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Whether or not Scotland secedes, the UK will still be mired in a housing crisis. How did this happen?
The graph below shows how many homes local councils built in the 1970s, and how many they have built since.
In 2001-02 local councils built 0.1 per cent as many homes as they did in 1969-70. The Second World War had created an extraordinary demand for housing, but the rate fell so far that the state had built nearly 900 homes in 1969-70 for every one it built in the early 2000s.
Throughout the 1970s council homes had made up between 30 and 50 per cent of new housing. During the Blair and Brown years they never made up more than 1 per cent in any given year.
Fewer than 6,000 council homes were built during their 13 years in office – fewer than 500 per year.
Local councils were partly replaced by housing associations from the late 1980s…
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