The Changing Geography of Council House Sales in England and Wales, 1978–1990

Abstract

Since 1980, when public housing tenants in England and Wales were given the right to buy their homes, sales activity has been strongest in Conservative councils and weakest in Labour ones. In recent years, however, this pattern has changed, with Conservative councils recording the lowest sales levels. It is suggested that this owes much to the boom and bust character of local housing markets in the late 1980s, along with growing fears over unemployment. Using a statistical model to control for underlying influences on purchases, this article examines sales rates for every year from 1977/7&1989/90 for all 333 district councils in England and Wales.

Fiscal conservatism versus local paternalism: divergent experiences of public housing decline in rural areas of England during the 1980s

“…It provides a perspective on the impetus behind council house policies that complements studies of interagency relationships associated with social housing initiatives (Gallent,1997;Milbourne, 1998;Yarwood, 2002) and earlier quantitative analyses of inter-authority differences by party political control (Sharpe and Newton, 1984;Page et al, 1990;Hoggart, 1995). Where Stoker's typology falls short is in its inability to take account of the dynamic nature of local political culture and the manner by which the infusion of new leadership ideas and direction can shape policy (for further discussion, see Long, 2003).…”

The changing faces of rural populations: ‘“(re) Fixing” the gaze’ or ‘eyes wide shut’?

“…Boyle, 1995;Hoggart, 1995). Newby's seminal work is a good example, which illustrates this point: 'The 1960s were also the decade in which the centuries-old pattern of rural-urban migration became reversed for the first time' (Newby, 1979, p. 22).…”

Homelessness and Rurality: ‘Out-of-Place’ in Purified Space?

“…Although some rural people clearly do present themselves to local authorities as`homeless' this action too can encounter barriers to the acceptance of their homelessness. As Hoggart (1995;, Larkin (1978), and Lidstone (1994) have pointed out, local councils often seem to establish an environment in which rural people do not consider it worthwhile applying to be housed because they perceive little hope of success.`Rural homelessness' is yet again both noncoupled discursively and translated into more comfortable`rural housing' terms. In some cases rural local authorities might even use caravan sites as dumping grounds' for`homeless families' (Larkin, 1978, page 16), thus denying the problem by ghettoising the people concerned into temporary and often unfit housing solutions, and helping homeless people to`blend back in' again.…”