Introduction

Local authorities in England have been intimately involved in the twin crises of super- austerity and housing over the past decade. And as John (2014: 688) has written, ‘repeated pronouncements of the end or terminal decline of locally elected government should be treated very cautiously’. Local government ‘remains a remarkable site for contestations and debate … (still around some of the same things as always – the delivery of care services, the fight for decent housing and so on)’ (Ward et al, 2015: 453). In the context of the remarkably resilient and adaptive system of local government in England, there has been a pushback by authorities against austerity and in favour of their own direct action in delivering housing. In this chapter, focusing on local authorities’ direct role in housing delivery, we consider what has motivated them to get engaged in direct delivery again in recent years, including frustrations at private developers within the planning system, and the forms of provision to deal with homelessness, housing and income generation and how these are enabled legislatively.

We draw extensively on our own empirical research, reported in Morphet and Clifford (2017, 2019). For the 2017 research this included 13 roundtable discussions held across England, 12 case study interviews with local authority officers and politicians, a direct survey (online questionnaire) sent by email to local authority officers, which resulted in a total of 268 responses from officers working in 197 different local authorities across England (sent in 2017), and a desk survey of online information about local authority housing delivery activity. For the 2019 research this included a further 13 roundtable discussions held across England, 13 case study interviews with local authority officers and politicians, a direct survey sent by email to local authority officers, which resulted in 184 responses from officers working in 142 different local authorities across England (sent in 2018), and a new desk survey of online information about housing delivery activity by every local authority in England, focusing particularly on housing and property companies.

Local authority motivations

We have found through our research that local authorities directly engaging in housing delivery, do so for a wide variety of reasons that vary between authorities.