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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.
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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.
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Local councils were partly replaced by housing associations from the late 1980s…
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