The impacts of housing stock transfers in urban Britain Hal Pawson, Emma Davidson, James Morgan, Robert Smith and Rebecca Edwards

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Transferring council houses to be owned and managed by a specially-established housing association was an initiative of Chiltern District Council, in 1988. By 2008, after two decades of ‘large scale stock transfer’, council housing was a thing of the past in half of England’s local authorities.

Although transfers were initially concentrated in relatively affluent southern shire districts, there was a dramatic change after 1997 when the focus switched to urban areas mainly in the Midlands and the North of England. In Scotland, the biggest transfer of them all – Glasgow’s 80,000 properties – was pushed through in 2003. A ‘second generation’ of stock transfers was, therefore, created.

Charged with tackling extensive disrepair, concentrated deprivation, and declining neighbourhoods, many of the new ‘second generation’ stock transfer housing associations faced formidable challenges. Focusing on these organisations, this study investigates how successfully these challenges have been met, and on the ways in which second generation transfers have impacted on social housing governance, organisational culture and area regeneration in England, Wales and Scotland.

 ISBN: 978 1 905018 72 7    Order no: 250    Published: February 2009

Contents

• Chapter One - Introduction
  • Background to the research
  • Research framework and scope
  • Existing research literature on stock transfer
  • Research methodology
• Chapter Two - Transfer promises: Overview of commitments and investment delivery
  • Key findings
  • Chapter scope
  • Transfer commitments
  • Delivery against transfer promises: overview
  • Delivery against stock investment promises
• Chapter Three – Evolution of transfer housing association business plans
  • Key findings
  • Chapter scope
  • National economic and housing market context
  • Adequacy of transfer business plan funding
  • Re-shaping business plans
• Chapter Four - Governance and tenant empowerment
  • Key findings
  • Chapter background and scope
  • Organisational structures and their evolution
  • Governance structures and their evolution
  • Tenant participation and empowerment
  • Chapter summary
• Chapter Five - Organisational culture and management
  • Key findings
  • Chapter background and scope
  • Transforming organisational culture through staff management?
  • Staff recruitment and training
  • Trades Union roles
  • Workforce morale
• Chapter Six - Housing management services and customer satisfaction
  • Key findings
  • Chapter scope
  • Impact of new institutional arrangements
  • Customer satisfaction
• Chapter Seven - Regeneration impacts
  • Key findings
  • Background
  • Housing replacement and new construction
  • Social, economic and community regeneration
• Chapter Eight - Transfer housing association staff perspectives
  • Key findings
  • Background
  • Evidence from previous research
  • Housing management practice
  • Staff management and organisational culture

Other titles in this series

• Achieving mobility in the intermediate housing market
• Housing aspirations for a new generation - perspectives from white and south Asian British women
• Peoples attachment to place - the influence of neighbourhood deprivation
• Residents' views of new forms of high density affordable living