We do all kinds of work with them, but explaining it to someone with such a set agenda as yours seems a little fruitless Mr Chicken.

My agenda isn't set in stone, its just a different point of view, you believe that you are there to provide temporary accommodation for absolute defined periods of a persons family life, I believe you should have a different function and I'm curious as to when your job function changed because it wasn't always so.

Why would they need to "move on"and where do you suggest they move on to?

It's a shame you have only been a housing professional for 15 years, if you'd done it for 60 years you would have the experience of seeing how council housing worked through the 50s and 60s and what happened to it post righ to buy

I'd say that your definition of "social" differs from mine, regardless of your job.

Unfortunately there are many who think that social housing is only for those receiving Social Security

What on earth do you mean by "trapped" in social housing? Why is it a trap? Is the social housing you deal with so awful people living there are trapped in it?

There was a documentary a few years ago about social housing and its history and it was this that highlighted to me the changes made by successive governments that have led us to where we are today. The biggy was of course the right-to-buy with councils not being allowed to reinvest the money in new builds but the one I mentioned above where social housing started to be allocated based on need had a polarising effect that was never the intention.

In fact the term "social housing" is pejorative IMO and is different to what I consider "council housing". The latter is simply the council providing rented accommodation to the local population and that is just what it used to be. The vast majority of people in [icounci[/il housing in the 50's and 60's were full time employed people with families. They were not the unemployed or the single mother stereotype associated with [isocial[/i housing these days.

The problems we face today of soaring private sector rents and property prices is crying out for a reintroduction of [icouncil[/i housing. Build enough and assured tenancy agreements and the like won't be a problem (as they were not in the 50's and 60's) but instead could be viewed as giving the tenants the assurance they can call their house a home which in my opinion is something we ought to consider a right in a society as rich as ours

It's odd to think that those making a fuss about this would probably be small-statists, yet they appear to think that the state should decree how much of your income you should spend on housing and at what point you should increase your spending on your accommodation.

But then again, the vast inflation in housing prices over the last 20-25 years was artificially created by the state in the first place, although one wonders what those small staters feel about that.

This is EXACTLY my viewpoint, based on my wife's parents home of 50 years or so (1962 until their death 5 years ago) on what was then a brand new council estate of 2 and 3 bed homes for families, the huge majority of whom were IN work and happy to pay rent for the rest of their lives, there was no indication that they would have to, and no inclination to give up their homes when the children of the family moved on but there was always a flow of elderly into the one bed bungalows (also council) on the outskirts of the same estate, indeed there was a waiting list for these and as each old person pegged it then one would be rehomed and free up a 2 or 3 bed house although this was always voluntarily and not based on any sort of enforceable contract (which all seems a little heavy handed).

I don't know at what point the attitude to council housing changed but there seems to be an approach now that it is a temporary and short term fix - why is this ?

My mam & dad moved into their council house in late 1953, a 2 bedroomed new-build on a brand new estate on the Eastern outskirts of Hull. The land was acquired for a song because it was previously agricultural land and the cost of build (at the time) was less than £1000. It was brick-built with metal window frames, tiled roof, bitumen-covered concrete base and a single coal fire in the living room. I can't recall the rent but it was affordable because we never went into arrears - my old lady had kept every rentbook from the day we moved in until the day they exercised RtB. Those rent books formed part of an exhibition at Hull Museum, showing that me mam always paid a few bob more than required each week, so that she wouldn't have to find two weeks rent at Christmas or for our annual summer holiday.

The old man worked on the dock and she worked at Northern Dairies, I'd get up at the same time as them and go to work with the old lady until it was time for school. Rather than attend a primary school adjacent to home, I attended one close to my mother's workplace. I can't imagine that happening today. I'd spend my time before school hanging around the dairy, going to the coffee shop for hot cakes etc. Again, I can't envisage that happening today.

I remember the house was sply furnished with lino on the ground floors, covered with a few mats. We initially had a radio, then a radiogramme and the only form of heat came from the coal fire in the living room, supplemented by a paraffin stove. It wasn't unusual to wake on a winter's morning and find ice on the inside of the windows. But compared to the back room at my nan's, it was a palace. Our neighbours were all similar, from similar backgrounds, everyone took pride in their homes. The council would come around every five years or so and paint the exteriors in a mix of council approved colours. Gardens (front or back) could only be fenced or hedged to a height not exceeding 3' and if anyone started to let their garden go to seed, it wasn't long before the man from "the corpo" would come around to issue a warning.

As I grew up, I and most of my mates went on to grammar (or similar) schools. We used to go to the local youth club based at the secondary modern school on the estate, so grammar and sec-mod kids mixed freely. Although my old man never owned a car (he used bike, bus or taxi), there were a few of my mates' dads who owned modest, old bangers. Most of those cars only ever spun a wheel at weekends, their owners would commute by bike or bus during the week and then use the car on Saturday & Sunday.

As people became more prosperous, very few moved on to purchasing a house, they stayed where they were, knowing that once all the kids were finally gone, they could apply for an OAP bungalow on the same estate. The majority of the houses on the estate were 2 or 3 bedroomed with a small number of four bedroomed houses, some one bedroomed flats over the shops on the two parades and the OAP bungalows. There were three pubs, a library, two parades of shops, an estate office, two primary schools (with nursery facilities) and a senior school, on top of all this, there was also a large council-run Old Folks Home and a couple of 6-bedroomed houses for fostering. It may sound corny but the planners had put everything in place to assist a genuine community.

Looking back, is there any wonder I blame so much of society's ills on Thatcher?

Your story is very familiar for its very much like the place, an ex-pit village, that my wife grew up in, the village itself was virtually 100% a council estate but depending on the economy most family's breadwinner were IN work, the wifes father was never out of work for the whole of his life and did not claim any benefits in order to raise six children other than child benefit, he was a proud man and most of the other tenants were too, being "on the dole" for longer than "they" considered necessary was looked on as being shameful, most of the tenants belonged to one of two social clubs in the village and they'd talk about the few individuals who never seemed to work - THATS what social networks used to be like.

Of course their area was very much a Labour socialist area and local councillors were known (because you drank with them in the club) so when in the early 1990s the council adopted a points scoring system for allocating houses which seemed to be biased towards out of work single young people, some of whom brought drug problems onto the estate, they were able to lobby their councillor by simply bagging him in the bar every night until the policy was changed, when the wifes parents had passed away and they gave up the house the policy then was to put it up for bids and a young family ended up "winning" it at a rent that was almost ten times the amount that my mother-in-law had been paying - but still only around £350 a month for a 3 bed semi detached (5 years ago), that family would regard that as a bargain compared to what they would have to pay to a private landlord and THAT is what council housing and the vehement opposition towards it is all about.

One has to wonder what some people really think is/was wrong with this.

I was the council tenant of a 3 bedroom house from age eighteen when my old lady died.
My older brother had already flitted by then and my younger sister went upto Scotland to live with an aunt.
So I was ensconced in the property on my lonesome and they couldn't get me out.
Me being an honourable chap though I exchanged into my mates two bed flat across the road as he had just got wed and had a couple of young sprogs.
Spent a good bit of time away although I kept the tenancy on (me bad ).
Smashing estate as a kid growing up on but oh how it changed after the children of Thatchers legacy started reaching adulthood from the 90's onwards.

When I was made homeless in 1997 after splitting with a partner, I was earning £7,500 pa. I applied (well, filled out the forms at least) for a council house in conjunction with sitting down with a mortgage adviser trying to work out if I could afford a mortgage. I went down the mortgage route only because I could only just afford it as I had no loans and no credit card debt but I was offered a small council property which I declined.

18 months after owning my own home, virtually overnight, I ended up in a wheelchair unable to work. With the help of my parents who would buy me food and IS, IB and DLA I managed until the end of 1999 I went into remission. I came off benefits and went back to work, albeit temping until I found a full time job some time later. I met Mr HWS at work and he moved into my house and life went on. I came out of remission and my disease took hold again, but I kept on working until I could no longer get out of bed in a morning let alone do a full days work. That was 2004 and until 2007 my disease improved by taking new drugs for a few months then the drugs would stop working (which is very common for these type of drugs ) and I'd be back to square one again. In 2005, to cut a long story short, my disease stopped me from going up my stairs (2 up, 2 down very small and steep stairs so no room for a stair lift) pretty much as it did in the beginning but I was married by this point, so we moved into a bungalow which I am still in today and which I am grateful for after 2 hip replacements, one knee replacement and a foot fusion later the bungalow has helped me no end.

If I did Standees way;

1997 Homeless so would qualify for a council property
1998 Back on my feet, leave council property, buy own property
1998 Contracted RA, in wheelchair, sell house as would qualify for special needs housing.
1999 Disease in remission, leave special needs housing, buy own property.
2000-2004 Disease fluctuating meaning sometimes housing meets needs, sometimes not.
2004 Gave up work for 2nd time, property no longer meets needs, sell own property, qualify for special needs housing.
2005-present - Mr HWS earning more than minimum wage - have to leave council property, buy own property.
2009 - 2010 Various joint replacements all at once, can't do stairs - sell own property, qualify for special needs housing.

Does he not realise how ridiculous this is, not to mention stressful? Peoples needs change at various intervals during their life. I cannot think what it must be like to yoyo in and out of social housing like Standee is suggesting, but probably true to style he will say he is not talking about people like me.

Coddy, my grandparents moved onto LHE in around 1955. Thats what those estates were built for, like you say, not because people had a need, but to build a community, a place that you never had to leave because everything from social (pubs, libraries), shops, houses, schools and recreation were all together within one community. They were happy renting just like they had done since the were married in 1945. We used to say that they could have bought their whole block of houses 10 times over with the rent they paid over the years.

But ''there is no such thing as society.''
She was wrong. She'd have known that if she'd have grown up on my council estate, and I suspect, many others.
They were our communities, good and bad.
People helped others, that's the way it was.

No food banks that I can remember back then though!

More importantly they would tell you that they had no desire at all to purchase their property.

It was a mindset just like my in-laws, my Father in law had the right to buy and could have had his 3 bed semi detached (larger than the house I'm living in right now) for £15k but refused, his youngest son offered to buy it for him as he was in the RAF at the time and had sackfulls of spare cash every month, but his father wouldn't let him - the principal of renting for life was an honorable one and my father in law held the opinion that it wasn't his house to buy.

THAT is socialism at its best.