Council house looks like council house

[OdiesMum]

Why do councils insist on making their properties look like council properties?
I’m referring to a council estate in my city. It’s a terrible estate, bad reputation, horrible place to live (I used to live there). Anyway they pulled down the high rise flats and the crappy 70s council houses on the main road going through the estate and started building new houses. They looked lovely, modern new builds, you would never have known they were council ... really improved the look of the area. Once they were finished guess what the council did? They stuck bright blue tacky cladding all down the sides of them that just screamed out “council”. Ruined the look immediately. Why do they do this? Why put crappy cladding all over everything?? Why do they insist on council properties LOOKING like council properties?

@violetmartini

Council tenant here, living in a street of mainly privately owned homes bought from the council years ago. All of us council tenants have had our steps and windows painted bright red without any say in the matter, basically branding us so people know which are the council houses!

What like that masonry paint stuff? Don’t they ask first? That would annoy me. Can you just go over it with a more muted colour?

Round us (SW London) they’ve just pulled down some ugly council brutalist high rises and low rises and replaced them with, guess what... almost identical buildings just built in brick and/or glass. But they’re still so ugly! I couldn’t believe it! They’re almost the same just with slightly different (but still very ugly) materials. I don’t think we’ve learnt anything from the 60/70s in terms of building beautiful things that people won’t want to tear down in 40 years. In cities especially the number of huge concrete and glass blocks that will date in the same way the ones from the 60/70s did is crazy, how can no one in planning see the similarities? And it’s not that all high rises have to be ugly - there’s a couple of red brick, slightly more “industrial docks warehouse” style ones near us that are 15+ storeys and still quite nice.

I think all the cheap new build housing estates are similar, just not as bad. But council houses from previous decades are much better, I lived in an ex council flat for a while and it was so well designed, think it was 1960s and low rise. I also like the 50s houses, although when you have a lot of them together it’s obvious they’re council, but they’re still nice houses.

It's easy to spot a Council house, they all have a clapped out Ford Cortina in the front garden

Sorry, what?

@SirGawain

It's easy to spot a Council house, they all have a clapped out Ford Cortina in the front garden

I see a clapped out 1970s comedian has turned up.

My house is privately owned but it still looks like a 1930s council house, which is what it is or was, and I'm happy with it that way.

I grew up on a council estate, in fact it was the biggest in the country when I was born all the houses are mostly bought from the council and private now but its a beautiful area and now very expensive to live in.

They didnt knock down the houses, they are still the exact same ones that where always there so no idea what you mean by 'council looking' because they sell for hundreds of thousands to the type of people who have never lived in a 'council house' in their lives easily lol.

I personally think that it is much better design than the 1960s mock Tudor houses at the other end of the village.

I said the same to dh in the week and he called me a snob! But yes why do they have to look unattractive?. Is it a way of keeping people in their place and reminding them it’s social housing?. It doesn’t make sense to me to have lovely houses one side of the street and quite unattractive houses on the other. It hardly creates a sense of community does it?.

Yes, our house has the cheapo council doors & crap windows, but it’s our home. Lots of flowers in the front garden & a neat hedge. There’s always a way to make your home more appealing, council or not.

Lots of flat owners have crap coloured facades of plastic that they’re being charged an arm & a leg to change after Grenfell. Tens of thousands of pounds.

Do they scream council too? Would you have the balls to tell them?

But thank you for picking us council tenants out & pointing at us on your travels.

You’re so kind.

This varies a lot between Councils some Councils are extremely good at insisting affordable housing including Council Housing is not of any lesser quality and should be indistinguishable at street level from it's neighbours.

There are local elections today - its one of many things your local Councillors have a say in!

@ElphabaTWitch

Council houses here look better than privately owned. All have new rough casting and new roofs. The insides were done a while back through some council home improvement scheme. They are better looked after with tax money than privately owned homes where owners scrimp and scrape if they are lucky enough to afford such things.

Which council/ local authority maintains housing stock with tax money? Normally they just use the rent for repairs or maintenance.

I’ve just moved in to a HA new build and it has a double driveway, a newly laid patio, newly laid turf, big windows that let in lots of light, shrubs and bushes planted on the grass verges of all drives too.
Inside it has a lovely kitchen that is no different to the privately bought homes across the road.
It’s all a bit white and lacking in personality inside but I am loving living here and it doesn’t feel cheap at all.
We have large double patio doors that open on to the garden from the living room and built in storage both up and down stairs, 2 big double bedrooms and a good size single. A large family bathroom and an extra toilet downstairs. Lots of cupboards in the kitchen which is also big enough to hold a dining table and chairs.
We have a long wide hallway and a lovely open staircase.
It doesn’t feel small or cheap. Also no cladding on the outside, it’s just the same brick build as the privately owned homes and the same windows and doors too.

I think some councils like to try to shame people in need, making them feel marked out. Know our place. Not a council house but I was claiming housing benefit in a private rented flat. There's a communal entrance shared with neighbouring flats. The council insist on sending a letter once a month giving that month's housing benefit amount. It comes in a very noticeable obvious envelope. Big bright green stripes and do not redirect across it. I asked for it to stop or for online or email notification and was told they had to send the letters by post. It's a waste of paper as well as embarrassing.

That sort of cladding is cheap.

In my area it goes up on social housing, private student accommodation blocks, the Travelodge, the Premier Inn, etc etc.

Meanwhile, the private 'luxury' flats shooting up are covered in 'brick slips' (basically cladding that looks like bricks - may be slices of actual brick, applied in big panels). Also pretty shoddy.

My Grandparents used to live in a council house and I agree with you, OP, at least back then 70’s/80’s they all looked the same. Same front doors and only permitted certain colours (I think).

The same estate is still there but sadly run down but the houses themselves, wonderfully, sturdy built semi detached houses! I would far more prefer one to the newish semi I live in today. My Grandparents had a great plot with room for a car on the drive. Many didn’t. Also two toilets, an ‘outhouse’ and a great garden.

There are affordable homes or are they HA properties being built within new build estates, is it called ‘pepper potting’ having a mixture of those who have bought and those who rent? Only a phrase I’ve heard from a police friend.

@SirGawain

It's easy to spot a Council house, they all have a clapped out Ford Cortina in the front garden

Hilarious

Not RTFT, but what is really annoying is when housing estates have to have a % of "affordable" housing and such housing has to look cheap for some reason.

Our last house was a new build and the houses were made to look nice. Except when I was coming home on the train one day and I saw another part of the estate from the train and the houses looked really different and plain. I went out for a walk to look, and realised they were the "affordable" bit. So insulting.

Not sure why they’d put cladding but surely there must be a benefit? Ie an extra course of damp proofing?

At the end of the day, the more money spent on a property, the more aesthetically pleasing it will be (well most of the time) as you can chose nicer bricks, fixtures, fittings etc... private housing is made to looker more appealing because they need to sell them so they need to make them look as nice as possible. Councils don’t....

As a pp points out, you can also tell which are the housing association houses compared to private houses in new estates because they are more basic, but then if someone is paying £400k for a 4 bed luxury detached house then of course it’s going to look ‘nicer’.

I also agree with OP in that generally you can tell whether you’re in a council estate or not, simply by the aesthetics of the houses.

I grew up in a council estate and loved it. I remember my sister always saying that the room dimensions inside are often better than the new build private houses and I’d say that’s true.

You couldn't tell which were council on our estate until they started cladding them all about 7 years ago. It has made the house much warmer though

Our HA here made their houses distinctive from others when they took them over from council.
I don't get why the separation.

Not RTFT, but what is really annoying is when housing estates have to have a % of "affordable" housing and such housing has to look cheap for some reason.

I presume it's 'Goldilocks' pricing on the part of the developers. They could have advertised 'Houses for sale FROM ££', but then, once people turn up, they show them the ones that look much nicer and maybe have better features - and just so happen to cost £££ - to encourage them to buy the dearer ones instead, if they actually have the financial ability to do so. The last thing they would want is for somebody who could have afforded one of the 'normal' premium ones to go for an 'affordable' one.

I suppose it's a bit like the Aldi effect (and most supermarket own-brands, to be fair) - so many people fail to see any real difference between them and the branded versions as 3+ times the price, loads of us see no reason at all to buy the much more expensive ones.

To be quite honest, I don't really care that my HA property and its surrounding properties scream 'council house'; I'm just really grateful to have somewhere secure for my daughters to grow up in.

We have a mix of privately owned houses and HA ones here. When new, they look pretty similar, except that the HA ones are terraced, although some of the private ones are too.

Unfortunately, it’s very obvious which is which now, a few years later, because the ones with the overflowing bins, bikes, scooters, chairs and stuff in the front gardens and uncared for gardens, are not the privately owned ones. It’s only a few, but it is apparent.

I also wonder if some councils genuinely think they are making the 'best' choices on behalf of their tenants; it's just that much of what councils tend to believe is better is frequently at cross-purposes with what most of us ordinary folk would value and prioritise??!

Their thinking processes are also sometimes quite 'pie in the sky' (they would say 'blue sky'!) as well - such as the idea that, if you don't provide drives/adequate parking, everybody will suddenly be able to manage without any cars, rather than just having to clog up unsuitable spaces and effectively render residential roads one-way streets. It's almost as if they think that many people currently have no need at all for a car, but the house they buy happens to have a drive, so they figure they'd better buy something pretty to keep on it

@SoMuchForSummerLove

I don't know what 'looking like a council house' means exactly, but I think the trend for brightly coloured panels all over buildings (commercial and domestic) should be drawing to a close shortly.

Hideous gaudy colours, external stairwells and doorways, useless playgrounds slapped in the middle etc.

I think we all know the kind of thing. They're horrible to look at, let alone have to live in.