The Politics of Public Housing Reform: Local Government Stock Transfer in England

José M Alonso,Rhys Andrews

doi:10.1080/10967494.2018.1427160

José M Alonso, Rhys Andrews

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/10967494.2018.1427160

Copy DOI

Abstract

ABSTRACTDrawing on theories of political competition, we explore the extent to which local public housing reform reflects the ideology of local ruling parties and local political preferences. Based on the citizen candidate and median voter perspectives, we hypothesize that left-wing party rule and pro-state preferences are associated with higher levels of government-owned housing. We test these hypotheses by analyzing the levels of housing stock held by English local governments during the period 2001–14. Our findings suggest that pro-state preferences matter more than left-wing party rule for the overall extent of public housing provision. By contrast, right-wing party rule is associated with the likelihood that a local government’s housing stock will be transferred out of the public sector, but pro-market preferences do not influence this decision. The implications of the findings are discussed in the conclusion.

Highlights

Reform of the local public sector has become an important objective for national and regional governments across the globe as they seek to modernize the design and delivery of key public services (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011)
The economic and ideological rationales behind large-scale voluntary transfer (LSVT) have been discussed in the public policy literature, to date, comparatively little research has systematically analysed the local politics of this far-reaching reform, even though the transfer of public housing stock required the support of existing tenants (Pawson and Mullins, 2010)
Our analysis was guided by two alternative models of political competition: the citizen-candidate model, which emphasises parties’ political ideologies; and, the median voter model, which emphasises citizens’ political preferences

Summary

Introduction

Reform of the local public sector has become an important objective for national and regional governments across the globe as they seek to modernize the design and delivery of key public services (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). From the contracting out of corporate, social and technical services to the wholesale externalisation of entire functions, the past forty years has seen a dramatic shift in the ways in which the local state manages and provides public services (Bel, Hebdon and Warner, 2007) The impact of these changes has perhaps been nowhere more evident than in the controversial and politically sensitive area of housing policy. In response to mounting financial pressures, the public housing sector in Europe, in particular, has been subject to wide-ranging reforms aimed at making the market for affordable housing more flexible and reducing the cost of public housing to the taxpayer (Scanlon, Fernandez-Arrigoitia and Whitehead, 2015) These developments have been especially prominent in England, where tenants’ right to buy their own ‘council house’ was established in 1980, and later large-scale voluntary transfer (LSVT) of all publicly-owned local housing stock to not-for-profit housing associations has been encouraged by both Conservative and Labour national governments. We seek to illustrate the relative importance of local politics for the public sector by examining its influence on the public ownership of housing in English local governments

Methods

Results

Conclusion