The Political Geography of Housing in Contemporary Britain

Abstract

Since the election of the first Thatcher government in 1979, there have been major changes in government housing policy. These changes, particularly the introduction of tenants’ ‘right to buy’, the massive cuts in council house building, and the reorientation of housing subsidies away from council housing and towards owner occupation, have led to major changes in both the tenure structure and geography of British housing. Over a million council houses have been sold off, and the tenure composition of new building has shifted markedly in favour of the private sector. Council house building is now at the lowest peacetime level for fifty years. As a result, the erratic but continuous growth of council housing in Britain since 1919 has been thrown into sharp reverse. The absolute number of council houses and their proportion of the total stock has fallen sharply since 1979 while the dominance of owner occupation has been further reinforced.