ABSTRACT
The process of production of accommodation in the state sector can be divided into four distinct types of activity: new building on redeveloped sites; new building on green field sites; maintenance and rehabilitation of the existing council stock; and the rehabilitation of newly municipalised dwellings. This chapter deals largely with public redevelopment, the first of the author's four categories, and its relationship with private sector rehabilitation. Physical obsolescence, they point out, is due to the effects of time and use on a structure, and its rate will be conditioned by the building’s nature and construction. Obsolescence can be diminished or off-set by maintenance and rehabilitation. The political economy of Conservative policy requires no great elaboration. They had always viewed state housing as a measure of last resort, a stratagem to be used only where private enterprise was unwilling to act.
