{"id":8501,"date":"2024-01-09T08:31:11","date_gmt":"2024-01-09T08:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8501"},"modified":"2024-01-09T08:31:11","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T08:31:11","slug":"housing-failures-and-mrs-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2024\/01\/09\/housing-failures-and-mrs-t\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing Failures and Mrs T"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In our house, Mrs Thatcher gets a reasonably balanced obituary. \u00a0One persistent negative feature is regret that her policy of selling council houses \u2013 which we welcomed \u2014 was not balanced by an equivalent house-building programme to ensure a continuity of supply of houses to rent. \u00a0To me, this was obviously a Treasury red line:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>'what's the point of building new houses, Prime Minister, if all you\u2019re going to do is to sell them at a discount?'<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fair point you might think. \u00a0If so, the consequences seem very costly as we are finding out.<\/p>\n<p>But are they really the consequences? \u00a0Is the acute shortage of rentable property really down to Mrs T and Treasury mandarins?<\/p>\n<p>Judging by a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/article\/96406672-b19c-48c1-bc24-ce73c24ba03e?shareToken=b8231358b7a15a121b9b737b078b1e4e\">graph published<\/a> recently in the Times, the answer's obviously no, as the fall in the building of much needed 'council houses' predated Mrs T's time in government, beginning in the early 1970s. \u00a0Another Treasury misstep I pressure as money was always short then.<\/p>\n<p>Another feature of the graph is the persistent failure to carry on building up our housing stock since WWII. \u00a0Is this really down to the planning system, as is usually stated, or is the Treasury behind this as well. \u00a0I know what I think.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2024\/01\/09\/housing-failures-and-mrs-t\/screenshot-2023-12-23-at-09-56-43\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8504\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8504 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2023\/12\/Screenshot-2023-12-23-at-09.56.43-300x278.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"278\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2023\/12\/Screenshot-2023-12-23-at-09.56.43-300x278.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2023\/12\/Screenshot-2023-12-23-at-09.56.43-1024x950.png 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2023\/12\/Screenshot-2023-12-23-at-09.56.43-768x712.png 768w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2023\/12\/Screenshot-2023-12-23-at-09.56.43-232x215.png 232w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/65\/2023\/12\/Screenshot-2023-12-23-at-09.56.43.png 1300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In our house, Mrs Thatcher gets a reasonably balanced obituary. \u00a0One persistent negative feature is regret that her policy of selling council houses \u2013 which we welcomed \u2014 was not balanced by an equivalent house-building programme to ensure a continuity...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8501\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}