LAUSR

account only covers general trends and there is little on detailed issues, such as the outsourcing of housing management through contracts that has sometimes resulted in difficulties of accountability to tenants, as evidenced in the Grenfell Tower fire, for example. Although the book was written and published before this catastrophic event, the trends that led up to it are barely covered here. There is also little discussion of the spread of digital technologies and the impact this is having on housing management practices. The lack of a current perspective is no doubt hindered by the scarcity of recent research on the details of housing management, mirroring the lack of policy interest in this area (in England at least) until the very recent past. The book is focused on Britain and is unlikely to be of much relevance to readers from other countries. But even within Britain, the coverage is quite uneven with the major focus being on England and Scotland and little reference to Northern Ireland or Wales. Regrettably, the book’s audience may also be limited by the aforementioned closure of many of the courses that trained housing managers in the past. Despite these drawbacks, this is a useful book which should be of interest to people working in social housing in Britain and may enable them to put distance between themselves and the immediate task they are confronted with, and reflect on how things got to be this way, and how they might be different in the future.