| AdminHistory | The Scottish Office department responsible for New Town Development Corporations was the Industry Department for Scotland, within which the New Towns Branch, as part of the Scottish Development Agency (SDA), dealt with the Corporations on an ongoing basis. The New Towns branch of the SDA had three basic functions:
(1) To develop policy and ensure Corporations acted in a manner compatible with Government policy, and to oversee their general operations were effected in accordance with the provisions of the New Towns (Scotland) Act 1968.
(2) To service Development Corporation's finance requirements.
(3) To monitor Corporation performance, and to make information available to the Government to enable Ministers to discharge their public accountability for New Towns.
The most direct control that was exerted over the Development Corporations was through the appointment of members to the Board but, as part of its oversight of the housing function of the New Town Corporations, the Industry Department for Scotland also commissioned a number of reports from independent management consultants, sought a variety of statistical information from Development Corporations, and posed a number of questions over the management of housing stock and tenants.
In the 1980s the emphasis on building houses in New Towns was reduced, and the Corporations began, instead, to outlay considerable resources on housing management. To relieve this pressure the Scottish Office ordered New Towns to investigate methods of tenure diversification, resulting in many of the tenant participation schemes of the 1980s. The functions of the housing department were also considerably affected by the "Right to Buy" legislation of the early 1980s, which entitled tenants to discounts on the purchasing of council houses. |