ABSTRACT
The evidence of the investigation was damning, cautiously worded as it was, and it highlighted beyond doubt both the magnitude of the design failure of some modern estates and the total inadequacy of some housing management and maintenance organizations. The aim of the survey was to find out how local offices were organzied and what, if any, success they were having. Later, the more ambitious local authorities, which had already marked up some success with a local office on their worst estates, became keen to decentralize their housing management further and set up offices on a wider scale to serve many or all of their estates, including more popular areas. According to the 1983 difficult-to-let returns to the Department of the Environment, the nineteen local authorities included in the survey of twenty estates contained 13 per cent of all English council housing, but 37 per cent of all difficult-to-let dwellings.
