Local government

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100 years on from the Addison Act

Under the Housing and Town Planning Act 1919, local authorities had to develop 'new housing and rented accommodation where it was needed by working people’.¹

About the author: Dr Darren Baxter works at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and Dr Jed Meers is a lecturer at the University of York.​​The history of social housing is defined by waves of legislative interventions. As with most common law countries, these take the form of broad-ranging statutes self-styled as ‘Housing Acts’ – each with its own political ethos passporting packages of reform. However, the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919 – known as the ‘Addison Act’ after its proponent, Dr Christopher Addison, the then Minister of Health – is among the most influential. In placing an obligation on local authorities to build housing in response to local needs and providing a national subsidy to support it, the Addison Act catalysed the shakier origins of England and Welsh social housing, formalising it in law and bringing subsidy to the national level.

Much has changed in the past century, but this article reflects on two key interrelated shifts: legislation's movement away from need and towards individual rights; and the related change from subsiding bricks and mortar to subsidising people.

From needs to rights

What defined the Addison Act was a focus on addressing housing needs, ie, an emphasis on the bricks-and-mortar delivery of housing by local government to address local demand. Its very first provision, section 1(1) of Part I, required local authorities to consider ‘the needs of their area with respect to the provision of houses for the working classes’. This was not a toothless provision.

Speaking in support of the bill in the House of Commons, Dr Addison underscored his intent to ‘compel authorities to act in accordance with the housing needs of the district’, which was reflected in the Act itself in section 2.²

The focus on addressing housing need mirrors housing rights discourse in the early 20th century. Formative international obligations under the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights framed the ‘right to housing’ as a means for securing an adequate standard of living. Housing is about health and well-being, and laws should secure not just ex-ante allowances, but a literal roof over you and your family’s head.

The approach became more individualistic throughout the late 1970s and culminated in the HA 1980. This landmark piece of legislation introduced two new legal interventions to social housing, both focused on the housing rights of the individual: ‘security of tenure’ and the ‘right to buy’. The former cemented clear legal rights for social tenants in legislation, ie, if they kept to the terms of their tenancy, they could stay in their home indefinitely, with their spouse or family having rights of succession. The latter also focused on a new statutory right, ie, social tenants could buy their homes after three years with a 33% (or higher) discount.

More than one million tenants availed themselves of the opportunity in the 10 years to follow as the programme was extended under HA 1984 and HA 1988. Debate has since oscillated between extension and retraction of these individual rights. Current housing reforms show the divergence: the Localism Act 2011 sought to fragment security of tenure by introducing fixed-term ‘flexible tenancies’, and the Housing and Planning Act 2016 put this on new footing, seeking effectively to phase out lifetime tenancies as we knew them under sections 118, 119 and Schedule 7 and, instead, requiring the grant of a fixed-term tenancy for a period of between two and 10 years for new tenants. In the wake of the green paper ‘A new deal for social housing’, the government decided against implementing these provisions ‘at this time’.³ On right to buy, Scotland and Wales have both abolished the policy (in July 2016 and in January 2019 respectively), while Westminster has sought to extend it to housing association tenants. ›

There is, of course, much to commend and, in many reforms, to criticise in rights-based interventions in social housing. However, the insight of the Addison Act and its descendants is that legislative interventions should always retain a core focus on addressing local housing needs. A statutorily underpinned duty, coupled with guaranteed national subsidy, cannot be supplanted.

From subsidy to allowances

The second significant shift in the 100 years since the passing of the Addison Act has been the move from ‘bricks and mortar’ subsidy to funding individuals through social security benefits.

The Addison Act and its successors led to significant investment in subsidised housing for the working classes in both urban and rural communities. These high rates of building were commonplace for councils for the most of the 20th century.› From the late 1970s, these rates of building slowed considerably while the introduction of right to buy depleted stock at greater rates than were being replenished, and although new housing association stock was growing over this period, it was insufficient to meet the rates seen in previous decades.

In the place of a steady supply of council and social housing, the role of the private rented sector in housing those on lower incomes has increased substantially in recent years.› Those who, in previous generations, may have likely found themselves in the social rented sector are now increasingly housed by private landlords.›

With this has come a significant increase in the cost of subsidising individual renters through Local Housing Allowance (LHA). LHA is a payment made to families on low incomes, who rent from private landlords to help them afford their rent. The amount of housing benefit a family can claim is affected by the number of adults and children in their homes, their income and the cost of renting in their local area.

Housing benefit spending increased from 0.8 per cent of the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 1983–84 to 1.5 per cent of GDP in 2013–14, with spending likely to increase further in the next few years.› In 2018–19, housing benefit is set to reach £23.4 billion.›

This acceleration in the use of the social security system to support access to housing has led politicians to worry about the rising cost. In order to reduce this expenditure, and as part of recent efforts to reform the welfare benefits system, the generosity of LHA has been reduced.

In 2012, the rate at which LHA was increased per year was delinked from increases in local rents and pegged to the Consumer Price Index.¹› Since 2016, LHA has been frozen in its entirety. As a result, many households face a gap between their rent and the amount of LHA they can claim and rents in 94% of the country for family accommodation.¹¹

However, despite the notable role that LHA plays in the current housing system, there are signs that the tide is turning once again in favour of ‘bricks and mortar’ subsidy. In 2018 at the Conservative party conference, Theresa May announced that the Housing Revenue Cap would be lifted.¹² This will enable councils to borrow against their housing revenues in order to invest in new council house building. Time will tell if this direction of travel will continue under the new administration.

Conclusion

The anniversary of the Addison Act has inspired much commentary, and our identification of what we characterise as two ‘shifts’ is a modest contribution to wealth of reflections on this topic. What unites much of this writing, however, is a recognition of the capacity of social housing as a force for good and the basic necessity: if you want to have social housing, you need to build it. A recognition of housing needs and subsidy is an important part of that.

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1 See: https://tinyurl.com/y2qwqlc2

2 HC Debates 7 April 1919, vol 114 cc1713–820

3 The consultation until 6 November 2018, and available at: https://tinyurl. com/yceu69hj

4 See Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government press release, 16 August 2018, available at: https://tinyurl.com/yyfzy5ch

5 Building for our future: a vision for social housing.’, Shelter UK, January 2019, available at: https://tinyurl.com/yb9kdeeg

6 Dwelling stock estimates in England: 2018’, May 2018, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, available at: https://tinyurl.com/ y44cp4jy

7 'UK Poverty 2018: a comprehensive analysis of poverty trends and figures’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, December 2018, available: https://tinyurl.com/yxrynque

8 ‘Welfare spending: housing benefit’, Office for Budget Responsibility, May 2018, available at: https://tinyurl.com/y5tcj9n4

9 See note 6

10 Brian Robson, ‘Mind the (housing benefit) gap – it’s growing’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, October 2017, available at: https://tinyurl.com/ yxnfh6jl

11 ‘Housing benefit freeze: 9 in 10 homes unaffordable for families’, National Housing Federation press release, 7 October 2019, available at: https://tinyurl.com/yxbjr8t7

12 Theresa May's speech is available at: https://tinyurl.com/y9armxwn See also, Nathaniel Barker, ‘The HRA borrowing cap explained’, Inside Housing, October 2018, available at: https://tinyurl.com/yygfkkbz