July 2019 marks the centenary of the Housing Act of 1919 and as such of council housing as one of the pillars of the UK’s housing system. A conference on 18 July will look back at the “homes fit for heroes” programme and at its lessons for housing today.

Of course 1919 did not mark the absolute beginning of council housing: that honour goes to Liverpool council, with its St Martin’s cottages scheme of 1869. But it did mark the beginning of councils right across the country building housing on a large scale. In the quarter-century before 1914, local authorities accounted for about 2% of new dwellings. But for the years 1919-23 the figure was 60% and for the inter-war period as a whole 30%. 

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