ABSTRACT
Housing concerns are always at the forefront of government debate. The political history of the twentieth century has been punctuated by speeches and housing policy initiatives that have captured the public imagination, and which have usually responded to a measured housing problem by offering some compelling vision of change. At the end of the First World War, Lloyd George responded to the potentially damaging spectacle of having soldiers returning home from France without homes to go to by promising ‘homes fi t for heroes’ (though he never used these exact words). In 1955, Anthony Eden offered a vision of post-war economic recovery based on the creation of a ‘property-owning democracy’. And in more recent times, Hilary Armstrong (a former housing minister) has outlined government’s intention to ‘[…] offer everyone the opportunity of a decent home and so promote social cohesion, well-being and selfdependence’ (Armstrong, 1999: 122). Housing and land-use planning has been a key arena of concern for government in the UK. Indeed, we saw in Chapter 1 that pre-war planning was dominated by a concern for housing.
