In reply to The Five Estates, Peckham, Part III: Back to the Future
November 4th, 2016
Firstly I was struck by a hypothetical question:-
“Would the regeneration have been necessary had the Thatcher cuts in maintenance been avoided and the inflation proofed money still been available?”
I suspect yes, owing to the change in residential makeup of the estates owing to the effects of right to buy (in subsequent decades companies and individuals bought onto council estates and let the flats to unemployed people on the then DSS thus further weakening the estate demographic) and the 1977 Housing Act – priority needs based lettings.
In my personal opinion the estates and council housing in general were damaged by those two pieces of legislation, the second of which was enacted under a Labour Government albeit with unintended consequences.