Stock transfer is a continuing success

Housing associations who inherited council housing have been ‘highly successful’ in delivering improvements to tenants, new research by the Joseph Rowntree Association has found. More than one million tenants have switched from local authority to housing association tenancies during the 20 years stock transfers have taken place and the research found that housing associations typically upgraded estates to standards ‘appreciably higher’ than originally promised – almost half implemented upgrades to standards much higher than the English decent homes standards or Scottish or Welsh equivalent, while generating procurement and other efficiency savings which were then ploughed back into unplanned works such as environmental improvements.