Housing Associations have emerged over the last twenty years as major agencies for building and providing housing. In England they now own and let more homes than local authorities and their activities relate to wider social and economic policy. As not-for-profit organisations, they now represent the major alternative to the private sector in housing and are an important element in the modernisation of the welfare state. Against this background there is a growing research, academic and policy literature that examines the origins of housing associations, their finance, regulation and governance.

Morag McDermont's book is a welcome addition to this literature. Based on her Ph.D., its focus is the representative body for housing associations in England, the National Housing Federation (NHF). It draws on various sources including valuable and clearly presented material from interviews with key actors. The focus on the NHF and its predecessors involves an account starting in 1935 – some way into the history of housing associations – and is more detailed, original and challenging when it refers to the last three decades. Following introductory chapters that set out key themes and provide a rapid historical overview, the core of the book is concerned with questions about the independence of housing associations and their relationship with the state. This refers to formal regulation and relationships with central government (including tensions between charitable status and taxation) and local government, the changing legislative and financial arrangements affecting housing associations and whether they have represented a social movement. The chapters on changing arrangements since 1974 are the most interesting and provide the opportunity to present original research insights and verbatim quotes from key actors interviewed for the research. The account of the development of private finance in the 1980s confirms the view that, rather than emerging as part of the Thatcherite agenda or emerging from the Treasury, it was housing associations that persuaded others that there was scope for such innovation.

Through the discussion of private finance in the 1980s and through some other examples, the book succeeds in establishing one central thesis: that ‘the expansion of the housing association sector into the principal provider of social housing can be located in a narrative that has been created by the sector itself’. But the case for an alternative view is not examined fully enough. There is little contextual material about what was happening elsewhere in the welfare state, housing policy or council housing; there is no statistical material charting the elements contributing to the growth of associations; and there is no wider account of the shift from public housing to social housing and the residualisation of council housing. At least for this reader the possibility remains that the key drivers for change lay outside the housing association sector and that the wider political environment and adaptability of some local authorities as well as the actions of some housing associations explains the unexpected growth of the sector. The focus on the National Housing Federation (NHF) provides a strong connecting theme but may contribute to a tendency to understate the importance of local action and local politics. It would have been useful to have referred to developments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and to discuss differences in regional patterns within England. As the essential legislative and financial arrangements were the same across all of these territories, variations in the size and nature of the housing association sector at these levels might have broadened the framework for analysis and explanation. The diversity and difference within the sector is understated and the extent to which housing associations have conformed to a pattern of modernisation and to the scramble for state and private funding may be overstated. There is little sense of the numbers and types of housing associations at the beginning of the period or at the end. There are references to disagreements within the sector over how to respond to financial opportunities and to geographical and other differences of interest but there is no sustained or systematic exploration of these questions. One consequence of this is that when it comes to discussion of the independence of associations the local examples of variation or the examples of specialist and non-developing associations that might establish that all associations have not followed the same route are not evident. The thesis is not sustained by a neglect of cases that might test it more strongly.

Notwithstanding these issues, the book succeeds in moving the debate on and adding to discussion of the independence and incorporation of housing associations and can be used in conjunction with other texts that have a different focus, set a different context and use different evidence. This is a clearly presented and valuable addition to the literature and will certainly be used to build debate in the future.