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From the archive - win a council house
Inside Housing looks back at what was happening in the sector this week 10, 20 and 30 years ago
30 years ago
It was the height of Right to Buy, and The Sun newspaper was offering readers “the chance of a lifetime” – funding to buy their council home outright.
This was covered by Inside Housing at the time, which noted that readers could enter the competition by finding some hidden keys in a cartoon, and answering the question: “I want to own my council house because…”
The competition was jointly organised by a mortgage broker that specialised in helping tenants to buy their homes called Homes Assured. Its sales spiel at the time promised it would “stump up cash to the value the council put on your house”. This company failed in 1989 with £10m in debts. Two of its former directors, Anthony Dobson and Keith Woodward, were found guilty
of fraudulent trading in 1993.
20 years ago
A year into Tony Blair’s years, the government announced it was releasing £3.6bn of capital receipts to help fund a £10bn backlog in repairs on council funds.
Local authorities were also going to have more control over how to spend the money, with councils free to decide how much to spend on their own stock and how much on ‘private sector renewal’. Housing associations too would see grant rates for new build remain at 54%.
However, the extra cash came with a sting in the tail – housing minister Hilary Armstrong warned that local authorities which were “persistently poor performers” would have their landlord responsibilities removed.
Government-appointed teams would be brought in to take over management of failing council housing departments. This was succinctly summarised with a photo of Ms Armstrong, captioned simply: “Threat”.
However, Julian Dobson, editor of Inside Housing at the time, concluded: “Councils and housing associations, starved of funds for so long, are hardly going to quibble about the strings attached to their new-found wealth.”
Picture: Chris McAndrew
10 years ago
In response to the credit crunch the government removed an “arbitrary cap” of £200m on the amount of funding that housing associations could use to buy up developments from the flagging private sector.
“Should the right properties at the right price... be available, we will add additional tranches of purchases in order to support delivery of our demanding affordable housing targets,” said the government.
Housing minister Caroline Flint (above) also unveiled ‘Rent to Homebuy’, which allowed first-time buyers to rent at a discount while they saved for a deposit.
Inside Housing reported that associations were being “inundated” with CVs from staff of private developers whose jobs were at risk due to the credit crunch.
