Moving Homes: The Housing Corporation 1964-2008 by Alan Murie
Politico’s, £14.99
AS I began to read this history of the Housing Corporation, the newspapers were full of dire predictions for the house building industry this year as well as recording that the total of new homes built in 2008 was the lowest for any year since 1924, when this country’s population was half its present size.
Most of the major house builders are in financial trouble and in order to sell their wares are offering to pay stamp duty, legal fees and moving costs for potential buyers. A number of housing associations are in an equally parlous state. Before Christmas they asked the government to bring forward their funding allocations for the next couple of years to help them stay in business. At the same time the Housing Corporation, the body used by the government to fund housing associations “went out of business” after 44 years to be replaced by the Housing and Communities Agency.
Alan Murie says his book is not a financial evaluation of the Housing Corporation. It is more an account of the development of what became the largest single non-departmental public body in the UK and the phases it passed through as well as offering judgements about its successes and failures within the wider context of the development of housing and housing policy.
Murie saw his purpose in writing this book as putting the spotlight on the Housing Corporation – which, hitherto, has been seen “as a shadowy organisation” – and its role in the development of housing in modern Britain. Although he displays no political bias, he writes that the corporation was a key player in a regulated not for profit housing sector with development costs financed through private investment and that, arguably, this was a more replicable model than council housing ever was and more in tune with the politics and economics of the 21st century global economy.
It is amazing how, as Harold Macmillan famously said, “events, dear boy, events” – namely the credit crunch and the slump that has come in its wake – has made such a statement out of tune with the times and as dated as last year’s fashion model.
Over the years the Housing Corporation became central to the government’s housing proposals for the rented sector and, as Murie admits, its annual reports were by the end more like statements of government policy. It failed to express “significant concern” over the level of funding for housing and was also guilty of failing to express concern about the way the transfers of housing stock from local authorities was done. In the beginning council tenants who did not vote to stay with their local authority were included with those who wished to transfer. There are many true stories of bullying and blackmailing of tenants and the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee criticised the whole stock transfer process as a waste of billions of pounds.
As for those who wished in principle to remain council tenants and the debate over the defence of council housing Murie thinks it worthy of only one sentence. He writes: “The defence of council housing would not always mean the defence of the best interests of the tenants living in council houses.” The truth is that council tenants, in large numbers, knew their secure tenancy was worth more than a shiny new kitchen or bathroom.
It was only in 2005 that the then chief executive of the Housing Corporation discovered that the £40 billion it had delegated to sub-committees to spend during its existence was actually illegal. Whoops! Finally, a whole paragraph on page 278 is repeated on page 279.
We can only hope that the Homes and Communities Agency which is following in the Housing Corporation’s footsteps learns from its mistakes – big and small – and does not repeat them.
Terry McGrenera
