The rise and fall of the conservatives' ‘grand design for housing’, 1951–64

Abstract

When they returned to power in 1951 the Conservatives aimed to restore the dominance of the market in housing and property and by early 1953 Harold Macmillan, the Minister of Housing, had put forth a ‘grand design’ to achieve that goal by phasing out rent control, making council housing a residual social service only for those in need, and thus further encouraging home ownership. But, as the Conservatives had feared from the start, the various steps they took to achieve this goal proved unpopular. As rents and land prices rose in the property boom of the early 1960s, Conservative housing policies became widely associated with profiteering and homelessness. The Rachman scandal of 1963 put the Tories even more on the defensive and forced them to retreat from what were widely seen as the unacceptable consequences of an unrestrained market in housing and land.