a third of brits lived in council housing

vivatifosi

ninky wrote: »

The private sector may be booming but standards of accommodation remain low. 1.4 million privately renting households are living in properties rated as "non-decent". That's 41% of the 3.4 million households who rent privately in England.
Under the criteria set down by the department of communities and local government, to be classed as “non-decent”, a property fails three or more of these minimum standards. These include a kitchen no more than 20 years old with “reasonable space and layout”, a bathroom less than 30 years old and good insulation against noise plus energy efficient features. Flats must have communal spaces of adequate size and properties of all kinds must be of an appropriate size for the number of tenants.

I'll watch the programme because it sounds interesting. However I'd argue that you can't compare housing standards in the 1970 with now and expect them to come out better. Look at the criteria above and ask how a 1970s house would have met them.

Taking the standards above, why does a kitchen need to be no more than 20 years old in order to be habitable? If it is older and made of say solid oak and built to last does it mean that it fails to function? In the council house I grew up in, which was built in the 1970s, we didn't have a fitted kitchen. The vast majority of bathrooms never had a shower, but if I rented a Victorian house with an original bathroom then that too would fail to make the grade above, even though people would often pay extra now for a roll-top bath!

As for insulation and soundproofing, my parent's victorian house with original sash windows wouldn't meet this criteria either, even though it's far from a dive. It's not really surprising when the criteria are such that 41% fail to meet the grade. I don't know of any houses in the 1970s that had double glazing, I think I saw my first DG window in the 1980s, so very few houses back then would have passed by such standards.

A newer kitchen or bathroom does not make a good house IMO, I'm more worried about people who live in houses with damp, or rot, or infestations, or in horrid high-rises, or who don't have enough bedrooms so their kids sleep in the conservatory. They are the ones I feel sorry for, and thankfully that's a much smaller percentage than 40%.

vivatifosi

ILW wrote: »

In my opinion, Thatcher only made two big errors.
1. Selling off council houses at a big discount.

I don't know that the big discounts were the issue as much as the fact that the money didn't go back to the council for rebuilding.

In terms of the amount of money, I know what the situation was where I was living but don't know if it was typical of the rest of the country, but then houses, while sold under the market rate; were not sold at less than the cost to rebuild unless they had been tenanted for a long period of time and then the rents + sale could not be below the cost to rebuild a replacement. Therefore if the money had come back into the system there was space to replace it with more, however the system was let down by the money not going back to the councils.

IveSeenTheLight

StevieJ wrote: »

Nothing to do with the Thatcher view that she was building a permanent Tory majority on the the backs of the increased home ownership?

How did that work out?
Was there not 13 years of Labour?
Did home ownership decrease under the Labour government?

Incidently, home ownership as a percentage of property stock has been decreasing since the Tories formed part of the coalition.

IveSeenTheLight

ninky wrote: »

err...no. i can't see that on the horizon.

whether it might actually be a good idea is a different question however.

So reality is no and what your contemplating is now fantasy.

Time to move on and accept that the likelyhood for future rental is private investors

StevieJ

Thrugelmir wrote: »

A lot of post war housing was built with an intended life span of 10 years. (Though some it is still standing today). Much of the rest was poor quality. The quality of housing stock today bears little resemblance to that of 50 years ago.

I think you are referring to prefabrecated housing (see below) and I doubt any of that is still standing. I thing the majority of rehousing developments in the 50's and 60's had a much longer life expectancy.

StevieJ

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

How did that work out?
Was there not 13 years of Labour?
Did home ownership decrease under the Labour government?

Incidently, home ownership as a percentage of property stock has been decreasing since the Tories formed part of the coalition.

Labour played a curve ball and turned Tory

vivatifosi

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

So reality is no and what your contemplating is now fantasy.

Time to move on and accept that the likelyhood for future rental is private investors

There are plenty of pre-fabs still not far from me, but a lot of them have been refaced in brick. They aren't like the ones in the picture, more like two storey houses but made of precast concrete and tin. They offered the chance for the council tenants to move out and have them rebuilt as new, but they chose to have them refaced in brick instead as they are nice big houses.

IveSeenTheLight

StevieJ wrote: »

I think you are referring to prefabrecated housing (see below) and I doubt any of that is still standing. I thing the majority of rehousing developments in the 50's and 60's had a much longer life expectancy.

There are still some about
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1347259/Britains-prefab-estate-residents-battle-save-homes-built-10-years-ago.html


There's also been discussions about the return of the pre-fab
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/8279552/Prefab-homes-could-solve-UK-housing-crisis.html

IveSeenTheLight

vivatifosi wrote: »

There are plenty of pre-fabs still not far from me, but a lot of them have been refaced in brick. They aren't like the ones in the picture, more like two storey houses but made of precast concrete and tin. They offered the chance for the council tenants to move out and have them rebuilt as new, but they chose to have them refaced in brick instead as they are nice big houses.

Hmmmm, you've quoted a post of mine where I was not discussing pre-fabs, but the return to1/3 of brits renting council properties

lostinrates

StevieJ wrote: »

I think you are referring to prefabrecated housing (see below) and I doubt any of that is still standing. I thing the majority of rehousing developments in the 50's and 60's had a much longer life expectancy.

there are some still standing...some in a town in somerset were torn down in February.

Aren't those famous humpy houses in Queen camel by the A303 post war prefabs too? I think there are some the same in....Hampstead Garden whatever, or welwyn garden city or somewhere like that...built for a competition for prefab/house design...and lost!