EUKN - United Kingdom - Evaluation of English housing policy 1975-2000: housing quality and neighbourhood quality

Evaluation of English housing policy 1975-2000: housing quality and neighbourhood quality

Introduction

Looks at the definitions and implications of decent homes and decent neighbourhoods and provides an overview of changes in housing and neighbourhood quality.

Description

This report:

examines the definitions and implications of decent homes and decent neighbourhoods and provides an overview of changes in housing and neighbourhood quality;
examines policy towards older private sector homes, including grants, regimes and area-based improvement;
considers housing quality in the social rented sector, including programmes to improve council housing and use of the registered social landlord/housing association sector as vehicles of housing improvement;
explores the diversity of approaches taken to improve neighbourhoods mainly built originally as council estates; and
investigates policies towards improving the quality of individual homes and of newly developing neighbourhoods in all sectors.

Background information

The evaluation was undertaken to examine the degree to which English Housing Policy during 1975–2000 has succeeded in improving housing and neighbourhood quality. It is one of five reports which evaluate housing policy within this period.

Methodology

The research involved:

investigating the scope of policies and the economic, social and political drivers behind them; and
examining the operation of policies and assessing their impacts and outcomes.

The study covered:

policy concerning housing and neighbourhood quality in the private sector;
housing quality in the social rented sector, especially programmes to improve council housing;
neighbourhood quality in ‘council built’ areas; and
policies designed to improve the quality of new housing and new neighbourhoods.

Conclusions

This report:

states that building new homes which achieve official minimum standards has been generally successful, although levels of dissatisfaction concerning policy achievements during the 1980s and 90s has increased;
notes that the physical quality of older housing has significantly improved, although it is difficult to assess the contribution of policy to this;
concludes that the private rented sector remains the worst of all tenures and lacks good quality improvement targets;
notes that neighbourhood quality is one of the most difficult areas of housing policy and that the relative character and location of deprived neighbourhoods has hardly changed over 25 years, even with a wide range of interventions.

Contact info

Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
Phone: +44 20 7944 4400
enquiryodpm@odpm.gsi.gov.uk

Publication date

01/01/2005

Project finished

Researcher

Jimmy Morgan

Links

Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (now Department for Communities and Local Government)

Evaluation of English housing policy 1975-2000: housing quality and neighbourhood quality (PDF, Eng, 511KB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Housing

Keywords

Housing quality