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Mr. William Ross: The Minister is well aware of the closure threat to grounds that do not conform to the necessary health and safety regulations within a short time. Is there some way of extending that period to give clubs time to meet those safety requirements?
Mr. McFall: I am sure the hon. Gentleman agrees that all health and safety problems will not be solved overnight, but the Government are extremely sympathetic when it comes to ensuring that football grounds remain open. I cannot give any commitments from the Dispatch Box, because that is a matter for health and safety officers. However, the Government will make every effort in that regard.
If we marry the short-term solutions that are available through the Sports Council and other areas with the longer-term element--the Government could talk to the Football Trust, legislation might be enacted and lottery funding awarded--progress might be achieved. We recognise that it would be folly to allow football grounds to close, because it would be difficult to generate support for the game again. We must foster the good will that exists in Northern Ireland soccer, and the Government will do everything possible to ensure that football grounds do not close. There is no automatic cut-off date, and the Government and communities will expend much effort considering that question.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, previous attempts to secure some of the Football Trust budget for improving sports grounds in Northern Ireland have received a sympathetic, but negative, response. That is not good enough. In my meeting with my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde and the chief executive of the Football Trust, I pointed out that Northern Ireland had been left out in the past and that it was now time to act. The Government and the Football Trust were very pleased with the meeting, which we viewed as a seminal event. It was previously believed that legislation was required and that the Assembly had to be up and running before any action could be taken. Some people are optimistic about what legislation will achieve--I know that the hon. Member for East Londonderry takes a pessimistic view. However, whether optimistic or pessimistic, all want to see early action. As a result of my meeting with the Football Trust, I can confirm that action will be taken soon that may be carried through to the Assembly.
I am delighted that the trust is now keen and willing, in principle, to support and become involved in an interim scheme for Northern Ireland. As I have said, the scheme includes soccer, the Gaelic Athletic Association and rugby grounds. An important element is that the Football Trust is looking for--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord):
Order. We now come to the next debate.
Mr. John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington):
The overriding aim of this debate is to secure from the Government a recognition of the problems associated with the economic, social and environmental decline of many suburban areas and to suggest a way in which to develop a policy programme targeted at those communities. Straightforwardly, it is an unashamed attempt to influence the drafting of the White Paper on the future of urban policy, which is promised for publication later this year. I hope that that will provide an opportunity for a fundamental reappraisal of the urban agenda of central and local government.
The debate on our suburban areas has been a long while coming. Understandably, discussion of urban policy in Britain has concentrated on the dereliction and decline of our inner-city areas and the terrible social consequences for many of their residents. Any discussion of suburban areas has largely focused on their role in the relocation of inner-city populations and as dormitory towns for commuters serving the central urban core.
In the 1980s in London, however, attempts were made to broaden the debate when the Greater London council launched its community areas programme. That acknowledged that significant pockets of deprivation had grown up in suburban areas and required the special attention of central and local government. The programme allocated additional resources and enhanced policy- making powers to those communities so that local organisations throughout the public, private and voluntary sectors could work together to regenerate their areas. The abolition of the GLC by the previous Government halted the community areas programme and contributed to hindering the development of discussion of policies for suburban communities, certainly in London and possibly nationally, for nearly a decade.
By contrast, internationally, there have been several major studies of the problems of suburban areas which have stimulated a healthy debate leading to specifically designed policy initiatives. In this country, the problems and challenges of suburban areas have, in recent months, been placed back on the agenda through a combination of initiatives.
The first was this Government's recognition that several large suburban estates with high levels of unemployment, poverty, alienation and crime demand their urgent attention. The social exclusion unit, set up by the Prime Minister within No. 10, has established policy action teams to launch a strategy for neighbourhood renewal targeted at those estates. Useful lessons will be learned from that initiative, which I welcome. Nevertheless, its remit is geographically limited and although it is often targeted at sizeable estates, it is not envisaged that it will encompass a whole suburb or town or strategically cover a town centre, estates, mixed ownership housing areas and industrial estates.
The second development that highlighted suburban regeneration was the publication in February of the Joseph Rowntree Trust report "Sustainable Renewal of Suburban Areas". The report provides a valuable stimulus to the suburban debate. It confirmed that few recent studies of the suburbs have been undertaken in Britain, in contrast to international analyses. It identified the fact that some
suburbs show signs of stress, with deteriorating community facilities, declining local centres, car domination and monotone housing which does not reflect population and social change and has undermined community spirit.
The report drew up a checklist of sustainability criteria and described how some suburbs were becoming less sustainable than when they were first built. In the researchers' judgment, there was a good case for careful intervention in some suburbs by working with the local communities to try to improve facilities and transport patterns and to adapt the housing stock. The researchers argued that there was a need for an urban renaissance and for the contribution of the suburbs to be recognised and fully explored.
The study identified four themes that were regularly identified where scope for early action clearly existed--transport integration and the need to reshape local centres, improve community facilities and renew housing. In a range of recommendations, the report suggested that the Government could pilot community-based programmes in a number of suburban areas and consider how we could tackle the specific problems of suburban communities.
I welcome the fact that the coincidence of Government concerns about the deterioration of the quality of life on suburban estates and the publication of the Rowntree report has contributed to broadening the urban debate. Both initiatives reflect the experience, analysis of problems and emerging policy programme that are evident within my constituency. My area is a typical example of the suburban areas that are under stress, as highlighted in the Rowntree report, and is open to the same policy solutions recommended in it.
After the general election in May 1997, a common theme emerged from my discussions with community groups, employers and residents. People were angry about the state of our town and how it had been allowed to deteriorate. They were angry about issues ranging from the litter in our streets, the running down of our parks, the decline of our town centre and the level of crime to the standards in our schools. They were also worried for the future, especially about the prospects for our children. People were becoming increasingly frustrated that there was nobody to listen to their concerns and that, when they expressed their worries or complained to many official bodies, they appeared to be ignored.
As a result of those discussions, I felt that we could not continue to stand back and let our town decline into a suburban slum. I took the view that we must and could take action to turn that situation around. For that reason, I convened a community conference at our local theatre, to which I invited representatives from as many community organisations, firms and public bodies as I could identify--roughly about 2,500. The aim of the conference was to discuss the future of Hayes and Harlington. For each problem that our community faced, I was determined that we would identify a solution.
All who attended the conference were surprised at the large number of representatives--450--who came and actively participated. The conference was not only well attended, but genuinely representative of all sectors of our community and overwhelmingly positive. It examined the main issues that confronted our community. Our analysis described the long-term spiral of economic, social and environmental decline that had afflicted our area.
We produced evidence of the lack of stable investment in our public services under the previous Government and the policy mistakes and neglect that we had experienced at the hands of local and national decision makers.
The result of that neglect was a town with a weakened sense of community, an incoherent structure of community leadership and a lack of any sense of direction or vision. In summary, if we were a school, we would be classed as failing. We had a failing town on our hands. On the positive side, however, we acknowledged that, in the past two decades, we had survived three recessions and that, with a change of Government, we now faced a period of planned, stable investment over the next five years. In addition, the public agencies pledged to concentrate anew on Hayes and Harlington.
The community conference had awakened a new sense of community activity. We concluded that it could stimulate a new structure to give Hayes and Harlington a new start, laying new foundations for a prosperous and successful town in which we could all enjoy living and of which we could all be proud to be a part.
At that conference, subsequent conferences and what we described as brainstorming sessions, we agreed that a succinct and readable prospectus should be drawn up describing the vision for the future of our town and setting out a series of recommendations for action aimed at securing that objective. The aim was not only to describe a way forward for our community, but to agree a programme of action that we could all sign up to and implement over the coming decade.
In 1998, a further community conference was convened to launch the prospectus for consultation. The prospectus tried to address the main concerns within the community and set out the policies and ideas designed to tackle those issues and to give our town a future. It was circulated to local community groups, companies and public bodies for their comments and advice. Numerous local organisations across the public, private and community sectors signed up to support in whatever way they could the achievement of that vision for the future of our community.
Last month, I led a delegation of the chief executives of local bodies, including the chamber of trade, the police, the health authority and the local authority, to present the prospectus to No. 10, and met the head of the Prime Minister's policy unit to discuss the development of suburban policy making.
The prospectus examines the economic, social and environmental problems facing our community and sets out our solutions. A key factor in our decline has been the restructuring of our local economy. Recent structural changes in the economy have led to major losses of traditional sources of employment. There have been significant reductions in employment in, for example, the defence industry and its subsidiaries. There has been intense downsizing in the manufacturing sector. Although there has been growth in the number of jobs at Heathrow airport, even in recent years there have been significant lay-offs at airport-related firms. Those structural changes have produced a black-eye effect around Heathrow, which depicts Heathrow as a centre of heightened economic activity, which is surrounded--especially to the north and east--by an outer ring of relative deprivation. Structural changes and rapid technological advances are forecast to
continue and the future of Hayes and Harlington may ultimately depend on how we can respond and adapt to such changes.
Hayes town centre has suffered particularly from the consequences of economic decline and a reduction in residents' spending power over the past two decades. The development of out-of-town retail parks and supermarkets, which was given permission to go ahead by the previous Government, has had a severe detrimental effect on the town. Those developments have drawn people away from the town centre in large numbers. Our task now is to develop the town in a way to enable it to survive alongside the out-of-town parks.
We believe that, if the regeneration of our town is to be successful, we need to bring together a new structure and co-ordinate new initiatives that build on the current successes and avoid present failures. A central aim, therefore, is to build on existing partnerships, notably our single regeneration budget partnership, and those with the Hillingdon chamber of commerce and the West London training and enterprise council, to launch a new economic development forum to promote the growth of economic prosperity in our area. The forum would promote and support initiatives to tackle three key drivers of local economic regeneration. These are business development and competitiveness, developing our skills base and improving the environment and infrastructure to attract inward investment.
Education is seen throughout the community as a key ingredient for the future success of our local economy and for improving the life chances of local people of all ages. We have identified the central questions to be addressed if we are to provide a high-quality education service in Hayes and Harlington. They include the supply of pre-school, school and college places. That has been greatly aided by new Government initiatives. A new school is being built in Hayes and Harlington, as is a new extension to our local TEC college and the first Sikh college in the country.
We have also identified the need to raise standards of attainment at local schools and to retain high-calibre staff, teachers and governors. We have a broad range of very high-quality, committed head teachers and teachers, and we need to retain them within the area. We need more support for parents and pupils out of school. We agree that we need to strengthen local partnerships between schools and business. We need also to develop facilities for lifelong learning. Again, that is greatly assisted by current Government policy.
As local people gain the skills to enter and progress within the local jobs market, it is crucial that we retain them as residents within the area. Too often, an increase in income in Hayes and Harlington has resulted in families moving away. Those residents move away to secure a safer, cleaner and healthier environment in which to raise their families. Our aim, therefore, must be to transform the quality of our local environment so that they remain within the area.
One of the issues is crime. To make our community safer, the community, the council and the police are already working together to tackle crime in Hayes. Consultation on our new community safety plan for the area has recently been completed. The plan highlights the role of partnership between the police, the community via a local sector working group and neighbourhood watch
schemes in enhancing safety and tackling issues such as security by design, including street lighting and the use of closed-circuit television; anti-social behaviour and disorder; youth offending; racial harassment and domestic violence; and, unfortunately, drug and alcohol abuse.
We aim to promote a healthier environment and life style in our community, and our prospectus has kick-started action on a number of issues, including plans and consultation to establish a new community hospital in Hayes after the closure and sell-off, under the previous Government, of our two community hospitals. We want to improve the facilities for doctors' surgeries in Hayes and Harlington. We already have two new health centres on the stocks. We want to promote healthy living and increased awareness of conditions that, unfortunately, are increasing in prevalence within the area, such as diabetes and asthma. We want to address the environmental issues that affect health locally--for example, pollution and asthma.
One of the hardest challenges for us is how we can restore the quality of our green environment. Local residents can chart the transformation of Hayes from an industrious town surrounded by villages separated by open fields and market gardens into an urban sprawl. Its open fields were used for gravel pits and rubbish dumps, and its Edwardian parks, gardens and municipal buildings were allowed to fall into dereliction, particularly over the past 20 years.
This historical decline is reflected in the number of key environmental issues that have become self-evident concerns for local residents. These include--they reflect many urban areas such as Hayes and Harlington--street cleanliness and the quality of our built environment, the loss and dereliction of our open spaces and parks and their inaccessibility for social and cultural activity, the protection of local wildlife, air pollution arising from the confluence of the airport and the M4 and M25 motorways and the heavily congested local road network, the lack of adequate recycling facilities and a strategy for minimising and recycling waste.
It has become clear that there is a need for a comprehensive programme to include the quality of the environment in which we live. That is reflected in many suburban areas. That should start with some basic improvements in local environmental services and facilities, leading on to long-term and more ambitious environmental regeneration projects.
Key components of our environmental programme are, first, providing good-quality affordable homes by new build and refurbishment and experimentation in the provision of homes by, for example, converting offices and derelict shops; secondly, enhancing our street environment by tackling litter and fly-tipping and involving residents in the assessment of their own street, architecturally and environmentally, as well as involving them in discussions about improvements; thirdly, reclaiming our parks and open spaces from dereliction and vandalism; fourthly, creating a biodiversity plan for the area, protecting our local wildlife; and, fifthly, implementing a sustainable transport and energy plan which is aimed at reducing air pollution.
The community conference process has identified a weakened sense of community within Hayes and Harlington as one of the key issues to be addressed. There is a general perception that, over recent years, there has
been a decline in the organisation of and participation in community and cultural activities. This has led to feelings of isolation and exclusion and a breakdown in many of the networks of support which traditionally existed in our area. The problems that community organisations face in our community include a lack of volunteers, especially people who will take on a leadership role, a lack of resources, a lack of a comprehensive network between groups and a lack of acknowledgement of their valuable contribution to the community.
Although there is a wide range of local community organisations, there is an obvious need to strengthen their ability to act more effectively in serving their communities of interest. There is a need also to ensure that the community organisations in our area come together regularly and are linked to the networks of support in the rest of the borough. This is all about capacity building within our community, and it needs assistance. In particular, it needs assistance through fundraising and the provision of the professional resources to ensure that grant applications are successful.
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