The "Homes for All" council house building was a key part of Britain's post-war reconstruction. Unfortunately all of that came to an end with Thatcher's Right to Buy[0] in 1980, with long-term public assets sold off for short-term private gains (sometimes in direct exchange for votes[1]), thereby creating the country's current shortage of affordable housing.
Edit: One anecdote to illustrate - Just a few streets away from the bunker in the article, a council home was sold for £775K to someone who immediately flipped it to overseas developers for around £1.5M and moved overseas himself, and the developers then applied to tear it down and build a much larger house with an "iceberg basement" to sell for £5M[2]. Now if all of that >£4M profit went to the council to build replacement homes it might not have been so bad, but it didn't (and in this case the money didn't even stay within the country).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Buy
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homes_for_votes_scandal
[2] (Apologies for the Daily Mail link) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3281930/Ex-EastEnde...