The project has engaged local people as well as archivists, and has inspired me to research the path towards the Act that enabled new council housing at a national and local level. In my second blog I will describe how the students used the resources here at The National Archives and Wandsworth Heritage Service, and discuss learning outcomes. But first I will explain how the Act came to pass. The 1919 Housing Acts

Woolwich Borough Council was responsible for the Well Hall Estate designed for workers at the munition factories at Woolwich Arsenal. The estate and the house were built to the garden suburb philosophy: houses were all different. The estate received the royal seal of approval when, on Friday 24 March 1916, Queen Mary made an unannounced visit. [3] Interwar housing [ edit ] There was a revival in council housebuilding in the 2010s, with a focus on energy efficiency. Schemes such as Accordia in Cambridge and Goldsmith Street in Norwich [18] have won awards. In London, space standards have been reintroduced via the London Plan, and councils including Southwark [19] and Hounslow [20] are building thousands of new council houses. The 1930s saw the end of this hopeful dream, when councils began large programmes of slum clearance, with massive schemes at White City, London, St Andrew’s Gardens, Liverpool and Quarry Hill, Leeds, among others. At the same time, space and technical standards were improving, but as ever, money was a controlling factor.

Contents

issues and they were slowly persuaded to intervene. It was argued that new private housing was too expensive for most working So, what does an estate look like? Well, as I found on my tour of Camberwell, some of our estates share similarities, whether social, cultural or architectural. Many have their unique features. But all of them have one thing in common: people. People, with the stories and connections that make up communities. And it’s in these communities, and among these people, that we have an opportunity to serve. Thank God for all the estates of our Diocese, for those who live there, and those that serve there. May God’s love and grace be shared there. The post-war introduction of subsidies for councils to solve the blight of slum estates was supposed to right a wrong and – in the words of the prime minister David Lloyd George – provide ‘homes fit for heroes’” But mainly, Boughton hopes to arm readers with a better understanding of social housing, which could help to "build better, just as we need to build more, in the future".

A history of council housing: a timeline From the Addison Act to prefabs, slum clearance and the Right to Buy, council housing in the United Kingdom has a long and colourful history. Carl Brown looks at how it has evolved over time This is a fascinating and important book, in many ways an extension of Boughton’s 2019 book charting the ”rise and fall of council housing”. It not only represents an uplifting story of social progress, but is also something of a lament. While there are currently some interesting estates under development, the high water mark has passed, and it’s a harsher – in spite of being a generally more affluent – world in which social housing exists. As in many of the 1919 estates, the range of housing types (those with and without a parlour, and cottage flats) and intelligent arrangement of housing groups help to reduce any sense of monotony. A small green with a war memorial facing Walker Park is the most formal element of a low density design with a garden suburb character. In this atmosphere Christopher Addison, head of the Local Government Board, presented a housing bill to Cabinet. Addison recommended that local authorities submit plans for housing schemes and limit the local authority’s financial responsibility to the product of a penny rate per annum: the residual cost to be borne by the Exchequer. The work would be supervised by the new Ministry of Health through a Housing Commissioner in each of 11 regions. The bill became law in July 1919. In December 1919 an additional Powers Act helped private builders gain a lump-sum subsidy to build.

Ten buildings that showcase the beauty of London's council housing

Kennett, John. "Case Study:Progress Estate". Ideal Homes -A History of the South East London Suburbs. University of Greenwich . Retrieved 18 November 2015. Their unusual form prompted some criticism, but the experiment that some hoped would be the solution to the housing problem of the country was ultimately killed by its failure to deliver promised cost savings." Spacious and green: inside Norwich's award-winning new council houses". The Guardian. 11 October 2019 . Retrieved 11 November 2022.

The results, as with Matthew Lloyd’s Bourne Estate in Holborn, are sometimes outstanding, but elsewhere have produced mixed results. The model of houses and flats to be sold on the open market being used to subsidise those for council tenants may sound like the ideal of a mixed community, but can lead to segregated rather than integrated developments.Dwellings completed by local authorities, New Towns, and the Scottish Housing Association, 1945–80 (thousands) [24] Dwellings completed 1945–80 Main article: Radburn design housing The Radburn layout. Maisonettes on Teak Avenue, on the St Ann's estate, Nottingham. The facing houses are on Tulip Avenue, Nottingham. The upper houses are accessed from this walkway, while car access is limited to the crossing roads. CHAPTER 8: 1980s-1990s - the sea-change of 1979; new emphasis on regeneration and a revival of traditional streetscapes; new models of provision emphasising cross-subsidy and the role of the third sector; alternative models In 1980, there were well over 5 million council homes in Britain, housing around one third of the population. The right of all to adequate housing had been recognised in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but, long before that, popular notions of what constituted a 'moral economy' had advanced the idea that everyone was entitled to adequate shelter.