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The loss of council housing is creating a rural dystopia
Decades of right to buy have eroded the social balance of our countryside — and now holiday lets and second home owners from the cities are compounding the crisis, writes DAVE BANGS
Houses on St Anne's council estate in Bristol, dating from the 1920's, which now has a mixture of council and privately owned homes

IT IS the council housing that can leave the strongest impression in the villages, small towns and hamlets of our countryside.

Still today, it is the well-built council family houses, mostly semis or small terraces, with their generous garden and community spaces, often paying homage in their design to local building traditions, that seem most practical and homely.

With their old privet hedges, mini-greens and trees often older than the houses, they are as much part of our countryside as old churches, pubs and timber-framed cottages.

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