Council housing: how Hackney has raised the game

Not everyone will be fans, but by cross-subsidising, talking to residents and valuing good design, the east London borough is investing in some of the best council housing ever built

In the 1990s, in a special kind of civic carnival, council-owned tower blocks were garlanded with the banners of demolition contractors. Explosives were set. Crowds would then gather at a hopefully safe distance. There was anticipation, as before a firework display, until – kerplunk! – the former homes of hundreds descended like stumpy ballerinas into spreading skirts of dust. As the received wisdom was that tower blocks were a Bad Thing, there was little inhibition about celebrating their destruction.

Times change. The finishing touches are currently being applied to two blocks, 20 and 16 storeys high, commissioned by the London borough of Hackney, which was once an enthusiastic detonator of its own high-rise housing stock. There is a twist: the new towers contain flats for private sale, at prices from £600,000 to £2.95m, in order to fund the rebuilding of lower blocks of homes for council tenants. The building type considered intolerable for the latter now attracts premium prices for private buyers.

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