ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the impact of privatisation upon housing policy and provision. The Conservative Party Manifesto at the 1979 General Election contained one and a half pages outlining a housing policy which concentrated upon issues of ownership and the sale of council houses. The 1980 Housing Act, with which Conservative policy began, replaced concern over housing supply and quality by a focus upon tenure and the clearing of any local impediments which might have been placed in the path of those wishing to exercise the new Right To Buy. Within the public rented sector, the introduction of ‘market testing’ into local authority housing management proceeded according to the mechanisms of competitive tendering. The result, it has been suggested, has been for housing management in many local authorities to become ‘reformed from within’. By the time of the 1996 Housing Act, according to R. Walker, a quarter of all homes in the registered social landlord sector were ex-local authority homes.
