A policy that has revolutionised the way hundreds of troubled neighbourhoods are managed, and has raised £14bn of extra money for regeneration, celebrates its twentieth anniversary today.

The stock transfer programme has seen 1.1 million council homes switched to independent housing association management since 1988. The policy has been widely praised for modernising hundreds of thousands of homes and transforming the fortunes of crime-ridden estates across the country.

In one case a neighbourhood in Wiltshire - dubbed 'murder mile' by local residents after gaining a reputation for violence and crime - underwent major regeneration, and is now unrecognisable from the run down area it was just a decade ago. Earlier this year it won a prestigious design at a national housing awards ceremony.

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The first transfer of council homes to an independent, not-for-profit landlord took place in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, 20 years ago tomorrow - when homes were transferred from Chiltern District Council to Chiltern Hundreds housing association.

Since then 2.3m people have seen their local authority homes switched to housing association management.

Chair of Selwood Housing and resident of Studley Green John Alford said: "This development isn't just bricks and mortar - the community owns it. People want to live here, they look after their homes, the scrap cars have gone and crime has plummeted."

The main driving force behind stock transfers in recent years has been the need for councils to meet the Government's Decent Homes Standard by 2010 - which sets targets for modernising housing.

(CD/JM)