The History of Social Housing

A Local Authority Owned House, otherwise known as a council house is a form of social housing provided by the state originally intended for working class people at an affordable rental rate to solve Britain’s housing problem.

One of the first ‘council estates’ built was the Boundary Estate in the East End of London. It was opened in the early 1900’s and is now a Grade Two Listed structure. In 1919 David Lloyd George launched a campaign to build ‘homes for heroes’, this was to be housing suitable for returning soldiers and funding was secured from the government. The Second World War intervened with the house building programme and it wasn’t until after the second war had finished the council house hey-day began.

Its estimated that around 4 million British homes were destroyed leaving many people homeless, the government provided large amounts of funding to provide new homes and suburban estates and introduced the New Towns Act 1946 which would shape the social housing we see today.

There was a small number of high rise developments introduced in large cities such as Kingston upon Hull, Birmingham and Coventry our focus in this blog is the social housing within London and the south East.

Typically across London’s sub-urban housing estates two and three bedroom semi -detached properties were built with a front and rear garden, hot running water and private indoor toilets and bathrooms. Inner city developments didn’t follow suit with many 3-4 storey low level flats being built albeit to similar standards of construction and private bathrooms and toilets. High rise structures were deemed more suitable for areas of inner city slum reform with prefabricated ‘system building’ being implemented for the design and construction of high rise developments.

Many High Rise tower blocks have been subject of sub-standard build and problems have arose with these structures such as the ingress of damp, structural defects and huge concern over their ability to with stand unexpected forces such as a gas explosion which is what happened at Ronan Point in East London in 1968.

Council housing declined rapidly during the ‘Thatcher era’ with the ‘right to buy’ scheme being introduced, laws were put in place preventing the proceeds of property sales and local taxes being invested into the councils housing stock  causing the properties to have a rapid decline in structural integrity.

Council estates within London and The south East are still standing and with investment from the decent homes project providing key funding to bring the dwellings to a decent standard of living will ensure the properties suffice. Newman’s have played a key role within the decent homes standard and are proud to have brought many properties on estates up to standard.

We have worked with councils and housing associations in order to upkeep and reform their housing stock bringing back to life many void properties for use as homes once again. As well as void properties Newman’s has extensive experience and contracting skills whilst restoring tenanted properties.