Jenny Rossiter is the author of Nobler and better things: Octavia Hill's life and work
A hand up rather than a hand out: She discouraged indiscriminate alms giving and treated all people with dignity. I agree that she failed to see the importance of local government's role in the provision of housing.
State involvement: Strangely, she had no problem with state involvement in the provision of open space for all, but she saw no role for government in providing housing.
Ethical investment: She did enable individuals to invest directly into providing decent housing for poor families. A sort of ethical investment in housing. Is this something that could be explored today?
What is important are the principles behind her approach: Human scale, personal contact with tenants and seeing housing as more than bricks and mortar. She was never going to be able to scale-up to respond to the appalling housing conditions and levels of poverty that prevailed. But her approach to housing management, social care, unemployment, open spaces, and the environment did provide some useful examples of what could be done, albeit on a small scale.
Tenant participation: She was perhaps one of the first to encourage tenant participation! Any cash surpluses that were generated on her houses (after investors had been paid their 5% return) were used to impove conditions. Tenants were asked how the money should best be spent.
Education: Octavia Hill was also very keen on providing educational opportunities for her tenants, especially for women. She was responsible for setting up vocational training as basic education classes.
Reena Mukherji is director of community charity the Octavia Foundation
Octavia Hill believed in personal contact and visiting her tenants: Arguably, this is what is needed today, so that we can build up personal relationships, create a sense of community and combat social isolation.
The small scale, individualistic approach works really well: No two people, or their experiences are the same. By providing an individualistic service and approach we can help build lasting solutions. Much of this thinking has been taken up by the current government, for example the approach with so called troubled families.
Octavia Hill was a pioneer of women in housing: But I wonder if she would think that the glass ceiling exists today for women in the housing profession and what she might have done to challenge this?
Sandra Skeete is executive director of housing at Peabody
Lasting lessons: Good housing management is underpinned by regular contact with residents and well-trained staff who have clear standards to deliver on.
Gillian Darley is the author of the biography 'Octavia Hill: A life'
Do not follow blindly: Speaking at an official celebration of her achievements in 1898, she hoped that her colleagues would not "follow blindly" in her footsteps. "New circumstances require various efforts, and it is the spirit, not the dead form that should be perpetuated."
Ben Cowell is deputy director for external affairs at the National Trust
Open spaces: Octavia Hill was a campaigner for a cause, and made a very strong argument about the importance of retaining open spaces in an undeveloped state in order to enhance the lives of city dwellers. But I'm sure she would have recognised the need to make balanced decisions in the interests of the common good.
Housing need: There ought to be ways of increasing the supply of housing without encroaching too heavily on well-used open spaces. We may need to increase efforts to tackle the problem of empty houses, for example. We may also need more debate about the kind of housing that we will need in the future – it may or may not match our present-day ideas.
Colin Wiles is a housing and planning consultant
She was the product of a different age: A middle-class do-gooder who believed in the self-help principles of Samuel Smiles. She opposed subsidised council housing because it would create dependency, something that chimes with Ian Duncan Smith and most in the Conservative party. She had an enormous influence on housing management – but many would now see her methods as paternalistic and controlling.
Octavia Hill proposed a green belt around London in 1875: A move that would have been disastrous for the future prosperity, housing and health of the capital (Cricklewood would now be in the countryside if she'd had her way.) Let's also not forget that she helped to found the National Trust, a body that is now one of the key blockages to sensible planning and housing policies in this country. She dealt with the small scale and the personal – I doubt she would have been sympathetic to the bigger picture of housing need and supply.
David Wardle is owner of learning4housing
Her views were broadly 'Christian socialist': Although she was a severe opponent of any state intervention into housing. On one hand she was a pioneer, with progressive views about improving living conditions for working class families. However, I think that this needs to be looked at within the context of her extreme paternalistic approaches to housing management, many of which have continued and become established practice within the housing profession. Clearly, Hill was of her time, and we cannot transpose her actions into the present and make judgements on this basis, but there are certainly different aspects of her legacy, not all of which are positive.