Of course I am not an expert on the housing history of every location across the Humberside Region but, over time, I have self-taught enough to be able to talk about housing in areas from an amateur, but informed perspective. As seen from page three of this website I have researched and written in detail about early rural areas council housing and 19th century housing analysis across a complete community. As with everything I write about, I am as keen to set a broad context for the topic under study as to recount ‘101 details’.
With housing the context, certainly in the 20th century, is to do with government legislation and local authority’s responses to the legislation. Also, of course, there are contextual issues such as fashion in building styles, availability and cost of building materials (which itself is often determined by national circumstances), availability of land for building (this related to the modern planning departments, a factor only in evidence in the last 150 years) and the extent of funds available to prospective buyers or tenants. Since the 1980s housing, as a factor in the landscape, has been almost totally market driven, unlike before. The government’s harping-on about ‘affordable housing’ as a compulsory element in planning applications results in only a fraction of the new housing being built to this standard and, as far as I can see, gets no mention in many planning applications for house building.
Also other things are happening in the housing market that don’t bode well for the future. One of these is the volume of applications to convert generally older, larger houses for conversion to ‘houses in multiple occupation’, these much like student houses. Astonishingly, government guidelines advise that no more than 50% of houses in a given street be so converted, a ridiculously high maximum proportion.
(to be continued)