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PolicyAnalysis: the Privatisation of Council Housing
The privatisation of councilhousing is intrinsically tied to the broader privatisation process of the1980's that, together with North Sea oil, constituted the basis of governmentfinancing under the Thatcher regime. However, it is important to note that privatisationwas, and remains, a political ideology every bit as much as an economic action.Privatisation is synonymous with Thatcherism and a pragmatic approach topolitics that is able to move away from rhetoric to embrace reality with easeand a certain degree of political effectiveness. The key, therefore, tounderstanding the current policy process with regards to the privatisation ofcouncil housing is to note the essential continuity between Thatcher's ToryParty and New Labour, particularly concerning domestic economic affairs. Whetherthe original policy was in fact designed to reduce the gap between rich andpoor (to liberate the poorest members of society from the urban post warpoverty trap) is a matter of sifting through government propaganda and is stillcertainly very much open to debate. State employees, for instance, would give awholly different answer to the media and independent watchdogs. However, forthe purposes of this essay, judgement is not required; instead analysis willfocus upon the evolution of the policy from the 1980's to the present day tosee how affordable rented accommodation is fast becoming a commodity ondiscount in the UK as quasiprivate landlords step into the vacuum created bythe erosion of the responsibilities of the municipal authorities.

First, a description and definitionof the policy must take place with a brief overview of the tools in place toensure the safe transition of property from state to private hands. Privatisationis a central governmental policy that requires local authorities to comply inthe selling of council property to private landlords. Yet the framework throughwhich social policy reforms were historically tackled changed irrevocably when thestructure of municipal government was fundamentally alerted during the 1980's,as Jones and Kavanagh (2003:226) explain.

In 1986 the metropolitan councilswere abolished by Margaret Thatcher, who considered them wasteful as well asLabour strongholds; their functions were distributed downwards to otherauthorities.

One of the ways in which Thatchersought to combat the traditional Labour stranglehold on the working classes wasto give council tenants the opportunity to purchase their council homes at areasonable price; the 'righttobuy' policy as it was known at the time. It wasa classic shortterm policy, the catalyst for an entire political culture that isstill very much rooted in political expediency because, while tenants took upthe option to buy their homes in their thousands, the problem shifted to thepart of the population who were dependent upon rented accommodation for shelter.The option to buy council property was not realistically an option for thoseunable to work, the elderly and indeed everyone mired in the welfare systemunable to earn a wage acceptable to government property price fixers. Anunderclass has thus been prevalent since the late 1980's that is dependent uponrented accommodation but, at the same time, is increasingly ostracised from themainstream of the UK housing market. The key point to bear in mind is theexpediency of the initial reform; one that was designed to keep the Tories inpower more than it was concerned with the plight of the poorest members ofBritish society.

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More significantly, the state's adoptionof the policy of laissezfaire for the council housing issue telegraphed ageneral deregulation of housing services at the precise time when greater stateintervention was required. In this conceptual context, little has changed underNew Labour. The 1990's in fact saw an increase in the state's drift away fromregulation of council housing, assisting, in the process, the rise to power ofthe worst excesses of the industry. The legacy is that unscrupulous groups oflandlords now control the lowest end of the rented housing spectrum, hiking upprices and buying up many of the remaining council properties to ensure a kindof economic hegemony over former public owned properties. Furthermore, thediscernible lack of new buildings in the most deprived areas of the country hasadded an extra urgency to the problem, itself a direct legacy of the lack ofmoney put back into the council housing system under Thatcher. One can begin tosee the essentially constrictive effect of the initial policy of privatisationwhereby the shortcomings could be covered up in the short term but,simultaneously, the long term issues bequeathed by its advent would prove evenmore difficult to solve.

With the wide ranging problems ofthe privatisation of council housing policy exposed attention must be turned tothe measures taken by the government to counteract the increasing marginalisationof the weaker and poorer members of society. First, it should be rememberedthat although New Labour has indeed continued the path set out by Thatcher'sinitial privatisation policy, it has likewise overseen the greatest series ofsocial reforms since the end of the Second World War. Blair's first term kickstartedthe broader policy of 'social inclusion' that particularly targeted employmentby tackling training and the stigma surrounding being out of employment. Theissue of social exclusion, unemployment and housing was therefore central toGordon Brown's aim to get Britain back to work. Yet by trying to tackle so manydeepseated issues at once, New Labour had to sacrifice one area of its reformagenda for the sake of the others. In this way Blair failed in his bid to easethe burden of shelter for the poorest elements of society. By making morepeople eligible for Housing Benefit, New Labour has only succeeded in furtherconstricting the already taut state of the poorer end of the housing spectrumin the UK, as Hewitt concludes.

The stress on rewarding work in thegovernment's policy and rhetoric is in danger of overshadowing the needs of themost vulnerable who cannot work.

In addition, according to theRowntree foundation (Social Policy Research: June 1996), Labour's overrelianceon means tested methods of ascertaining housing benefit has resulted in asizeable increase in the number of claimants, putting added pressure on thelocal authorities that must deal with the discrepancy between supply anddemand. The government has since aimed to tackle the problem by shifting theonus onto local authorities who have been very quick to take up the option totransfer large numbers of homes to private associations. Matt Weaver (2000:3)projects that, because of this, there will not simply be a lack of councilhousing in the future, there will in fact be a vacuum where once there used toexist state funded accommodation.

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