Politics, policy and rural-urban house-building divergence, England 1945–1973

Investigations into social housing construction pre-1974 point to a national Conservative Party predilection to ‘weaponize’ urban annexations, greenbelts and overspill developments to concentrate public housing in cities, with rural territories given over to owner-occupation. This paper challenges the potency of this viewpoint, arguing that these ‘structural fixes’ fall short in accounting for increased rural-urban social segregation. By exploring 1945–1973 construction rates for all councils outside Greater London, it is shown that under both Conservative and Labour administrations, building permissions, urban prioritizations and the favouring of non-traditional building materials and methods were sufficient to produce sharp divisions between rural and urban construction. Despite similar magnitudes of rural-urban housing discomfort, national policies fostered a countryside deficient in social housing. That this outcome was deliberate is highlighted by the changing geography of new-build as national emphases shifted over time, with a marked tendency to thwart rather than encourage rural social building.