Council house
A council house, corporation house or council flat is a form of British public housing built by local authorities. A council estate is a building complex containing a number of council houses and other amenities like schools and shops. Construction took place mainly from 1919 to 1980s, as a result of the Housing Act 1919. Though more council houses have been built since then, less tend to be built. Local design variations exist, however all followed local authority building standards. The Housing Acts of 1985 and 1988 facilitated the transfer of council housing to not-for-profit housing associations with access to private finance, and these new housing associations became the providers of most new public-sector housing. The characterisation of council houses as 'problem places' was key for leading this movement of transferring public housing stock to the private arena. By 2003, 36.5% of the social rented housing stock was held by housing associations.[1]
A landlord's obligations are set out in several pieces of legislation, including the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which applies to tenancies entered into after 1961. In summary, section 11 provides that a landlord shall:
If a landlord refuses to repair a rented property, the tenant can take action to require them to carry out necessary works and claim compensation.
Criticism[edit]
Beginning in the 1970s with Thatcherism, the housing sector witnessed public expenditure cutbacks, along with cutbacks in other public sectors like health and education, yet more extreme than those.[21] This retrenchment from public housing was justified by a preference for a private housing market, or for commodification over public goods, and by the popularity of the critical description of council houses as a ‘sink estate’.[22] "Sink estates" were criticized as “cut off from society’s mainstream” with “self-inflicted poverty stemming from…the dead weight of low expectations.”[22] In the immediate years of the post-war era, the role of the state in the sector existed as providers of public housing aimed at a broad range of households.[23] This changed starting from the 1970s, with social housing entering the mainstream. Social housing emphasizes the ‘safety net’ characteristic in that it is only for those whose needs are not met in the market. The transformation of the sector from a public housing as serving a wide range of households with different incomes to a stigmatised social housing model is a direct result of government policies and their portrayal of council houses.[23]