Life on council estates 'improving'

Life on some of the UK's council estates is improving, a new report has claimed.

The report, conducted by the London School of Economics for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, covered 25 years on 20 estates in London, the Midlands, the North East and North West.

The report found that there had been a reduction of unemployment on the estates, while GCSE performance at estate-linked schools also improved between 1994 and 2004 at a faster rate than national results.

Housing management performance in the estates also improved, the report found, and there were fewer empty homes, better repairs services and better-kept environments.

Report author, Rebecca Tunstall, said: "Most of the estates have turned from a vicious circle of deprivation and stigma to a virtuous circle of improved popularity and easier management."

However, the report said that although most of the estates had been transformed, major policy challenges remained for the estates and housing and regeneration as a whole. It said that although gaps between the estates and other social housing had been reduced, they had not disappeared altogether.

Some of the improvements in estates were linked to wider trends, including high national employment levels and a strong housing market, which may not be sustained, the report said.

The report also said that although employment levels have risen, so has the proportion of residents who are economically inactive (not working or looking for work). It has also noted that some of the changes reflected population movements and that the lives of individual residents may not necessarily have changed for the better.

Ms Tunstall said: "A quarter of a century of progress must not be threatened by complacency or a shift of attention from these estates and others like them. The policy challenge is to sustain improvements in these estates and ensure other areas can also benefit."

Commenting on the report, Lord Richard Best, Director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: "This report shows that even problematic estates can be improved and become popular, which suggests caution in criticising council housing and recommending demolition. Ministers are already becoming interested in devolution of management to neighbourhood level and a more localised approach. They also need to balance the funding for both physical and social regeneration to ensure that the positive changes seen on many of these estates can be sustained and delivered elsewhere."

(KMcA)