Anyone move to London to work in the CS forty odd years ago?

[JacknDiane]

Did the civil service provide accommodation like hostels for people moving to work in London?
Am I imagining it?
Was there any help for someone moving from Scotland to London in the late 70s who started a job in the civil service?

My mother definitely lived in a hostel. She moved in London at 18.

Would have 1963.

DW was in the CS - Property Services Agency - in London in the 70s. Temp accommodation was provided for transferees from outside London but she seems to think it was a room in another CS's house. She thinks there was a list of CS's who would "take in lodgers".

Thank you

A bit longer than forty years ago but my Mum left a small town in Scotland to join the Inland Revenue in the late 1940s when she was 17. She went to Llandudno first for a stint and then London, where she lived in a hostel in Kensington. Going by her stories the office itself was entertainingly eccentric to work in and she was out every night partying.

They used to be able to recommend hostels. When I started in 1987 several young women in my intake lived in them. I don’t think they were civil service run then, but seemed pleasant enough - one of my friends stayed in hers for a couple of years. Most of us were renting in shared houses though. I don’t know that the equivalent of the hostels exists today.

When I joined the CS in 1989 several of my intake initially moved into hostels before clubbing together to get a house/flat share. There's a lovely nostalgia thread on a social media group for current staff and retirees at the moment about hostel memories in the 1960s and 70s.

My aunt started her working life with the CS in London in the 1960s living in a hostel. She later moved to Norwich as a newly wed when HMSO went there, as the incentive was the offer of council flat.

There used to be lots of public sector housing like this. The site I work on used to be part of a hospital that had 'nurses houses' where nurses could live while working at the hospital. Another part of our organisation is on a science park that used to have a hostel on it for people who worked at the site. I think they were generally phased out in the 1990s.

Why do you ask?

Just thinking of the difference between the and now.

Yes, I worked in the Civil Service in the 80s and lots of my friends lived in hostels, usually 4-6 to a room, although some of the better ones had two to a room.

Also as someone else mentioned, a list of people who took in lodgers.

As a senior civil servant my father was reimbursed for the rent on a flat during the late 70s. Was in the Barbican.

My sister moved to London with the CS in the 80s and ended up with a flat in the Barbican as her temporary accommodation. Talk about ideas above her station!

But it isn't though. People who have to work in London and other high cost areas, especially in essential services like NHS, emergency services, teachers, and some civil servants should have priority for subsidised and secure housing.

The problem is treating housing as a commodity instead of an essential public service.