A Return To Local Authority Housebuilding?

Between the late 1940s and the early 1980s, over a 100,000 social housing units were built each year in England, with the vast majority being built by local authorities. In recent years, English local authorities have built around 1,500-2,000 dwellings per year.

Although this is not a like-for-like comparison (social housing vs all dwellings), the figures paint a clear picture of local authorities' withdrawal from the business of house building.

A number of initiatives suggest that this might be about to change, and one model for local authority housing delivery may be particularly attractive to local authorities looking to get back into house building without the rigmarole of OJEU procurement.

Councils as housing developers

The Government's One Public Estate programme (delivered in partnership with the Local Government Association) has the ambition of delivering collaborative property focussed projects involving local and central government. The ambitions go beyond simply enabling house building, and extend to...