Strategic intervention for the economically active? Exploring the role of selected English local authorities in the development of new market rental housing with pension fund investment

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative data the paper explores a shift in the focus of the English local authority enabling/strategic function towards innovative models to stimulate new supply of market rented homes, with local authority pension funds as institutional investors. It is argued that these initiatives are significant in illustrating the role of local, rather than national authorities, as initiators and trailblazers of policy towards the private rented sector. The importance of policy discourses that prioritise the needs of economically active households in justifying the use of publicly owned land for the development of privately-owned rented housing is explored in the context of debates around modes of local economic development in the global context. It is suggested that although the identification of local government pension funds as institutional investors may create an impression of social accountability and an ethical dimension to these innovations, they nevertheless represent a form of marketization of socially-held assets. This raises questions about the changing nature of the enabling/strategic function within English local authorities and the extent to which the previous focus on affordable housing delivery is being diminished in the dedication of local authority resources such as land to a profit-driven form of housing supply.