you’re on a good salary) is not exactly fresh news to many thousands of first-time buyers. Homeownership has already been falling for a number of years now after its peak in 2003 of 70%.
Should councils care about this? At first glance, no. They have statutory duties to the homeless and those in housing need and have a planning system to administer. They have more than enough on their plates providing sufficient affordable homes, finding temporary accommodation for those who need it and trying to keep tabs on the less scrupulous private landlords in their area.
But in the past councils have underpinned Britain’s high levels of homeownership. Right-to-buy (for better or worse) vastly increased the number of those who owned their own home and spread ownership far further down the income scale. Councils used to provide mortgages to their residents – the hurdle which is tripping up most of today’s first-time buyers. Many also used their council housing to help people buy. They sound dated now, but ‘young married couples schemes’ gave time-limited tenancies and social rents to young couples to help them save for a deposit.
The rising homeownership of the past was enabled by high and sustained levels of house building. It’s no accident that the highest levels of private house building went side-by-side with the highest levels of council house building. Prior to the recession, we got used to the idea that affordable housing was a ‘by-product’ of successful and high value private development, through Section 106 agreements and the like. Through the sixties and seventies large council house building programmes supported large-scale development by private enterprise – providing the industry with a certain stream of work and increasing capacity in the building industry.
If it becomes a goal of public policy again to increase the levels of homeownership in society, the government will need to remember that it was local councils that had a key role in making 70% levels possible.
Tony also blogs at Red Brick.