Rural Settlement Policies and Local Authority Housing: Observations from a Case-Study of South Hams, Devon

Settlement planning and council housing development and management are functions of different departments and, at least partly, of different tiers within local government; and there have been few attempts to harmonise the aims of these interrelated functions. Research has also tended to ignore the links between settlement policies and local authority housing. This paper, drawing on evidence from a case study in South Devon, investigates three of these relationships: the distribution of local authority housing stock and completions, applicants' preferences for rehousing, and housing management procedures and allocations with respect to different tiers in the settlement hierarchy.