Memorandum by Shelter (UWP 35)
THE PROPOSED URBAN WHITE PAPER
Shelter welcomes the opportunity to respond
to the Select Committee on the matter of the Urban White Paper.
Urban areas contain the majority of the nation's
population. The priority must be to ensure our urban areas contain
inclusive, mixed and safe communities. Providing decent housing
for all will be a key issue for an urban renaissance. How we achieve
this objective is all important.
In 1998-99, Shelter provided advice and assistance
to over 113,000 households in England. Shelter's network of advice
centres and specialist projects cover urban areas throughout the
country. This experience gives us a clear perspective on the nature
and level of housing need in urban areas. Urban housing, provided
in inclusive communities, must meet the needs of homeless people
and those living in poor housing conditions. It is vital that
it does not only meet the demands of the market.
The report of the Urban Task Force provides
a comprehensive blueprint for a housing led urban renaissance,
while recognising that there will be an additional need to ensure
the sustainability of that renaissance by funding other services.
This should form the basis of the Urban White Paper and its aims
and objectives.
There are many recommendations in the Urban
Task Force report that should be prioritised and acted on at an
early stage. We have indicated those recommendations we believe
would most actively support a policy of developing mixed communities,
and of providing the opportunities for ensuring our urban areas
meet the needs of all who live there.
THE NEED
FOR AN
URBAN WHITE
PAPER
The forthcoming publication of the Urban White
Paper provides an opportunity for government to bring together
policies relevant to urban areas and to seek greater integration
of those policy responses. It must reach across government departments
and seek to ensure that employment, education, health and transport
opportunities are co-ordinated to create a safe environment. In
addition, it must complement the proposals contained within the
Rural White Paper, due to be published at the same time.
Investment in housing is essential in providing
for the regeneration and development of inclusive and sustainable
communities. Such investment must however, be integrated with
other investment to ensure that neighbourhoods are safe, the schools
are good and successful, and that there is good access to shops,
transport, health and community services. These integrated resources
need to mesh with other policy areas to ensure that:
— local residents are empowered and
can direct resources;
— people living in areas of low demand
housing can secure the resources to help put right the issues
and problems facing their area; and
— new housing within mixed tenure estates
is adequately planned for and delivered.
Ensuring this process occurs requires a clear
commitment from central, regional and local government bodies
to be major players in the process of regenerating and improving
our urban areas. The new Regional Development Agencies, and in
London the London Assembly and Mayor's office, will need to be
involved in this process to ensure urban areas offer opportunities
for all of their population. Indeed, the Spatial Development Strategy
for London, to be overseen by the Mayor and the Assembly, will
focus on the housing requirements for London, including how the
need for affordable homes will be met.
Shelter supports the Urban Task Force recommendation:
"Publish an ambitious Urban White Paper,
which addresses economic, social and environmental policy requirements,
tying in all relevant government departments and institutions".
MIXED AND
INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES
Our urban areas must consist of mixed communities.
These would include mixed tenure housing, with mixed income households
living side by side. Shelter wholeheartedly supports the statement
of the Urban Task Force that the objective should be to ensure
that "a visitor to an urban neighbourhood is unable to tell
the difference between social and market housing". We believe
this objective should be at the heart of the urban renaissance,
and should inform the principles underlying the Urban White Paper.
A recent DEMOS report (Living Together, DEMOS,
1999) showed that most people were happy living in areas where
market housing for sale and social rented housing were mixed at
the level of the individual property. Mixing house types, sizes
and tenures in this way helps to avoid the conditions which give
rise to problematic and stigmatised areas of housing.
The residualisation of social housing in recent
years has led to the concentration poverty and those who are socially
excluded. Although social housing does effectively concentrate
pockets of deprivation, this is the result of the residualisation
of the sector, increasing the rationing of housing to people in
need, not a fault of the tenure itself.
There is a need to recognise the important role
social housing has played, and will continue to play, in housing
those who cannot afford market rents or to buy their own property.
The Urban Task Force report recognises that many social housing
estates have a strong sense of community. Social housing provides
a vehicle for developing communities through tenant participation
and other measures. It is this sense of community and purpose
that must be harnessed, to enable people to take decisions about
their neighbourhoods.
Shelter supports the Urban Task Force's recommendation:
"Pilot different models of neighbourhood
management which give people a stake in the decision-making process,
relaxing regulations and guidelines to make it easier to establish
devolved arrangements".
LOW DEMAND
AND DIFFICULT-TO-LET
HOUSING
There has been much concern expressed that social
housing has become difficult to let to new tenants and that estates
are lying empty. Shelter recently published a report which looked
at this phenomenon (No excuse not to build, Mark Kleinman
et al, Shelter, 1999). The report found that the proportion
of the social housing stock classified as difficult-to-let is
relatively high at over 8 per cent, and that this problem has
become worse in recent years. The rates of difficult to let properties
are higher in the Midlands and Northern regions and lower in the
South. The report also found that difficult to let housing covers
all tenures not just social housing.
There are four main reasons factors leading
to housing stock becoming difficult to let:
Physical upgrading and changes in management
practice can alleviate some of these identified problems. There
remains however, a need to make properties and neighbourhoods
more desirable.
The problems are at their most intractable when
property is difficult to let because of excess supply. When a
whole area has become difficult-to-let, the main causal issue
is usually out-migration, while deprivation and social exclusion
can be increased. The difficulty to let in high demand areas does
not co-exist with deprivation in the same way as in low demand
areas.
Solutions to the issue should therefore encompass
broad based area regeneration strategies which include improving
economic and educational opportunities and promoting community
development and participation.
The Urban White Paper must recognise the comprehensive
approach required to tackling issues of social exclusion and low
demand estates, and that this represents a challenge for the whole
of government and local agencies. The new pathfinder strategies,
led by local authorities and involving local communities must
be supported by concerted action at the regional and national
level to ensure they are successful in the longer term.
Shelter supports the Urban Task Force recommendation:
"Strengthen the New Commitment to Regeneration
programme by combining government departments' spending powers
to deliver longer term funding commitments for local authorities
and their partners. Central government should be a signatory to
local strategies where they accord with national and regional
policy objectives".
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
OF URBAN
RENAISSANCE
Housing investment is key to ensuring the regeneration
and development of inclusive and sustainable communities. Recognising
the importance of meeting the needs of the current urban population,
as well as the new and rising urban population, will require new
policy initiatives and a reordering of financial priorities.
In many areas there is a stock of buildings
available that could be refurbished to provide new housing. There
are financial disincentives to improving the current housing stock
and for developing new homes through the refurbishment of other
properties, such as warehouses and offices. Although there is
a good market for this refurbished accommodation amongst higher
earners, it is important to find ways of extending this to people
on lower incomes so that they too can share the benefits of urban
living, within mixed tenure communities. This has implications
for housing investment policy.
At present, newly built housing is exempt from
VAT. The cost of refurbishing or converting residential buildings
is charged VAT at the full rate of 17.5 per cent. It is important
to create a level playing field between building new homes and
renovating existing properties.
Shelter supports the Urban Task Force recommendation:
"Harmonise VAT rates at a zero rate in respect
of new building, and conversions and refurbishments. If harmonisation
can only be achieved at a 5 per cent rate, then a significant
part of the proceeds should be reinvested in urban regeneration".
THE ROLE
OF PLANNING
The Urban Task Force reported that "the
way that affordable housing is developed and allocated needs to
reflect the desire for mixed communities. There is a need for
the planning system to be more responsive and reflective of these
needs".
Shelter remains unconvinced that current Planning
Policy Guidance is either strong or clear enough to ensure this
will occur. Many of our concerns were highlighted to the Committee
last year in evidence on the revision of Planning Policy Guidance
Note 3: Housing.
In that response we stated that while the Government's
objectives to meet housing need and to provide inclusive and sustainable
communities were welcomed, currently planning policy guidance
does not provide the tools to meet this. In addition, Shelter's
National Inquiry (Towards a new settlement, Shelter 1998)
identified that although Section 106 agreements can achieve affordable
housing in private developments, this can be a uncertain process.
The National Inquiry identified examples where
although affordable housing had been secured, this was provided
either on a separate site from the market housing, or on the same
site but separated from the market housing. In Barking Research,
for example, a new development of homes will include 25 per cent
of affordable housing, this will however by physically segregated
from privately owned homes. Although the policy intention has
been to provide a mixed tenure development, its practical application
has been to provide two separate estates, one for those buying
and renting privately and one estate for social housing tenants.
Shelter therefore supports the Urban Task Force's
recommendation:
"Review the mechanisms by which local planning
authorities use planning gain to secure affordable `social' housing
to ensure that developers have less scope to buy their way out
of obligations to provide mixed tenure neighbourhoods".
CONCLUSION
The Urban Task Force report provides a good
blueprint for the forthcoming Urban White Paper. A housing led
regeneration of our urban areas can achieve mixed and inclusive
communities, if all government departments are required to work
together to achieve this common aim.
It is important for the Urban White Paper to
recognise the need is not just for new housing but also to meet
the needs of existing communities, and the needs of those for
whom housing choices are currently limited.
Shelter Policy Unit
January 2000
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