Public Housing after the Local Government and Housing Act 1989

Abstract

Local housing authorities have faced more than a decade of legal and fiscal measures designed to transform the premises that have traditionally underpinned municipal housing.2 The right to buy3 and the encouragement of voluntary sales4 by local authorities has divested many of them of some of their better housing stock.5 This has also led to a situation where some of the smaller authorities have either decided, or felt compelled, to dispose of the remainder of their housing stock.6 In a White Paper published in 1987,7 the Government set out its plans for the future of council housing. Councils are no longer to be primary providers of rented housing, so much as institutions that have an enabling role one where they encourage a diversity form of landlordism, by encouraging the development of housing associations and other private landlords. This was to be seen along side efforts to arrest the decline of the privately rented sector, encouraging further growth of owner occupation, and preventing any further expansion of municipal rented