Social housing - an earlier Hills report and the re-education of bureaucrats

Two weeks today the report of the Hills review on social housing is published (not to be confused with the Cave review of social housing regulation). The "left-leaning" Institute of Public Policy Research has re-published on its website the final report and various research reports of its own review of social housing back in 2000.

It is interesting to see that several ideas in the final Housing United report (pdf available) fed into government policy although not all - in particular, the comprehensive vision of Community Housing and blurring boundaries between "tenures of equal esteem".

Among the research reports, there is one from Professor John Hills himself (pdf available). Much of the report is about housing finance, particularly reform of housing benefit. However, he did make some interesting comments on giving tenants the right to exit from unsatisfactory landlords.

It will be interesting to see if the Cave report on regulation will recommend the re-education of Housing Corporation regulators. Maybe Martin Cave will be inspired by the example of the governor of the Russian region of Ulyanovsk who has sent 2000 bureaucrats back to school.