ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to examine how the housing role of local authorities has developed by reviewing the changes of the last 30 years and considering the factors which have driven them. Major factors are tenure policy, political ideology and changes in the management and governance of housing. The chapter then considers what the future role of local government might be, taking into account the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliament is likely to create a new constitutional role for local government in which a clearer 'strategic role' for local housing authorities is signalled in the Green Paper Investing in Modernisation. The chapter illustrates the possible breadth of the local government housing role. The housing role of local authorities after 1945 was almost as broad as housing policy itself, concerned with clearance, renewal, land assembly, development planning and development control, infrastructure, new building and regulation of HMOs, for example.
