Council House - Design

Design

Council housing was generally typified by houses with generously sized rooms (compared to the bottom end of the private sector), particularly those built in the 1970s after the Parker Morris standards were introduced. However they also tended to be unimaginatively designed, and rigid council rules often forbade tenants "personalising" their houses. Council tenants also faced problems of mobility, finding it hard to move from one property to another as their families grew or shrank, or to seek work. Despite the building, there was a constant demand for housing, and 'waiting lists' are maintained with preference being given to those in greatest need. In Birmingham, people accepted as eligible for council housing are allocated points according to need, people then bid for properties and the property goes to the bidder with the highest number of points who wants it. People who fail to get a property can carry on bidding until they are successful. This is like a market but bidding success depends on need rather than financial resources.

The original council houses from the early 1920s were among the first houses in the country to feature electricity, running water, bathrooms, indoor toilets and front/rear gardens. Many of these houses had a "cottage" design and were built on estates imitating garden city principles, with an open spaced layout that gave a pleasant environment to residents who had previously lived in dilapidated inner city slums. These new houses had two, three, four or five bedrooms, and generous-size back gardens intended for vegetable-growing.

Flats and bungalows were first built by local councils during the interwar years, but in relatively low volumes. It was not until the 1950s that this type of property became a common sight, and until then it was rare to see blocks of flats which were more than three or four storeys high. It was also around this time that councils started building garages on new housing developments, although these were usually in separate blocks to houses.

The first tower block flats in Britain were built during the early 1950s, reaching a peak in the 1960s. But these flats quickly became unpopular due to poor insulation and structural defects, with construction of high-rise flats being effectively ended during the 1970s. Tower block clearance schemes were becoming common by the end of the 1980s, and continue more than 20 years later. The most notable regeneration programme featuring tower blocks was that of the Castle Vale estate in Birmingham. 32 of the estate's 34 tower blocks were cleared between 1995 and 2003, with the remaining two being refurbished and re-opened as "vertical warden-controlled schemes". All of the estate's 27 maisonette blocks were also cleared, as were more than 100 bungalows. The remaining low-rise stock, however, was retained. A similar regeneration had taken place around the end of the 1980s and start of the 1990s on Smethwick's Galton Village estate, known locally as the Concrete Jungle, which had been built in the late 1960s.

Many of the older interwar council houses have been demolished, mostly due to subsidence or decay. Much of this regeneration has been concentrated in the West Midlands since the early 1990s. Areas that have been regenerated include Pype Hayes and Stockfield in Birmingham, parts of The Lunt estate in Bilston, the Poet's Estate at Harden in Walsall and the Harrowby Road Estate in Darlaston. Several other estates are currently earmarked for a similar regeneration in the future. These include the Goscote Estate in Walsall, parts of the Priory Estate in Dudley and parts of the Tibbington Estate in Tipton.