UK housing: no go areas now go to spots By Kate Allen Local authorities have been the great overlooked hope in attempts

to expand Britains housing market. Their lack of development activity is one of the reasons why only about half the 250,000 new homes sought by the government each year are being built. But it was not always this way. After the second world war, housing construction boomed on the back of huge council programmes. Of the 10m homes built between 1947 and 1980, half were built by councils. Council housing was seen as a solution for people of all income levels, not only those who could not afford to rent or buy in the private market. Since the early 1990s, however, a lack of funding has limited new council housebuilding to fewer than a thousand homes a year. At the same time, councils existing housing stock has been eroded first by Margaret Thatchers flagship Right to Buy scheme of the 1980s, which turned millions of council tenants into owner-occupiers; and then by the transfer of more than a million units of council-owned housing to not-for-profit housing associations from the late 1980s onwards. As a result, there are now more homes in housing association ownership than in council hands and the proportion of people living in council housing has fallen to its lowest level: just 8 per cent of homes in Britain are council-owned, down from almost a third in the mid-1970s. David Montague, chief executive of L&Q, one of Britains largest housing associations, says local authority finance reforms in 2012 went some way towards levelling the playing field. Until recently, it has been a unique advantage that housing associations are funded for, and can focus on, the long-term, he says. With the advent of 30-year local authority business plans, this is now an advantage that we share with local authorities. And this, he adds, opens up a world of opportunity for private developers. Places which seem impossible [to redevelop] are entirely different propositions if you can take a 30-year view, he suggests. Liabilities become assets; no go areas become go to areas.