ABSTRACT
The effect of the local offices on the life of the estates in the survey was immediate and extensive. If 25 per cent were added for central overheads, the cost of the local offices would average 2.12 for flats and 1.39 for houses. To the knowledge, all of the local offices survived the severe cut-backs of the last few years. With constrained budgets, with staff usually recruited from within the existing workforce and with limited direct control over performance, it is important to see how effectively basic tasks were performed in the local offices. Nine estates ran lettings from the local office but on sixteen of the survey estates, there were changes in lettings policy after the local office opened, in an attempt to reverse the social distress of the estates. The local offices which worked so hard to establish goodwill with tenants were extremely reluctant to pressurize people who were financially hard-pressed already.
