Satire ahead of the curve: "Night Terrors" and council house ownership

By Danny Nicol
University of Westminster

In “Night Terrors” (2011) the Doctor and companions Amy and Rory encounter landlord Purcell who, to Rory’s astonishment, owns the council block in which this adventure takes place.  Purcell proves no model landlord.  The accommodation is run-down and he menaces tenants for rent with the help of his large dog Bernard.  Purcell’s smug and solitary self-centredness contrasts with the troubled but less selfish family life of the story’s sympathetic characters – Alex, Claire and their troubled little boy George.  At one point, Purcell sinks agreeably into his own floor - although this come-uppance proves temporary.

 

Not as nice as he looks: Landlord Purcell and Bernard

In Britain, accommodation through council houses and flats (apartments) is a means of sheltering the less-well-off from the harshness of the free market.  In the 1980s, however, the Thatcher government started to sell off these properties to tenants at subsidised prices.  This policy was presented as liberating the individual.   Tenants could enjoy the dream of home ownership and bequeath their properties to their children.  Many years later a study by Inside Housing (14 August 2015) has made some astonishing revelations about the long-term effects of this policy.  There has been a concentration of ownership in favour of the well-to-do.  Some 40 per cent of homes originally sold under the scheme are now let out by private landlords.  Furthermore these landlords charge up to seven times the average social rent for the properties.  As a result there has been a huge rise in evictions for rent arrears. 

 

Yet Doctor Who was satirising this state of affairs several years before this study appeared: Purcell’s ownership of the entire block gave the lie to the idea that the council house sell-off would benefit the individual tenant.  It is admirable how Doctor Who transmitted the sense of unease about the “liberation” of council accommodation well before the impact of the policy had been formally documented and the facts had fully come to light.

A sinking property market: Purcell gets sucked in