A council house, corporation house or council flat 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 to 1980s, as a result of the Housing Act 1919. Though more council houses have been built since then, fewer have been built in recent years. Local design variations exist, however all followed local authority building standards. The Housing Acts of 1985 and 1988 facilitated the transfer of council housing to not-for-profit housing associations with access to private finance, and these new housing associations became the providers of most new public-sector housing. The characterisation of council houses as 'problem places' was key for leading this movement of transferring public housing stock to the private arena. By 2003, 36.5% of the social rented housing stock was held by housing associations.[1]
House design in the United Kingdom is defined by a series of Housing Acts, and public housing house design is defined by government-directed guidelines and central governments' relationship with local authorities. From the first interventions in the Public Health Act 1875 (38 & 39 Vict. c. 55) to the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1900, council houses could be general housing for the working class, general housing, part of slum clearance programmes or just homes provided for the most needy. They could be funded directly by local councils, through central government incentive or by revenue obtained when other houses were sold. Increasingly, they have been transferred through the instrument of housing associations into the private sector.
An early use of the new powers was in Bath, where 36 new houses named Lampard’s Buildings were built in 1900 on the compulsory purchased site of a row of rat infested cottages.[2]
Woolwich Borough Council was responsible for the Well Hall Estate designed for workers at the munition factories at Woolwich Arsenal. The estate and the house were built to the garden suburb philosophy: houses were all different. The estate received the royal seal of approval when, on Friday 24 March 1916, Queen Mary made an unannounced visit.
A programme of council house building started after the First World War following on from the David Lloyd George’s government’s Housing Act of 1919. The 'Addison Act' brought in subsidies for council house building and aimed to provide 500,000 "homes fit for heroes" within a three-year period although less than half of this target was met.The housing built comprised three-bedroom dwellings with parlour and scullery: larger properties also include a living room. The standards are based on the Tudor Walters Report of 1919, and the Design Manual written according to the 1913 building standards.[3]
In 1923 the Chamberlain Act withdrew subsidies for council houses except for private builders and houses for sale. Councils could undertake to build houses and offer these for sale but also to sell off some of their existing properties. This was essentially reversed by the incoming Labour government of 1924. The Wheatley Act (1924) passed by the new Labour Government introduced higher subsidies for council housing and also allowed for a contribution to be made from the rates. The housing revenue account was always separated from the general account. This was a major period of council house construction.
The Housing Act 1930 stimulated slum clearance, i.e., the destruction of inadequate houses in the inner cities that had been built before the 1875 Act. This released land for housing and the need for smaller two bedroomed houses to replace the two-up two-down houses that had been demolished. Smaller three bedroom properties were also built. The Housing Act 1935 led to a continuation of this policy, but the war stopped all construction, and enemy action reduced the usable housing stock.
The Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act 1944 led to the building of prefab bungalows with a design life of ten years. Innovative steel-framed properties were also tried in an attempt to speed up construction. A number survive well into the 21st century, a testament to the durability of a series of housing designs and construction methods only envisaged to last 10 years.
The Burt Committee, formed in 1942 by the wartime government of Winston Churchill, proposed to address the need for an anticipated 200,000 shortfall in post-war housing stock, by building 500,000 prefabricated houses, with a planned life of up to 10 years within five years of the end of the Second World War. The eventual bill, under the post-war Labour government of Prime Minister Clement Attlee, agreed to deliver 300,000 units within 10 years, within a budget of £150m. Of 1.2 million new houses built from 1945 to 1951 when the programme officially ended, 156,623 prefab houses were constructed.
Mainly during the immediate post-war years, and well into the 1950s, council house provision was shaped by the New Towns Act 1946 (9 & 10 Geo. 6. c. 68) and the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 of the 1945–51 Labour government. At the same time this government introduced housing legislation that removed explicit 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 for a wide range of society). In particular, Aneurin Bevan, 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".[4]
From the late 1970s, the wider takeover of free market economics propagated by Margaret Thatcher’s conservative government sought to reduce the role of the state and the housing sector was further opened for private investors and actors. Deregulation of the mortgage finance sector in the 1980s was particularly significant, with the 1988 Housing Act introducing private competition into the sector.[5] The Housing Act 1988 marked the onset of various policies resulting in the residualisation of the public housing. Residualisation refers to the shrinking of the social housing stock, consisting mostly of deteriorated quality dwellings, and the growing concentration of disadvantaged minorities in such housing.[6] As the residual housing sector is mostly concentrated in lower-income neighbourhoods, a ‘neighbourhood effect’ manifests, reinforcing the idea of poverty as a problem of the place which has allowed market ideologies to advocate against decommodified housing provision.[7]
A landlord's obligations are set out in several pieces of legislation, including the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which applies to tenancies entered into after 1961. In summary, section 11 provides that a landlord shall:
If a landlord refuses to repair a rented property, the tenant can take action to require them to carry out necessary works and claim compensation.
See also: Public housing in the United Kingdom. The Addison Act 1919 houses were usually three-bedroom houses with a living room and scullery, sometimes also with a parlour. Some had two, four, or even five bedrooms, as well as generously sized back gardens intended for vegetable growing. At most, they were built at 3,000/km2. They were generally built to the recommendations of the Tudor Walters Report. Examples are found in Downham, Watling Estate, and Becontree.