London 1978

Peter MARSHALL


Council flats, Battersea, Wandworth, 1978
14l36: wandsworth, battersea, girls

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This was an age where local councils were proud to build houses for local people, and realising that many lived in poor quality and over crowded privately rented properties they built homes to a good standard for the time, both large housing estates mainly on the edges of their boroughs for those who could afford slightly higher rents and the cost of travel to work, and also blocks of flats such as this in the middle of their boroughs for those who could not afford council house rents and travel costs.
 
Things are rather different now, with councils long constrained by government from serious building programmes, and looking at their estates not as housing but as development opportunities, assets to be realised by working with private developers (including some housing associations that appear to have lost track of why they were created) to build homes for the wealthy, often just as investments rather than places to live, forcing former residents to move out of London.
 
This was a small block of less than 20 flats and I think was demolished some years ago.