Welfare Reform on the Web (October 2010): Social housing - UK
Coalition risks Tory alarm as Thatcher's right-to-buy policy faces review
A. Stratton
The Guardian, Sept. 17th 2010, p.1 & 2
The housing minister, Grant Shapps, is looking into ways to increase social housing stock as numbers on the waiting lists for council properties swell. His review will call into question the right-to-buy scheme initiated by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and will also consider Cameron's plans to end lifetime tenancies in social housing.
The end of the Right to Buy and the future of social housing in Scotland
K. McKee
Local Economy, vol.25, 2010, p. 319-327
Thirty years after the introduction of the right-to-buy, the current Housing (Scotland) Bill proposes to end the scheme for both new social housing tenants and new social housing. This paper considers the implications of the reform in the context of housing policy divergence post-devolution.
Mind the step: an estimation of housing need among wheelchair users in England: a summary
G. Joseph and others
Housing, Care and Support, vol.13, May 2010, p. 20-25
The majority of dwellings in England (84%) do not allow someone using a wheelchair to get to and through the front door without difficulty and only 0.5% are reported to be 'accessible and adaptable'. This paper presents a summary of research that presents national and regional estimates of housing need among wheelchair users in England and shows how these figures can be used to produce similar estimates at local authority level. There are three solutions to under-provision:
- development of more wheelchair standard homes for both owner-occupiers and tenants
- support for home adaptations across tenures
- more efficient allocation, within social housing, of existing accessible and adaptable homes.