ABSTRACT
The quality of social housing after the war was forcibly cut, first by materials shortages, then by economic problems. The problems with their role stemmed from four main factors: the style and quality of council housing; the management of building and rehousing processes and, in the long run, management of the stock; the ripple effects from the slum-clearance programme; the loss of private renting. The amalgamation of local authorities, in 1964 in London and in 1974 in the rest of the country, was an attempt to rationalise and gain economies of scale in local government. As a result, British local authority landlords, some of them already very large, became unique in the scale of their housing management operation, with the average council landlord becoming five times larger overnight. At the same time, the size of the local authority stock expanded far more rapidly than the systems could cope with.
