ABSTRACT
Right up to 1989, the large, urban local authorities reacted defensively to the Thatcher government’s proposals and actions, even though they had begun to recognise the need for radical management change more than decade earlier. Behind the central-local crossfire, the reality of local authority housing practice was undergoing a radical reorganisation that was beginning to bear fruit at the end of the 1980s in spite of all the pressures of polarisation. A major actor in housing management change in local authorities in the 1980s had been the Priority Estates Project (Audit Commission 1986). The 1989 Act was heavily interventionist. But it was timely in at last imposing standards of housing management – a role that government should arguably have played from the outset (Stewart 1988). As part of the ‘ring-fencing’, local authority housing departments were required to prepare performance monitoring reports for the government, the general public, and specifically for their tenants.
