From the archive - week of 24 April

25 years ago

Michael Howard MP was made environment secretary following the Conservative Party’s fourth successive general election win.

His appointment was seen as a step towards the privatisation of local authority housing services – at the time, housing was under the purview of the Department of the Environment – but he was thought to have little interest in housing itself.

Mr Howard was a champion of privatisation; in 1988 he chose to become the minister for water, rather than housing, to push through plans to privatise the former. He spent a short time as housing minister in 1989, when he oversaw a new council housing finance regime.

Sir George Young retained his role as housing minister and was expected to be given a relatively free hand by his new boss in implementing housing policies.

15 years ago

Two weeks after Birmingham City Council’s tenants had voted to reject a stock transfer, Inside Housing learned that the government was considering relaxing its rules on councils’ borrowing in order to enable Birmingham to meet the 2010 Decent Homes target.

The council’s director of housing, David Thompson, had been present at a meeting between Stephen Byers – secretary of state for transport, local government and the Regions, the department with responsibility for housing – and Albert Bore, leader of Birmingham City Council, to discuss a way forward after the shock result.

“He was encouraging us to be as inventive as possible within government policy [at the meeting],” Mr Thompson said, adding that he felt the minister was referring to a local government White Paper that was out for consultation at the time.

It was understood, Inside Housing reported, that the White Paper could be a precursor to legislation allowing councils such as Birmingham to borrow the money they needed in order to bring their stock up to the required standard by the 2010 deadline.

Five years ago

The government was warned that its plans to stop London councils from housing vulnerable people in other parts of the country could prove impossible to implement.

The coalition’s welfare reforms had begun to bite, and some of the capital’s local authorities were ramping up efforts to find homes for housing benefit claimants elsewhere: Newham Council, for example, had asked 1,179 housing associations across England to help provide accommodation for 500 families up to 160 miles outside the capital.

Housing minister Grant Shapps announced that the Department for Communities and Local Government would issue new regulations to make local connections a principle factor when councils were seeking to house people in the private sector.