Return to the golden age?

Published 15 August 08 04:01 PM

Society supplement in The Guardian highlighted this week, through Peter Hetherington's article Building up hope, that the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham is set to build 8 000 council houses over the next 12-15 years . to meet the need for more homes. Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne and Nottingham are set to follow. North of the border 1 100 new homes are also set to be built in Edinburgh on council land. Are we set for a return to the golden age of council house building despite the 1980s sell off? . What do you think? If you want to find out what's happening in the UK residential market take a look at our Hot Topic to keep up with the latest market news.

by Hilary Oakley

Filed under: online database, Library catalogue, keep up-to-date, housing, house prices, housing market, housing stock, affordable housing, social housing: council housing, council houses

Comments

# John Evans said on September 2, 2008 17:59:

Possibly the ready availability of unsold properties presents a more immediate access to properties for letting by councils, althoug quality standards may fall well short of those achieved in houses built directly for councils.

There remains a distinct danger that a new generation of council (or housing association) houses could become subject to the same discounted sell off to tenants in due course, and that the circle of remortgaging for higher and higher values will be encouraged by a government using the releases of equity to fund another artificial economic boom, similar to the one just ended.

This could perhaps be minimised if proper financial discipline is exercised over the grant of re-mortgages after the present down-turn, and if the supply of homes could be increased consistently to meet the demand of the ever-increasing number of households.  Planning restrictions - another aspect within the control of government -  would have to be lifted to a large degree.

About Hilary Oakley