Public Housing In The United Kingdom
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Public housing in the United Kingdom, also known as council estates, council housing, or social housing, provided the majority of rented accommodation until 2011 when the number of households in private rental housing surpassed the number in social housing. Houses and flats built for public or social housing use are built by or for
local authorities Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...
and known as
council house A council house is a form of British public housing built by local authorities. A council estate is a building complex containing a number of council houses and other amenities like schools and shops. Construction took place mainly from 1919 ...
s, though since the 1980s the role of non-profit
housing association In Ireland and the United Kingdom, housing associations are private, Non-profit organization, non-profit making organisations that provide low-cost "Public housing in the United Kingdom, social housing" for people in need of a home. Any budge ...
s became more important and subsequently the term "social housing" became more widely used, as technically council housing only refers to housing owned by a local authority, though the terms are largely used interchangeably. Before 1865, housing for the poor was provided solely by the private sector. Council houses were built on council estates, known as schemes in Scotland, where other amenities, like schools and shops, were often also provided. From the 1950s, blocks of
flat Flat or flats may refer to: Architecture * Flat (housing), an apartment in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and other Commonwealth countries Arts and entertainment * Flat (music), a symbol () which denotes a lower pitch * Flat (soldier), ...
s and three-or-four-storey blocks of
maisonette An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are ...
s were widely built, alongside large developments of terraced housing, while the 1960s and to some degree the 1970s saw construction of many high-rise tower blocks. Flats and houses were also built in mixed estates. Council homes were built to supply uncrowded, well-built homes on secure tenancies at reasonable rents to primarily working-class people. Council housing in the mid-20th century included many large suburban council estates, featuring terraced and semi-detached houses, where other amenities like schools and shops were often also provided. By the late 1970s, almost a third of UK households lived in social housing: some of these developments did not live up to the hopes of their supporters, and now suffer from
urban blight Urban decay (also known as urban rot, urban death or urban blight) is the sociological process by which a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude. There is no single process that leads to urban deca ...
, while others became desirable locations. Since 1979, the role of council housing has changed. Housing stock has been sold under
Right to Buy The Right to Buy scheme is a policy in the United Kingdom, with the exception of Scotland since 1 August 2016 and Wales from 26 January 2019, which gives secure tenants of councils and some housing associations the legal right to buy, at a large ...
legislation, and new social housing has mainly been developed and managed by
housing association In Ireland and the United Kingdom, housing associations are private, Non-profit organization, non-profit making organisations that provide low-cost "Public housing in the United Kingdom, social housing" for people in need of a home. Any budge ...
s. A substantial part of the UK population still lives in council housing; in 2010, about 17% of UK households. Approximately 55% of the country's social housing stock is owned by local authorities, of which 15% is managed on a day-to-day basis by
arms-length management organisation In the United Kingdom, an arms-length management organisation (ALMO) is a not-for-profit company that provides housing services on behalf of a local authority. Usually an ALMO is set up by the authority to manage and improve all or part of its ho ...
s rather than the authority, and 45% by
housing association In Ireland and the United Kingdom, housing associations are private, Non-profit organization, non-profit making organisations that provide low-cost "Public housing in the United Kingdom, social housing" for people in need of a home. Any budge ...
s.


History

The history of public housing is the history of the housing of the poor. Even that statement is controversial, as before 1890 the state was not involved in housing policy. Public housing became needed to provide "
homes fit for heroes A council house is a form of British public housing built by local authorities. A council estate is a building complex containing a number of council houses and other amenities like schools and shops. Construction took place mainly from 1919 a ...
" in 1919, then to enable
slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...
. Standards were set to ensure high-quality homes.
Aneurin Bevan Aneurin "Nye" Bevan PC (; 15 November 1897 – 6 July 1960) was a Welsh Labour Party politician, noted for tenure as Minister of Health in Clement Attlee's government in which he spearheaded the creation of the British National Health ...
, a Labour politician, passionately believed that council houses should be provided for all, while the Conservative politician
Harold Macmillan Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as "Supermac", he ...
saw council housing "as a stepping stone to home ownership". The Conservative government of
Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
introduced Right to Buy in 1979, with the millionth council house being sold within seven years. In time, the transfer of public housing stock to private ownership reached the point where councils had to rent back their own houses to house the homeless.


Before council housing

Even in the stable medieval model of landowner and peasant, where estate workers lived at the landowner's whim in a tied cottage, the aged and infirm needed provision from their former employer, the church or the state.


Almshouses

The documented history of social housing in Britain starts with
almshouse An almshouse (also known as a bede-house, poorhouse, or hospital) was charitable housing provided to people in a particular community, especially during the medieval era. They were often targeted at the poor of a locality, at those from certain ...
s, which were established from the 10th century, to provide a place of residence for "poor, old and distressed folk". The first recorded almshouse was founded in
York York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...
by King
Æthelstan Æthelstan or Athelstan (; ang, Æðelstān ; on, Aðalsteinn; ; – 27 October 939) was King of the Anglo-Saxons from 924 to 927 and King of the English from 927 to his death in 939. He was the son of King Edward the Elder and his first ...
; the oldest still in existence is the Hospital of St. Cross in
Winchester Winchester is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city in Hampshire, England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government Districts of England, district, at the western end of the South Downs Nation ...
, dating to 1133.


Workhouses

The public
workhouse In Britain, a workhouse () was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term ''workhouse'' ...
was the final fallback solution for the destitute. Rural poverty had been greatly increased by the
Inclosure Act The Inclosure Acts, which use an archaic spelling of the word now usually spelt "enclosure", cover enclosure of open fields and common land in England and Wales, creating legal property rights to land previously held in common. Between 1604 and 1 ...
s leaving many in need of assistance. This was divided into outside relief, or handouts to keep the family together, and inside relief, which meant submitting to the workhouse. The workhouse provided for two groups of people – the transient population roaming the country looking for seasonal work, and the long-term residents. The two were kept separate where possible. The long-term residents included single elderly men incapable of further labour, and young women with their children—often women who had been abandoned by their husbands, single mothers and servant-girls who had been dismissed from residential positions.


Migration to the city

The pressure for decent housing was increased by overcrowding in the large cities during the
Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going f ...
of the 19th century; many social commentators (such as
Octavia Hill Octavia Hill (3 December 1838 – 13 August 1912) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born into a fa ...
) reported on the squalor, sickness and immorality that arose. Some industrialists and independent organisations provided housing in
tenement block A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...
s, while some philanthropist factory owners built entire villages for their workers, such as
Saltaire Saltaire is a Victorian era, Victorian model village in Shipley, West Yorkshire, Shipley, part of the City of Bradford Metropolitan District, in West Yorkshire, England. The Victorian era Salt's Mill and associated residential district locate ...
(1853), Bournville (1879) and
Port Sunlight Port Sunlight is a model village and suburb in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside. It is located between Lower Bebington and New Ferry, on the Wirral Peninsula. Port Sunlight was built by Lever Brothers to accommodate workers in it ...
(1888).


Council-built housing

The
City of London Corporation The City of London Corporation, officially and legally the Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London, is the municipal governing body of the City of London, the historic centre of London and the location of much of the United King ...
built
tenement A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...
s in
Farringdon Road Farringdon Road is a road in Clerkenwell, London. Route Farringdon Road is part of the A201 route connecting King's Cross to Elephant and Castle. It goes southeast from King's Cross, crossing Rosebery Avenue, then turns south, crossing C ...
in 1865, but this was an isolated instance. The first council to build housing as an integrated policy was
Liverpool Corporation Liverpool City Council is the governing body for the city of Liverpool in Merseyside, England. It consists of 90 councillors, three for each of the city's 30 wards. The council is currently controlled by the Labour Party and is led by Mayor J ...
, starting with St Martin's Cottages in Ashfield Street,
Vauxhall Vauxhall ( ) is a district in South West London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. Vauxhall was part of Surrey until 1889 when the County of London was created. Named after a medieval manor, "Fox Hall", it became well known for ...
, completed in 1869. The Corporation then built Victoria Square Dwellings, opened by Home Secretary Sir Richard Cross in 1885. That year, a Royal Commission was held, as the state had taken an interest in housing and housing policy. This led to the
Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890 The Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890 ( 53 & 54 Vict. c. 70) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Background The Housing of the Working Classes Act 1885 was a public health act, not a housing act. It empowered local authoriti ...
, which encouraged the London authority to improve the housing in their areas. It also gave them the power to acquire land and to build
tenement A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...
s and houses (cottages). As a consequence,
London County Council London County Council (LCC) was the principal local government body for the County of London throughout its existence from 1889 to 1965, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today kno ...
opened the
Boundary Estate The Boundary Estate is a housing development in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London. It is positioned just inside Bethnal Green's historic parish and borough boundary with Shoreditch, which ran along ''Boundary S ...
in 1900, a 'block dwelling estate' of tenements in
Tower Hamlets The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is a London borough covering much of the traditional East End. It was formed in 1965 from the merger of the former metropolitan boroughs of Stepney, Poplar, and Bethnal Green. 'Tower Hamlets' was originally ...
. The Housing of the Working Classes Act 1900 extended these power to all local councils, which then began building tenements and houses.


Homes fit for heroes – interwar policy

In 1912,
Raymond Unwin Sir Raymond Unwin (2 November 1863 – 29 June 1940) was a prominent and influential English engineer, architect and town planner, with an emphasis on improvements in working class housing. Early years Raymond Unwin was born in Rotherham, Yorks ...
published a pamphlet ''Nothing gained by Overcrowding''. He worked on the influential Tudor Walters Report of 1918, which recommended housing in short terraces, spaced apart at a density of . The
First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
indirectly provided a new impetus, when the poor physical health and condition of many urban recruits to the
army An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...
was noted with alarm. This led to a campaign under the slogan "Homes fit for heroes". In 1919, the Government first required councils to provide housing, built to the Tudor Walters standards, under the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919 (Addison Act), helping them to do so through the provision of subsidies. London County Council embraced these freedoms and planned eight 'cottage estates' in the peripheries of London:
Becontree Becontree or Both pronunciations are given as Received Pronunciation in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, but the form is prioritised (). The dialectologist Peter Wright wrote in 1981 that is the traditional pronunciation in the cockney ...
,
St Helier St Helier (; Jèrriais: ; french: Saint-Hélier) is one of the twelve parishes of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands in the English Channel. St Helier has a population of 35,822 – over one-third of the total population of Jersey – ...
,
Downham Downham is a district of south-east London, England, within the London Borough of Lewisham. It borders the London Borough of Bromley, and is located north of Bromley and south of Catford. Downham was named in honour of Lord Downham, who was ...
for example; seven further followed including Bellingham. Houses were built on green field land on the peripheries of the urban area. The war had caused house building costs to rise enormously: Sir Ernest Simon reported to the Manchester Housing Committee in 1910 that "houses that had cost £250 to build pre war were then costing £1,250, so the economic rent was 30/- a week but had to be let at 12/6d". The provision of local authority housing varied throughout the UK; in the period 1919–39 67% of the houses built in Scotland were in the public sector, compared to 26% in England.


LCC cottage estates

The Addison Act provided subsidies solely to local authorities and not to private builders. Many houses were built over the next few years in 'cottage estates'. The Housing, &c. Act 1923 ( Chamberlain Act) of 1923 stopped subsidies going to council houses but extended the subsidies to private builders. Following the line of the railways, predominantly private estates were built on cheap agricultural land; building houses that the professional classes with an income of £300- £500 a year were able to afford. These pattern-book houses, put up speculatively by companies such as Wimpey,
Costain Costain is a surname of English, Scottish and Manx origin. When originating in Scotland and northern Ireland the surname is an Anglicisation of the Gaelic ''Mac Austain'', meaning "son of ''Austin''". The English surname is a reduced form of '' ...
, Laing and
Taylor Woodrow Taylor Woodrow was one of the largest housebuilding and general construction companies in Britain. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index until its merger with rival George Wimpey to create Ta ...
, were mocked by
Osbert Lancaster Sir Osbert Lancaster, CBE (4 August 1908 – 27 July 1986) was an English cartoonist, architectural historian, stage designer and author. He was known for his cartoons in the British press, and for his lifelong work to inform the general p ...
as " By-pass Variegated". Large council estates following the line of the radial roads. This marked a further movement out of the city, first by the middle classes and then the blue-collar workers, leaving just the poorest layer of society living in the urban area. The first Labour government was returned in 1924. The Wheatley Act of 1924 restored subsidies to municipal housing but at a lower level, it failed to make any provision for lower paid, who were living in the worse conditions, and could not afford to pay the higher rents of the new houses, or travel to or from them to work. They continued in substandard housing circling the urban core; in Manchester, for example, this 'slum belt' was about half a mile wide.


Statutory slum clearance plans

While new council housing had been built, little had been done to resolve the problem of inner-city
slum A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily inh ...
s, which could also be found in many smaller towns. This was to change with the
Housing Act 1930 The Housing Act 1930, 20 & 21 George 5 c.39, otherwise known as the Greenwood Act, is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. It encouraged mass slum clearance and councils to set to work to demolish poor quality housing and replace it wit ...
( Greenwood Act), which required councils to prepare
slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...
plans, and some progress was made before the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
intervened.


Post-war reconstruction phase

During the Second World War almost four million British homes were destroyed or damaged, and afterwards there was a major boom in council house construction. The bomb damage from the war only worsened the condition of Britain's housing stock, which was in poor condition before its outbreak. Before the war many social housing projects, such as the Quarry Hill Flats in
Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...
were built. However, the bomb damage meant that much greater progress had to be made with
slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...
projects. In heavily bombed cities like London,
Coventry Coventry ( or ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city in the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It is on the River Sherbourne. Coventry has been a large settlement for centuries, although it was not founded and given its ...
and
Kingston upon Hull Kingston upon Hull, usually abbreviated to Hull, is a port city and unitary authority in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It lies upon the River Hull at its confluence with the Humber Estuary, inland from the North Sea and south-east ...
, the redevelopment schemes were often larger and more radical. In the immediate post-war years, and well into the 1950s, council house provision was shaped by the
New Towns Act 1946 The New Towns Acts were a series of Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to found new settlements or to expand substantially existing ones, to establish Development Corporations to deliver them, and to create a Commission to wind up the C ...
and the
Town and Country Planning Act 1947 The Town and Country Planning Act 1947 (10 & 11 Geo. VI c. 51) was an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom passed by the Labour government led by Clement Attlee. It came into effect on 1 July 1948, and along with the Town and Country Plannin ...
of the 1945–51
Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...
government. Simultaneously, this government introduced housing legislation that removed
explicit Explicit refers to something that is specific, clear, or detailed. It can also mean: * Explicit knowledge, knowledge that can be readily articulated, codified and transmitted to others * Explicit (text) The explicit (from Latin ''explicitus est'', ...
references to housing for the working class and introduced the concept of "general needs" construction (i.e., that council housing should aim to fill the needs of a wide range of society). In particular,
Aneurin Bevan Aneurin "Nye" Bevan PC (; 15 November 1897 – 6 July 1960) was a Welsh Labour Party politician, noted for tenure as Minister of Health in Clement Attlee's government in which he spearheaded the creation of the British National Health ...
, the Minister for Health and Housing, promoted a vision of new estates where "the working man, the doctor and the clergyman will live in close proximity to each other". While a number of large cities tentatively erected their first high-rise developments (e.g., Aston Cross in
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
,
Churchill Gardens Churchill Gardens is a large housing estate in the Pimlico area of Westminster, London. The estate was developed between 1946 and 1962 to a design by the architects Powell and Moya, replacing Victorian terraced houses extensively damaged durin ...
in
Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Bu ...
), in England and
Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
homes were typically
semi-detached A semi-detached house (often abbreviated to semi) is a single family duplex dwelling house that shares one common wall with the next house. The name distinguishes this style of house from detached houses, with no shared walls, and terraced house ...
or in small
terrace Terrace may refer to: Landforms and construction * Fluvial terrace, a natural, flat surface that borders and lies above the floodplain of a stream or river * Terrace, a street suffix * Terrace, the portion of a lot between the public sidewalk a ...
s. A three-bedroom semi-detached council house was typically built on a square grid on the side, with a maximum density of houses of no more than , that is to say around per house. As a result, most houses had generous space around them. The
new town New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...
s and many existing towns had countless estates built to this basic model. In
Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
, the tradition of
tenement A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...
living meant that most homes of this period were built in low-rise (3–4) storey blocks of
flat Flat or flats may refer to: Architecture * Flat (housing), an apartment in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and other Commonwealth countries Arts and entertainment * Flat (music), a symbol () which denotes a lower pitch * Flat (soldier), ...
s. For many working-class people, this housing model provided their first experience of private indoor toilets, private bathrooms and hot running water, as well as gardens and electric lighting. For
tenants A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to hold land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord. Although a tenant does hold rights to real property, a ...
in England and Wales it also usually provided the first experience of private garden space (usually front and rear). The quality of these houses, and in particular the existence of small gardens in England and Wales, compared very favourably with social housing being built on the European continent in this period.


Focusing on a new urban vision

The 1951
Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
government began to re-direct the building programme back from "general needs" towards "welfare accommodation for low income earners" The principal focus was on
inner-city The term ''inner city'' has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Sociologists sometim ...
slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...
, completing the job that was started in the 1930s.
Harold Macmillan Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as "Supermac", he ...
's task, as Minister for Housing, was to deliver 300,000 houses a year. These were , 20% smaller than a Tudor Walters Bevan house, usually built as a two-bedroom terrace called "The Peoples House". From 1956, with the
Housing Subsidy Act 1956 Housing, or more generally, living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings individually or collectively, for the purpose of shelter. Housing ensures that members of society have a place to live, whether it ...
the government subsidy was restricted to only new houses built to replace those removed by slum clearance, and more money was given to tower blocks higher than six stories. With this subsidy, neighbourhoods throughout the country were demolished and rebuilt as mixed estates with low and high-rise building. At the same time the rising influence of
modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
architecture, the development of new cheaper construction techniques, such as
system building In structural engineering, a pre-engineered building (PEB) is designed by a PEB supplier or PEB manufacturer with a single design to be fabricated using various materials and methods to satisfy a wide range of structural and aesthetic design requ ...
(a form of
prefabrication Prefabrication is the practice of assembling components of a structure in a factory or other manufacturing site, and transporting complete assemblies or sub-assemblies to the construction site where the structure is to be located. The term is u ...
), and a growing desire by many towns and cities to retain population (and thus rental income and local rates) within their own boundaries (rather than "export" people to New Towns and "out of boundary"
peripheral A peripheral or peripheral device is an auxiliary device used to put information into and get information out of a computer. The term ''peripheral device'' refers to all hardware components that are attached to a computer and are controlled by the ...
estates) led to this model being adopted; abandoned inner-city areas were demolished, and estates of high-rise apartments blocks proliferated on vacant sites. Whole working class communities were scattered, and the tenants either relocated themselves to neighbouring overcrowded properties or became isolated away from friends in flats and houses, on estates without infrastructure or a bus-route.
Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...
led the way and others followed.
Tower block A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently ...
s became the preferred model. The councils visited Marseille and saw the results of Charles Édouard Jenneret's (Le Corbusier's) vision. The argument was advanced that more generously sized dwellings could be provided this way, that communities could be re-housed close to existing employment opportunities and there would be far less disruption to local
shopping Shopping is an activity in which a customer browses the available goods or services presented by one or more retailers with the potential intent to purchase a suitable selection of them. A Retail#Shopper profiles, typology of shopper types ha ...
and
leisure Leisure has often been defined as a quality of experience or as free time. Free time is time spent away from business, work, job hunting, domestic chores, and education, as well as necessary activities such as eating and sleeping. Leisure ...
patterns. During the 1950s and 1960s, the number of high-rise dwellings rose significantly. In 1953, just 23% of public-sector approvals were for flats, with only 3% high-rise (defined as blocks of six stories or more). By 1966, however, high-rise housing accounted for 26% of all homes started. A National Dwelling and Housing Survey carried out in 1977 also found higher levels of housing satisfaction amongst owner occupiers than council housing tenants. The survey found that 90% of owner occupiers were "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their accommodation and only 4% "dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied", while for council tenants the equivalent figures were 74% and 14%, respectively. Subsequent research at the
London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...
has tried to cast doubt on claims that only high rise developments could accommodate the population density required for these policies. The post-war governments considered the provision of as much new housing as possible to be a major part of post-war policy, and provided subsidies for local authorities to build such housing. The Conservatives competed with Labour for the popular vote over who could build more houses, abandoning Bevan's principle that numbers weren't enough – that the homes had to be spacious and well built, too. The use of
system building In structural engineering, a pre-engineered building (PEB) is designed by a PEB supplier or PEB manufacturer with a single design to be fabricated using various materials and methods to satisfy a wide range of structural and aesthetic design requ ...
methods was later seen as possibly being a short-sighted, false economy, as many of the later houses are in a poor state of repair or have been demolished. On many estates, older council houses, with their largely superior build quality, have outlived them – more incredibly, they have even been outlasted by a large percentage of Edwardian and late Victorian private houses. A number of types of system building used in flats have serious flaws. They were initially very popular with tenants due to their generous space standards, and with
councillor A councillor is an elected representative for a local government council in some countries. Canada Due to the control that the provinces have over their municipal governments, terms that councillors serve vary from province to province. Unl ...
s and housing officials due to their speed of construction – but have suffered problems, especially poor protection from damp and weather ingress, as well as other design defects and poor management. Also, studies such as ''
Family and Kinship in East London ''Family and Kinship in East London'' was a 1957 sociological study of an urban working class tight-knit community, and the effects of the post-war governments' social housing policy leading to their rehousing. Many East Londoners by rigid slum c ...
'' found that people moving to such estates lost their old social networks and failed to develop new ones. As noted by one study: "There was, however, one way in which slum clearance rather than enhancing housing standards actually threatened to reduce them: the building by experimented prefabricated methods, of large impersonal estates of high-rise buildings, lacking many of the amenities common in similar developments on the continent." The last major push in council home provision was made under the Wilson government of 1964. The energetic Minister of Housing
Richard Crossman Richard Howard Stafford Crossman (15 December 1907 – 5 April 1974) was a British Labour Party politician. A university classics lecturer by profession, he was elected a Member of Parliament in 1945 and became a significant figure among the ...
accepted the truth that the provision rate was too slow and instructed authorities to exercise their compulsory purchase powers and construct large overspill estates. In
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
he forced the building of
Castle Vale Castle Vale is a housing estate located between Erdington, Minworth and Castle Bromwich. Currently Castle Vale makes up the Castle Vale Ward of Birmingham City Council which is part of Erdington constituency (having previously been part of Birmin ...
and the 15,590 dwelling
Chelmsley Wood Chelmsley Wood is a town and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, West Midlands, England, with a population of 12,453. It is located near Birmingham Airport and the National Exhibition Centre. It lies about eight miles eas ...
estate,
Solihull Solihull (, or ) is a market town and the administrative centre of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in West Midlands County, England. The town had a population of 126,577 at the 2021 Census. Solihull is situated on the River Blythe i ...
.


Right to buy

Laws restricted councils' investment in housing, preventing them subsidising it from local taxes, but more importantly, council tenants were given the
Right to Buy The Right to Buy scheme is a policy in the United Kingdom, with the exception of Scotland since 1 August 2016 and Wales from 26 January 2019, which gives secure tenants of councils and some housing associations the legal right to buy, at a large ...
in the
Housing Act 1980 The Housing Act 1980 was an Act of Parliament passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom that gave five million council house tenants in England and Wales the Right to Buy their house from their local authority. The Act came into force on 3 Oc ...
offering a discount price on their council house. Proposed as policy by Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
and carried out under the remit of
Secretary of State for the Environment The Secretary of State for the Environment was a UK cabinet position, responsible for the Department of the Environment (DoE). This was created by Edward Heath as a combination of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, the Ministry of Tra ...
Michael Heseltine Michael Ray Dibdin Heseltine, Baron Heseltine, (; born 21 March 1933) is a British politician and businessman. Having begun his career as a property developer, he became one of the founders of the publishing house Haymarket. Heseltine served a ...
, the Right To Buy scheme allowed tenants to buy their home with a discount of 33–50% off the market value, depending on the time they had lived there. Councils were prevented from reinvesting the proceeds of these sales in new housing, and the total available stock, particularly of more desirable homes, declined. The "right to buy" was popular with many former Labour voters and, although the Labour government of
Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...
tightened the rules (reducing the maximum discount in areas of most housing need), it did not end the right-to-buy. Labour did relax the policy forbidding reinvestment of sales proceeds. Following its election in 2015, the Conservative government has announced proposals to extend the Right to Buy to housing association tenants. Social housing is being sold off under right to buy, new social housing is not being built to replace it and waiting lists for social housing have become very long, up to 18 years. Over a million people are on the social housing waiting list and a quarter of people on social housing waiting lists have been there for 5 years or more. The number of social homes is at a record low, over 100,000 households were on council waiting lists for over 10 years. Council houses sold under right to buy are typically sold at half market value, some of the money from the sale has to go to the Treasury. Councils can replace only one in three of homes sold under right to buy.


Stock transfer

The Housing Acts of
1985 The year 1985 was designated as the International Youth Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 ** The Internet's Domain Name System is created. ** Greenland withdraws from the European Economic Community as a result of a ...
and
1988 File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Australian ...
facilitated the transfer of council housing to not-for-profit housing associations. The 1988 Act redefined housing associations as non-public bodies, permitting access to private finance, which was a strong motivation for transfer as public sector borrowing had been severely constrained. These housing associations were also the providers of most new public-sector housing. By 2003 36.5% of the social rented housing stock was held by housing associations. In some council areas
referendum A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of a ...
s on changing ownership were won by opponents of government policy, preventing transfers to housing associations. The
Wakefield Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census.https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/census/2011/ks101ew Census 2011 table KS101EW Usual resident population, ...
district council found itself unable to maintain its supply of council housing and transferred it all to a housing association, in 2004; this represented the second largest stock transfer in British history. Housing rented from the council accounted for about 28% of the district and around 40% of the actual city of Wakefield. Many districts of the country have less than 10% of housing rented from the council; the national average stood at 14%.


Renewal and regeneration

On 16 May 1968, the problems associated with tower blocks were brought into sharp focus after the partial collapse of
Ronan Point Ronan Point was a 22-storey tower block in Canning Town in Newham, East London, that partly collapsed on 16 May 1968, only two months after it had opened. A gas explosion blew out some load-bearing walls, causing the collapse of one entire cor ...
, a system-built tower block in
Newham The London Borough of Newham is a London borough created in 1965 by the London Government Act 1963. It covers an area previously administered by the Essex county boroughs of West Ham and East Ham, authorities that were both abolished by the s ...
, east London, as a consequence of a gas explosion. A similar incident caused significant damage to one side of a block in
Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
. Although these incidents were due to a series of failures (not least being the illegal connection of gas cookers by unqualified friends of tenants), subsequently all system-built tower blocks were usually built with "all electric" heating, to prevent the occurrence of such an explosion. The same year Manchester started the construction of the
Hulme Crescents Hulme Crescents was a large housing development in the Hulme district of Manchester, England. It was the largest public housing development in Europe, encompassing 3,284 deck-access homes and capacity for over 13,000 people, but was marred by se ...
. Thirteen tower blocks connected by aerial walkways and the four long curving south facing blocks of flats and maisonettes connected by walkways and bridges. Five thousand homes were constructed in eight years. Three thousand of these were the deck access flats, almost immediately the constructional problems became apparent: they leaked, ducting failed and they were too expensive to heat. A child died falling from a deck and by 1975, and they were declared unsuitable for families with children, the elderly and the disabled. In 1975, 96.3% of the residents wanted to leave. 643 families petitioned to be rehoused. They were demolished between 1991 and 1994. Proportion of houses and flats built by local authorities and New Towns in England and Wales, 1960–80 (a) Notes:
(a) Tenders approved.
(b) Including maisonettes.
While some tower blocks have been demolished, many that occupy convenient city centre sites (such as The Sentinels in Birmingham,
Trellick Tower Trellick Tower is a Grade II* listed tower block on the Cheltenham Estate in North Kensington, London. Opened in 1972, it had been commissioned by the Greater London Council and designed in the Brutalist style by architect Ernő Goldfinger. ...
and Great Arthur House on the
Golden Lane Estate The Golden Lane Estate is a 1950s council housing complex in the City of London. It was built on the northern edge of the City, on a site devastated by bombing during the Second World War. Since 1997, the estate has been protected as a group of ...
in London) remain extremely popular with residents and have even been subject to an element of
gentrification Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more Wealth, affluent residents and businesses. It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and urban planning, planning. Gentrification ...
, caused by the onward sale of
lease A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user (referred to as the ''lessee'') to pay the owner (referred to as the ''lessor'') for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial ...
s purchased by original tenants under the
right to buy scheme The Right to Buy scheme is a policy in the United Kingdom, with the exception of Scotland since 1 August 2016 and Wales from 26 January 2019, which gives secure tenants of councils and some housing associations the legal right to buy, at a large ...
to more affluent purchasers. In 1988, the
Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
government of
Margaret Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
set up the first of six
housing action trust Housing action trusts (HAT) were non-departmental public bodies, set up to redevelop some of the poorest council housing estates in England's inner-city suburbs. Six housing action trusts were established under the Housing Act 1988. Each HAT wa ...
s designed to regenerate some of Britain's most deprived council housing areas, which involved refurbishment or demolition of council properties in these areas, as well as improved community facilities and scope for new private and social housing developments. The North Hull HAT was set up to regenerate a large area of predominantly interwar council housing in the north of Hull,
Humberside Humberside () was a non-metropolitan and ceremonial county in Northern England from 1 April 1974 until 1 April 1996. It was composed of land from either side of the Humber Estuary, created from portions of the East Riding of Yorkshire, West ...
.
Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...
HAT covered 67 of the worst tower blocks on
Merseyside Merseyside ( ) is a metropolitan county, metropolitan and ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England, with a population of List of ceremonial counties of England, 1.38 million. It encompasses both banks of the Merse ...
; 54 of these blocks were demolished and replaced by new public or private sector housing developments, while the remaining 13 blocks were refurbished. Stonebridge HAT in
Harlesden Harlesden is a district in the London Borough of Brent, North West London. Located north of the Grand Union Canal and Wormwood Scrubs, the Harrow Road flows through the centre of the area which goes eastwards to Central London and west towards ...
, London, was the final HAT to cease to exist when it was wound up in 2007, mostly covering an area of council housing built during the 1960s and 1970s.
Waltham Forest The London Borough of Waltham Forest () is a London borough in north-east London, England. Its population is estimated to be 276,983 in 2019. It borders five other London boroughs: Enfield to the north-west, Haringey to the west, Hackney to t ...
HAT in
South London South London is the southern part of London, England, south of the River Thames. The region consists of the Districts of England, boroughs, in whole or in part, of London Borough of Bexley, Bexley, London Borough of Bromley, Bromley, London Borou ...
covered several council estates, mostly built during the 1960s, and lasted until 2002, with the final phase of the regeneration being completed several years later by
English Partnerships English Partnerships (EP) was the national regeneration agency for England, performing a similar role on a national level to that fulfilled by regional development agencies on a regional level. On 1 December 2008 its powers passed to a successor ...
.
Tower Hamlets The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is a London borough covering much of the traditional East End. It was formed in 1965 from the merger of the former metropolitan boroughs of Stepney, Poplar, and Bethnal Green. 'Tower Hamlets' was originally ...
HAT involved the regeneration of three council estates, mostly consisting of flats, in
East London East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the f ...
. Perhaps the most notable HAT was the one founded in 1993 to regenerate the
Castle Vale Castle Vale is a housing estate located between Erdington, Minworth and Castle Bromwich. Currently Castle Vale makes up the Castle Vale Ward of Birmingham City Council which is part of Erdington constituency (having previously been part of Birmin ...
estate in
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...
, which had been built in the 1960s. The original master plan for the redevelopment of Castle Vale saw 17 out of 34 tower blocks on the estate earmarked for demolition, as well as 24 of the estate's 27 maisonette blocks, but by the time of the HAT's demise in 2005 all but two of the 34 tower blocks had been demolished, as well as all of the maisonette blocks and more than 100 bungalows. Community facilities on the estate were also improved, and the main shopping centre was completely redeveloped. One of the most ambitious post-war council housing developments, the complex of estates at
Broadwater Farm Broadwater Farm, often referred to simply as "The Farm", is an area in Tottenham, North London, straddling the River Moselle (London), River Moselle. The eastern half of the area is dominated by the Broadwater Farm Housing estate, Estate ("BWFE") ...
(shown above), became a national symbol of perceived failures in the council housing system following the
Broadwater Farm riot The Broadwater Farm riot occurred on the Broadwater council estate in Tottenham, North London, on 6 October 1985. The events of the day were dominated by two deaths. The first was that of Cynthia Jarrett, an Afro-Caribbean woman who died the p ...
in 1985. Since then, Broadwater Farm has been the focus of an intense regeneration programme, resulting in a dramatic drop in crime on the estate. In London, many council estates are being demolished and replaced with luxury housing, resulting in a net loss of
social housing Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, def ...
. Campaigners fear almost 8,000 homes could be lost during the decade following 2018. Among estates for regeneration, over 80 will be partly or completely demolished.


Council housing estates

The design and character of a council estate is related to the government initiative that allowed it to be built. The estates of the Addison Act are mixed tenure estates with generously proportioned semi-detached houses designed to be fit for heroes, albeit only affordable by the most prosperous workers. The generosity changed in the 1930s, with the push to eliminate the slums.
Aneurin Bevan Aneurin "Nye" Bevan PC (; 15 November 1897 – 6 July 1960) was a Welsh Labour Party politician, noted for tenure as Minister of Health in Clement Attlee's government in which he spearheaded the creation of the British National Health ...
's, new towns and estates planned to the Tudor Walters standards were designed to be the pinnacle of housing to which all classes would aspire. This gradually changed through the 1950s and 1960s, partly due to the increase in private housebuilding under
Harold Macmillan Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as "Supermac", he ...
, as well as due to dropping standards, especially with the adoption of system-building by many local authorities across the UK in the 1960s. Nonetheless, space standards in council homes (based on those prescribed by the Parker-Morris Report remained above those of many privately built dwellings at the time. The earliest council estates were built within the borough boundaries on low value land that was walking distance from the places of employment. When that was exhausted,
peripheral estate An overspill estate is a housing estate planned and built for the housing of excess population in urban areas, both from the natural increase of population and often in order to rehouse people from decaying inner city areas, usually as part of the ...
s were built on the edge of the town. Residents needed to commute by public transport or bicycle, as almost none of the people living in these areas had cars until well after
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Councils bought vacant land in neighbouring boroughs to build
overspill estate An overspill estate is a housing estate planned and built for the housing of excess population in urban areas, both from the natural increase of population and often in order to rehouse people from decaying inner city areas, usually as part of the ...
s. In
Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...
, this included
Wythenshawe Wythenshawe () is a district of the city of Manchester, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in Cheshire, Wythenshawe was transferred in 1931 to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the ...
in the 1920s and then
Hattersley Hattersley is an area of Tameside, Greater Manchester, England; it is located west of Glossop and east of Manchester city centre, at the eastern terminus of the M67. Historically part of Tintwistle Rural District in Cheshire until 1974, it i ...
in the 1960s. Later, infill estates were created on small pieces of brown field land that had been vacated by contracting heavy industry. Some pit villages, such as
Grimethorpe Grimethorpe is a large village in the metropolitan borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. Historically within the West Riding of Yorkshire, it had a population of 4,672 at the 2011 census. Grimethorpe is located to the east of Barnsl ...
in Yorkshire, are almost entirely composed of original council housing.
Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...
has
Seacroft Seacroft is an outer-city suburb/township consisting mainly of council estate housing covering an extensive area of east Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It lies in the LS14 Leeds postcode area, around east of Leeds city centre. It sits in th ...
– the 'town within the city'.
Sheffield Sheffield is a city status in the United Kingdom, city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is Historic counties o ...
boasts the award-winning Park Hill. Both Seacroft and Park Hill are now undergoing major redevelopment. In
Tyneside Tyneside is a built-up area across the banks of the River Tyne in northern England. Residents of the area are commonly referred to as Geordies. The whole area is surrounded by the North East Green Belt. The population of Tyneside as published i ...
, large council estates include
Byker Byker is a district in the east of the city and metropolitan borough of Newcastle upon Tyne. Home to the Byker Wall estate, made famous by TV series ''Byker Grove'', Byker’s population was recorded at 12,206 in the 2011 census. Byker is borde ...
and
Walker Walker or The Walker may refer to: People *Walker (given name) *Walker (surname) *Walker (Brazilian footballer) (born 1982), Brazilian footballer Places In the United States *Walker, Arizona, in Yavapai County *Walker, Mono County, California * ...
in
Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...
,
Felling Felling is the process of cutting down trees,"Feller" def. 2. and "Felling", def. 1. ''Oxford English Dictionary'' Second Edition on CD-ROM (v. 4.0) © Oxford University Press 2009 an element of the task of logging. The person cutting the tree ...
in
Gateshead Gateshead () is a large town in northern England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank, opposite Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle to which it is joined by seven bridges. The town contains the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, Millennium Bridge, Sage ...
and
Meadow Well Meadow Well, also known as Meadowell or the Ridges, is a district of North Shields, North East England. Historically in Northumberland, it is now part of the Tyne and Wear Metropolitan county. The population in 2016 was approximately 11,000. His ...
in
North Tyneside North Tyneside is a metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of Tyne and Wear, England. It forms part of the greater Tyneside conurbation. North Tyneside Council is headquartered at Cobalt Park, Wallsend. North Tyneside is bordered b ...
, the site of violent civil disorder in 1991. Meadow Well has been largely redeveloped since this unrest, with most of the old housing having been demolished.


Estate design

The very earliest council estates were in London, as they were permitted to finance houses ten years before non-metropolitan area and these were 'block estates' that is estates of
tenement A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...
blocks, or in modern terminology estates of low or medium rise flats. The first was the Boundary Estate. The alternative was the 'cottage estate' trialled at
Totterdown Fields Totterdown Fields was the first London County Council cottage estate built between 1901 and 1911 It contained 1244 individual houses built over . The estate was designated a conservation area, on 19 September 1978. Context It was the first Lon ...
, which emulated garden city principles, though this was hampered until the 1906 Hampstead Garden Suburb Act and the 1910 Town Planning Act, removed some of the restrictions imposed by the 1875s byelaws. The
Progress Estate The Progress Estate is a housing estate located in Well Hall, Eltham, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, South East London. It was built in 1915 to house some of the senior and skilled workers employed at the nearby Royal Arsenal munitions fac ...
, Well Hall Road, had an open spaced layout that gave a pleasant environment to residents. The
Tudor Walters Report The Tudor Walters Report on housing was produced by the Tudor Walters Committee of the United Kingdom Parliament in November 1918. Its recommendation set the standards for council house design and location for the next 90 years. The committee Tudor ...
was adopted and council estates opened up. They were designed to
Radburn principles Radburn design housing (also called Radburn housing, Radburn design'', ''Radburn principle, or Radburn concept) is a concept for planned housing estates, based on a design that was originally used in Radburn, New Jersey, United States. History ...
with wide feeder roads joining short cul-de-sacs. Houses were separated by at least from the facing houses. The former gridiron street pattern was deprecated. The Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919 (also known as the Addison Act after
Minister of Health A health minister is the member of a country's government typically responsible for protecting and promoting public health and providing welfare and other social security services. Some governments have separate ministers for mental health. Coun ...
, Dr Christopher Addison, the-then Minister for Housing), and the resulting wave of mass council housing in the early 1920s was among the first generation of houses in the country to feature electricity, running water, bathrooms, indoor toilets and front/rear gardens. However, some council houses were still being built with outdoor toilets, attached to the house, until well into the 1930s. Some of the earliest council houses did not feature an actual bathroom; the bath could often be found in the kitchen with a design that allowed it to double as a work surface. These new houses had two, three, four or five bedrooms, and generously sized back gardens intended for vegetable growing. At the best they were built at a density of houses of . However, later in the 20th century these houses were modernised to feature modern bathrooms and indoor toilets. The Wheatley Act 1924, reduced the expected standard in a council built house. Under the Addison Act a house would be but after 1924 it would be . Flats and bungalows were first built by local councils during the interwar years, but in relatively low volumes. Most interwar council houses were built on completely new estates. The
Housing Act 1930 The Housing Act 1930, 20 & 21 George 5 c.39, otherwise known as the Greenwood Act, is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. It encouraged mass slum clearance and councils to set to work to demolish poor quality housing and replace it wit ...
encouraged further mass slum clearance. There was a cut in funding and the housing density on the
peripheral estate An overspill estate is a housing estate planned and built for the housing of excess population in urban areas, both from the natural increase of population and often in order to rehouse people from decaying inner city areas, usually as part of the ...
s was increased; leading to a poorer build quality. The former tenants of the inner city properties, were displaced far from their workplaces unable to afford the higher rents (though reduced from the 1919 levels) or the cost of transport. Although the standard of housing improved, stable communities were broken up, and with it, support networks.


System build estates

It was not until the 1950s that mixed estates of multi-storey flats and houses became a common sight. Until then it was rare to see blocks of flats that were more than three or four storeys high. An early and famous development of council flats was at Quarry Hill in Leeds. Modelled on
Karl-Marx-Hof Karl-Marx-Hof (English: ''Karl Marx Court'') is one of the best-known '' Gemeindebauten'' (English: ''municipal housing complexes'') in Vienna, situated in Heiligenstadt, a neighbourhood of the 19th district of Vienna, Döbling. At over a kilo ...
flats in Vienna, the complex was built by Leeds City Council. At the time they were considered revolutionary: each flat had a motorized rubbish chute leading to a central incinerator. The complex had its own offices, shops and
gasworks A gasworks or gas house is an industrial plant for the production of flammable gas. Many of these have been made redundant in the developed world by the use of natural gas, though they are still used for storage space. Early gasworks Coal ...
. The 1970s sitcom Queenie's Castle was filmed there. Long-term problems with the steel-frame structure led to demolition, beginning in 1978 and there is now no evidence of their existence. Though not in UK, the
Oliver Bond flats Oliver Bond flats, also known as Oliver Bond House, is a group of blocks of flats in the Liberties area of Dublin, Ireland. They were designed by Herbert George Simms and built in 1936. They are named after Oliver Bond, a member of the Societ ...
in Dublin, Ireland were built in 1936 and have a similar design to many of the council estates in the UK today. The
Red Road flats The Red Road Flats were a mid-twentieth-century high-rise housing complex located between the districts of Balornock and Barmulloch in the northeast of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. The estate originally consisted of eight multi-storey blocks ...
in Glasgow were once the tallest residential buildings in Europe; but all eight towers were demolished in the 2010s. By the 1990s, many multi-storey flats and low-rise flats and maisonettes (mostly built in the 1950s and 1960s) were being demolished, due to their deteriorating condition, structural problems and a difficulty in finding new tenants when these properties became empty. One notable regeneration programme featuring tower blocks was that of the
Castle Vale Castle Vale is a housing estate located between Erdington, Minworth and Castle Bromwich. Currently Castle Vale makes up the Castle Vale Ward of Birmingham City Council which is part of Erdington constituency (having previously been part of Birmin ...
estate in Birmingham, built between 1964 and 1969 to rehouse families from inner city 'slums' in areas including
Aston Aston is an area of inner Birmingham, England. Located immediately to the north-east of Central Birmingham, Aston constitutes a ward within the metropolitan authority. It is approximately 1.5 miles from Birmingham City Centre. History Aston wa ...
and
Nechells Nechells is a district ward in central Birmingham, England, whose population in 2011 was 33,957. It is also a ward within the formal district of Ladywood. Nechells local government ward includes areas, for example parts of Birmingham city centr ...
. 32 of the estate's 34 tower blocks were cleared between 1995 and 2004, with the remaining two being refurbished and re-opened as "vertical warden-controlled schemes". All of the estate's 27 maisonette blocks were also cleared, as were more than 100 bungalows. The remaining low-rise stock, however, was retained. The two remaining tower blocks were comprehensively refurbished. The sites of the demolished flats have been replaced by both private and social housing in low-rise redevelopments. The mood had changed and new
council garden estate A council garden estate is a housing estate planned and built for the rehousing of people from decaying inner city areas, pioneered by Ted Hollamby at Cressingham Gardens, Lambeth, in the 1960s. It was a reaction to the philosophy of Ernő Goldf ...
s were built. These consist of low rise dwellings, mainly houses with gardens. The high residential density, equivalent to a tower block, is achieved by pedestrianisation of the estate, which allowed the dwellings to be very close together, separated by pathways not -wide roads. The resident's car park is next to the service road. Front doors open onto pedestrian areas, which thus provide safe play areas for children. An early late 1960s example of this design is
Cressingham Gardens Cressingham Gardens is a council garden estate in Lambeth. It is located on the southern edge of Brockwell Park. It comprises 306 dwellings, a mixture of four, three and two-bedroom houses, and one-bedroom apartments. It was designed at the end ...
. This estate popular with its residents, and they have resisted all attempts to be resettled.


Largest estates

Becontree Becontree or Both pronunciations are given as Received Pronunciation in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, but the form is prioritised (). The dialectologist Peter Wright wrote in 1981 that is the traditional pronunciation in the cockney ...
in Dagenham is the largest area of council housing in the UK with a population of over 100,000. It forms the bulk of a town. It was built during the 1920s and early 1930s. Otherwise, the largest estates are
Wythenshawe Wythenshawe () is a district of the city of Manchester, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in Cheshire, Wythenshawe was transferred in 1931 to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the ...
in the south of Manchester and
Bransholme Bransholme is an area and a housing estate on the north side of Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The name Bransholme comes from an old Scandinavian word meaning Brand's water meadow (''brand'' or ''brandt'' meant 'wild boa ...
in the north-east of Hull. In
Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
, Glasgow has the highest proportion of social housing. The largest estates include
Drumchapel Drumchapel ( gd, Druim a' Chapaill), known locally as 'The Drum', is a district in the north-west of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It borders Bearsden (in East Dunbartonshire) to the north-east and Drumry (part of Clydebank, in West Dunbarton ...
,
Easterhouse Easterhouse is a suburb of Glasgow, Scotland, east of the city centre on land gained from the county of Lanarkshire as part of an expansion of Glasgow before the Second World War. The area is on high ground north of the River Clyde and south ...
,
Castlemilk Castlemilk ( gd, Caisteal Mheilc) is a district of Glasgow, Scotland. It lies to the far south of the city centre, adjacent to the Croftfoot and Simshill residential areas within the city to the north-west, the town of Rutherglen - neighbourhoo ...
and
Pollok Pollok ( gd, Pollag, lit=a pool, sco, Powk) is a large housing estate on the south-western side of the city of Glasgow, Scotland. The estate was built either side of World War II to house families from the overcrowded inner city. Housing 30,0 ...
. In Edinburgh there are several smaller peripheral estates such as
Craigmillar Craigmillar ( gd, Creag a' Mhuilleir, IPA: kʰʲɾʲekˈaˈvɯʎɪɾʲ, from the Gaelic ''Creag Maol Ard'', meaning 'High Bare Rock', is an area of Edinburgh, Scotland, about south east of the city centre, with Duddingston to the north and Ne ...
,
Wester Hailes Wester Hailes is an area in the south west of Edinburgh, Scotland. Wester Hailes borders on Kingsknowe and Longstone to the east. Bankhead Industrial Estate and Sighthill Park lie to the north. History Although named after a large private ho ...
and
Sighthill Sighthill may refer to: * Sighthill, Edinburgh Sighthill is a suburb in the west of Edinburgh, Scotland. The area is bordered by Broomhouse and Parkhead to the east, South Gyle to the north, the industrial suburb of Bankhead and the Calders ...
. The large council estates in
Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
include
Caia Park Caia Park () is a suburb and community in Wrexham, Wrexham County Borough, Wales. Created in 1985 after a boundary commission review of the four community areas within the city, of which, Caia Park occupies its east, with the others being Acton, ...
in
Wrexham Wrexham ( ; cy, Wrecsam; ) is a city and the administrative centre of Wrexham County Borough in Wales. It is located between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee Valley, near the border with Cheshire in England. Historically in the count ...
, Bettws in Newport and Ely in
Cardiff Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...
.


Public housing debate

The debate on public housing provision is politically polarised, as can be seen in the large number of parliamentary acts referred to above. The left saw council estates as a great achievement, while successive Conservative administrations attempted to curb their spread. In 1951, they changed the raison d'être from being affordable homes for all to homes only for the most needy, thereby breaking up the social mix by grouping dysfunctional families together. Council estates could then be stereotyped as "problem places", where social difficulties like crime and
welfare dependency Welfare dependency is the state in which a person or household is reliant on government welfare benefits for their income for a prolonged period of time, and without which they would not be able to meet the expenses of daily living. The United St ...
are expected. Estates with particularly marked economic and social deprivation are derogated as
sink estate A sink estate is a British term used for a council housing estate with high levels of social problems, particularly crime. Origin The phrase came into usage in the 1980s, and was used by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair in 1998, when he referred t ...
s. Council house residents may be stereotyped as an underclass. In reality, council house residents are ethnically and culturally diverse. Suggestions for
crime prevention Crime prevention is the attempt to reduce and deter crime and criminals. It is applied specifically to efforts made by governments to reduce crime, enforce the law, and maintain criminal justice. Studies Criminologists, commissions, and research b ...
include: Those who regard stable homes as a family's right see public housing differently from those who see it as welfare. They are comfortable that council housing was generally typified by unimaginatively designed houses with generously sized rooms. They could cope with aggravating estate rules that could forbid tenants "personalising" their houses. The system favours those who have already secured tenancy, even when they are no longer in dire need. The combination of security of tenure and subsidized rent gives little incentive to tenants to downsize from family accommodation after their children have moved out. Meanwhile, those who are on the waiting list are often in much greater need of this welfare, yet they cannot have it; once a council house has been granted to a tenant, they cannot be evicted except for anti-social behaviour, serious offences committed at the premises. Recent policy decisions to reduce the supply of public housing have exacerbated this problem. The Cameron government addressed this shortage by imposing a
bedroom tax The under-occupancy penalty (also known as the under occupation penalty, under-occupancy charge, under-occupation charge or size criteria) results from a provision of the British Welfare Reform Act 2012 whereby tenants living in public housing (a ...
to encourage movement. Social policy economists, such as Culyer and Barr, have been critical of the role that council housing plays in attempts to help the poor. One large criticism is that it hurts labour mobility with its system of allocating housing to those in the local area. Working-class people thus face a disincentive for moving across district lines, where they would be further down the waiting list for council housing in the new districts. The movement from a close urban society with multiple emotional and practical support mechanisms to new out-of-town estates with few informal facilities has been recognised since the 1930s. Again, when residence is restricted to the poor and dysfunctional, the effect is greater. Council estates have been blamed for creating isolated communities and fostering there a mentality where residents have low aspirations.


Domestic violence

The
Housing Act 1996 The Housing Act 1996 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. Part VII of the Act concerns the duties that a local authority has to homeless people and when these duties arise. Section 189 of the Act concerns the "priority need" hurdle that ...
imposes a duty on local housing authorities in England to rehouse victims of domestic violence. The authority simply needs a 'reason to believe' that the person is homeless for them to be eligible for assistance, and that they are in priority need of accommodation. Failure in this duty has led to cases of victims returning to their abuser.


Law

The legal status and management of council houses, and the social housing sector, has been subject to lobbying and change in recent years.
Local authorities Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...
now have new legal powers to enable them to deal with anti-social behaviour and the misuse of council houses by organised gangs or anti-social tenants. An example is when a gang uses social housing as a "
crack house A drug house (also called a trap house or drug den) is a residence used in the illegal drug trade. Drug houses shelter drug users and provide a place for drug dealers to supply them. Drug houses can also be used as laboratories to synthesize ( ...
".
Anti-social behaviour order An anti-social behaviour order (ASBO ) is a civil order made in Great Britain against a person who had been shown, on the balance of evidence, to have engaged in anti-social behaviour. The orders were introduced by Prime Minister Tony Blair ...
s (ASBOs) were created by the
Crime and Disorder Act 1998 The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (c.37) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act was published on 2 December 1997 and received Royal Assent in July 1998. Its key areas were the introduction of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, Sex ...
, and ASBIs were created by amendments to the Housing Act 1996, enacted by the
Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 The Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 (c.38) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which almost entirely applies only to England and Wales. The Act, championed by then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, was passed in 2003. As well as str ...
. Tony Blair launched the
Respect Agenda The Respect agenda was launched in September 2005 by Tony Blair, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Tony Blair described it as being about "putting the law-abiding majority back in charge of their communities". Its aim was to help central ...
in 2005, aimed at instilling core values in the tenants of council houses. Recently bodies such as the Social Housing Law Association have been formed to discuss the impact of legislation in the social housing sector and to provide training and lobbying facilities for those who work in that area.


Historical statistics on housing construction

Dwellings completed by local authorities, New Towns, and Scottish Housing Association, 1945–80 (thousands) Proportion of houses and flats built by local authorities and New Towns in Scotland and Scottish Special Housing Association, 1960–80 (a) Notes:
(a) Tenders approved.
(b) Including maisonettes, which are not shown separately from 1967.


Analysis of housing built by year and government

Different British Governments oversaw the vision, regulations and overall budget for social housing. Between 1978 and 2016, the amount of social housing started to be built failed to keep up with population growth from 2008 onwards. In 2011 almost 40,000 English socially rented homes were built. Just 5,900 social housing homes were completed in 2017 which is the smallest proportion of overall housing building since records began. Government funding for social housing in 2018 is widely considered insufficient. London and some other local authorities are moving people out, away from their work and their social networks due to lack of available social housing. In 2018 it is promised that the government will build just 2,500 social homes per year. Most newly built homes will be too expensive for the poorest people. In 2019 in England official figures demonstrated that only 37,825 new homes were built for letting at discounted rents though the national housing waiting list is over 1.1 million households.Housebuilding data shows dearth of homes for affordable renting
''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''


See also

* ABC city *'' Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle'' – documentary film discussing social policy towards public housing in the UK *
List of large council estates in the UK This is a list of notable council estates. Public housing in the United Kingdom has typically consisted of council houses, often built in the form of large estates by local government councils. Becontree in The London Borough of Barking & Dag ...
*
List of existing model dwellings Model dwellings were buildings or estates constructed, mostly during the Victorian era, along philanthropic lines to provide decent living accommodation for the working class. They were typically erected by private model dwellings companies an ...
*
HLM An habitation à loyer modéré (HLM, , ), is a form of low-income housing in France, Algeria, Senegal, and Quebec. It may be public or private, with rent subsidies. HLMs constitute 16% of all housing in France.Housing in the United Kingdom Housing in the United Kingdom represents the largest non-financial asset class in the UK; its overall net value passed the £5 trillion mark in 2014. About 30% of homes are owned outright by their occupants, and a further 40% are owner-occupied ...
*
Public housing Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, def ...


References

;Footnotes ;Notes ; Bibliography * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links

*
"Council home for sale at £895,000"
BBC News
Website of the campaign to "Defend Council Housing" against privatisation

Social Housing Law Association


Describing how mutual exchange schemes operate

Recollections of former and current residents of the Harold Hill council estate
Streets in the Sky
Christopher Bacons history, with references, of high-rise social housing in the United Kingdom. University of Sheffield
Urban Housing in Scotland 1840–1940 by historian W.W. Knox (pdf)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Council House House types Housing in the United Kingdom