Britain Used to Build Council Houses — So Why Did It Stop?

There was a time when Britain built homes for ordinary working people. Not a few homes — millions of them. After the First World War, Lloyd George promised "homes fit for heroes", and the Addison Act of 1919 made housing the nation's responsibility. Becontree, east of London, became the largest public housing estate in the world. After 1945, Aneurin Bevan built more than a million homes and insisted they be good ones: "We shall be judged in ten years' time by the type of houses we build." Harold Macmillan then built 300,000 homes a year. By 1979, around one in three homes in Britain belonged to the council. Then, slowly and quietly, it all changed. Ronan Point collapsed in 1968. Right to Buy arrived in 1980, more than two million council homes were sold, and very few were ever replaced. Today about four in ten of them are rented out by private landlords. More than 1.3 million households are on waiting lists, over 176,000 children live in temporary accommodation, and an average home costs nearly eight times a typical salary. So who decided Britain would stop building homes for its people — and who is still paying for it? If you enjoy stories about how our grandparents really lived, subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next video. Sources: • Wikipedia – Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1919 (Addison Act) • Wikipedia – Council house • Wikipedia – Becontree • Red Brick – Building the New Jerusalem: how Attlee's government built 1 million new homes • Wikipedia – Aneurin Bevan • Prospect Magazine – Could Harold Macmillan solve today's housing crisis? • Wikipedia – Public housing in the United Kingdom • Wikipedia – Ronan Point • Wikipedia – Right to Buy • Wikipedia – Housing Act 1980 • House of Commons Library – The Right to Buy (research paper 99/36) and The Right to Buy scheme in England • Shelter – The problem with Right to Buy • LocalGov – Four in 10 council homes sold under right to buy owned by private landlords • Shelter – 1.3m households stuck on waiting lists • GOV.UK – Statutory homelessness in England: October to December 2025 • ONS – Housing affordability in England and Wales: 2024 • GOV.UK – Social housing sales and demolitions 2024-25 • Shelter – Loss of social housing • UK Parliament – Written statement on the Social and Affordable Homes Programme (2 July 2025) • Big Issue – Labour wants to build 300,000 affordable and social homes in 10 years Photographs (Wikimedia Commons): • David Lloyd George — Harris & Ewing, public domain • Christopher Addison — Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0 • Aneurin Bevan — Elliott & Fry; Howard Coster (1943), public domain • Winston Churchill — Central Office of Information, public domain • Harold Macmillan (1942) — Elliott & Fry, public domain • Stevenage New Town, 1956 — Ben Brooksbank, CC BY-SA 2.0 (geograph.org.uk) • Tower block collapse, Canning Town (Ronan Point, 1968) — Derek Voller, CC BY-SA 2.0 (geograph.org.uk) • Thumbnail: Aneurin Bevan (1943) by Howard Coster, public domain, colourised All other images in this video are AI-generated recreations. #britishhistory #councilhousing #documentary #history #uk #housingcrisis #socialhousing #righttobuy #aneurinbevan #nyebevan #postwarbritain #becontree #ronanpoint #haroldmacmillan #housing #generationrent #oldbritain #workingclass #ukpolitics #britain #nostalgia #ourgrandparents