Council housing has seen a notable resurgence over the past decade in a shift that marks a welcome change after decades of decline in publicly owned housing across the UK. This revival, albeit modest, is likely to play an increasingly important role as the Labour government seeks to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years. 

And, as Labour promises to boost social housing delivery, exemplars of good design become ever more important in demonstrating how to build well.

The new wave of council housing is seeking not just to address the housing crisis, but to rehabilitate a typology that has long been maligned by much of the media as either poorly designed or the type of housing that the aspirational should avoid. Satish Jassal Architect’s Rowan Court development, located at the edge of an existing council estate in Seven Sisters, north-east London, offers a model of how to rewrite this narrative, delivering council housing that elevates not just its inhabitants, but its entire context.

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