I suspect the problem here is that local councils no longer have the capability or skills to deliver council housing. Decades of cutbacks on services and outsourcing to private companies has created a hollowed out council capability. Thus, the only way pretty much anything can be built is by outsourcing to private developers. The loss of skills in local authorities is evident in the many dramatic financial disasters and scandals, frauds etc that one can read about every week in Private Eye. Local councils are a destination for nieve idealists, and ambitious crooks - a mix that leads to spectacular failure. And private developers answer to shareholders not the community, and will see their duty as profit maximisation every time. This adds incentives to corruption in councils too. Put bluntly, one shouldn't trust local councillors to organise and deliver anything much more complicated than bins. Well, that's what I think may be happening, but there may well be other factors.
