Local authorities are getting back into the housebuilding business. But this time it’s different.

In the decades either side of the Second World War, local authorities were prolific builders of council housing. Today they are again building council houses, and this has been boosted, for some, by the recent removal of the HRA cap.

But that isn’t why local authorities have been setting up wholly-owned housebuilding companies. This fashion pre-dates the HRA cap removal.

Different authorities have different motivations. For some it is political. Political motivations vary but an increasingly common one is - we hate developers, and housing associations are just as bad, so we’re going to do it ourselves.

The political fallout from some high-profile estate regeneration projects, or proposed public private joint ventures like the Haringey Development Vehicle, have underpinned this reluctance to deal with developers. In some places the development industry is perilously close to having lost its public ”licence to operate”.