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The council house is a figure of public housing found in the United Kingdom. Council houses were built and operated by limited councils for the advantage of the local population. As of 2005, around 20 per cent of the country's housing stock is owned by local councils or by housing associations. The major council estate in the country is Becontree, Dagenham, with a population of over 100,000. Building started in the 1920s and took almost 20 years to finish. The Republic of Ireland has a parallel public housing system, Local Authority Accommodation.

Council housing was normally typified by houses with generously sized rooms, mainly those built in the 1970s after the Parker Morris standards were introduced. However they also tended to be dully designed, and rigid council rules frequently forbade tenants "personalizing" their houses. Council tenants also faced troubles of mobility, finding it tough to move from one property to an extra as their families grew or shrank, or to seek work. Despite the building there was a steady demand for housing, and 'waiting lists' are maintained with favorite being given to those in greatest need.

Social strategy economists, such as Culyer and Barr, have been serious of the role that council housing plays in attempts to aid the poor. One large criticism is that it hurts labor mobility with its system of allocating housing to those in the limited area. Working-class people thus face a discouragement for moving across borough lines, when they would be more down the waiting list for council housing in the new districts. When Britain witnessed gathering immigration after the Second World War, new immigrants could not originally live in council houses and this led to racial segregation in housing. This has improved over time; most huge cities have council estates with large Asian and Black communities. The partition remains most marked in Dewsbury and Bradford, which both have huge Asian communities that remain concentrated outside the council estates.

Another criticism is that the system favors those who already safe tenancy, even after they are no longer in positions of dire need. The subsidized rent encourages over expenditure by council tenants of housing space. Meanwhile, those who are on the waiting list are often in much enhanced need of this welfare, yet they cannot have it; once a council house has been granted to a tenant, they cannot be ejected except for anti-social behavior or serious breach of the rental conditions, such as rent arrears.