ABSTRACT
Although good-quality, secure housing is essential for the well-being of every household, housing professionals witnessed a substantial increase in housing problems faced by individuals and families during the last two decades of the twentieth century. With the return of a Conservative government in 1979 under the premiership of Mrs Margaret Thatcher, the uneasy consensus of the previous half-century or more had broken down. Thatcherism, involving a lurch back to the free market, dominated housing policy for a generation-in latter years under the nostrums of the Major administrations, 1991-97. A neo-liberal welfare regime emerged in which public expenditure on housing was reduced, housing investment in the public sector plummeted, local authorities were superseded by housing associations as the main providers of new social housing, the local authority stock of dwellings was increasingly privatised, rents were permitted to rise to market levels within both the social and the private rented sectors, while mortgage repayments imposed an increased burden on owner-occupiers, and mortgage foreclosures and homelessness increased. Against this backdrop, this concluding chapter:
• analyses Labour’s housing policy, 1997-2001, considering some of its achievements and failures;
• notes the aims of housing policy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; • examines the contents of Labour’s manifesto of 2001 in respect of housing; • reviews Labour’s housing policy in the aftermath of the 2001 election; and • refers critically to post-election policy omissions.
