Introduction

This book is based on detailed information on 20 English social housing estates (Chapter 1), and this chapter introduces the estates. It describes how the sample was selected, and sets out some basic characteristics of the estates, including their location, age, size, main built form and size of homes. It discusses the extent to which the 20 are representative of less popular estates, and what evidence from the sample can and can't tell us.

How the estates were selected

The sample of 20 estates on which this book is based is an accident of history, and in formal terms it represents a ‘convenience sample’. The research on which the book is based started with a small 1981–82 project on the decentralisation of council housing management services from central offices to estate offices, a new approach to difficult-tolet estates. This project was carried out by Anne Power and others on behalf of the Priority Estates Project (PEP), a unit set up by the Department of the Environment (DoE) in order to promote local housing management. The report of the first study was duly called Local housing management, and found local management to be effective and good value (Power 1984). The longitudinal element developed incrementally. The original study was repeated with fieldwork in 1988, to track developments in local management in the same 20 estates over the 1980s (Power 1991). It then continued with a wider brief to investigate the impact of other landlord policies, national policy, and social and economic change, with further fieldwork in 1994 and 2005 (Power and Tunstall 1995; Tunstall and Coulter 2006). The most recent research has used archives to go back to estates’ origins, and interviews and desk research to bring evidence up to date and to provide context (Appendix 1). In 1994, 2005 and 2018, residents and local authority staff interviewed were promised that efforts could be made to ensure that they and their estates would not be identifiable in publications.

The 20 estates were selected in 1981 for the purposes of the original management study. Power contacted every local authority in England known to have started local housing management projects on difficultto-let estates.