Memorandum by the North British Housing
Group (UWP 36)
COMMENTS REGARDING PROVISIONS TO BE CONTAINED
IN THE PROPOSED URBAN WHITE PAPER
1. INTRODUCTION
North British Housing Group currently contains
North British Housing Association, the largest registered social
landlord (RSL) in the county, and has been involved over 20 years
in major urban regeneration projects around England eg Crown Hotel,
Newcastle in the 70's, Warehouse 13 and mixed tenure enveloping,
Hull 80's, Hulme City Challenge, Manchester 90's, King's Cross,
London, Norfolk Park, Sheffield 2000.
We now have a group structure including companies
which in addition to an RSL have charitable, commercial and joint
venture organisation including Greenframe (timber frame manufacturer)
and Techno Tots (nursery company). This structure enables us to
engage very broadly with both people and places within a regeneration
environment becoming a key long term multi-faceted stakeholder
capable of developing and managing both mixed use schemes and
mixed tenure housing within these vital communities.
NBHG welcome the publication of the Urban Task
Force report and feel that the Urban White Paper is the opportunity
to bring together for the first time the social, economic and
environmental policies together into a joined-up piece of legislation
that enables some of the longstanding barriers to regeneration
to be moved away and some of the best practice experience to become
main stream.
2. NBHG RESPONSE
NBHG has organised it's response under the following
headings:
— 2.1 Strategy and empowerment.
— 2.2 Funding mechanisms.
— 2.3 Compulsory Purchase Orders.
— 2.9 The role of historic parks
and buildings in urban regeneration
— 2.10 Future of areas suffering
from low demand for housing and social decline.
— 2.11 Managing the results
2.1 STRATEGY
AND EMPOWERMENT
There needs to be some clarity of roles and
responsibilities with respect to regeneration schemes, as European,
national policy, departmental policies, RDAs, Government Offices
for the Regions, Local Authorities, Housing Corporation, Lottery,
private sector, voluntary agencies, interest groups and community
groups all have input to make and ending up with a clear vision
and strategy with a limited number of organisations with resources
and authority to make things happen, is essential. It is difficult
to see an alternative to Local Authorities having the prime strategic
role, with appropriate public/private/voluntary sector partnerships
having delivery responsibilities through the mechanism of regeneration
companies.
2.1.1 REGENERATION
COMPANIES
NBHG has experience of working closely with
Hulme Regeneration Ltd, a public/private joint venture company
on the delivery of Manchester's pacemaker City Challenge project,
referred to in the Rodgers Report. NBHG believe this type of regeneration
company can be effective and responsive in delivering successful
large scale urban quarter regeneration.
2.1.2 HOUSING
REGENERATION COMPANIES
Housing Regeneration Companies as proposed in
the report have more limited powers and as such would only be
appropriate in areas where a direct intervention in the housing
market would have a significant impact on land values, even so
the need to engage with other social and economic issues might
mean that this vehicle would be more limited in its impact.
2.2 FUNDING MECHANISMS
NBHG consider the funding arrangements to be
crucial to successful urban renaissance. Experience of trying
to develop mixed use schemes through existing funding regimes
has been almost impossible. This White Paper should be the opportunity
to produce funding policies which ensure that mixed use schemes
and innovative projects can be funded minimising the number of
funding sources and removing conflicting criteria and timescales.
There also has to be a recognition of the large amount of project
management and legal time necessary to compile complex projects
of modest capital investment.
eg An innovative community, health, training
and housing scheme took six months to conceive, design (with full
user group participation) but has taken three years to confirm
the cocktail of funding consisting of social housing grant, private
finance, capital challenge funding, health authority funding,
English Partnerships/RDA funding and URBAN European funding. Many
of the funding sources had criteria which were mutually exclusive.
This project consumed huge amounts of time and tested partners
to breaking point and beyond, and involved the expenditure of
large sums of money on avoidable temporary arrangements. There
was also resistance from EP to the project management and legal
costs involved in putting a complex project of this type together.
2.2.1 URBAN
RENEWAL AND
PRIVATE FINANCE
INITIATIVE (PFI)
The private finance initiative may present a
useful framework for urban renewal framework. PFI is a framework
for procuring public services through a partnership between the
public and private sector. Typically, the private sector designs,
builds and finances any capital assets that are involved and then
receives a revenue payment from the public sector to enable it
to fund the cost of the asset and to manage the provision of the
service. NBHG is involved with one of the pilot projects (Berwick
on Tweed) that are currently underway to test the applicability
of PFI to social housing and the indications are that it could
be used for newbuild, refurbishment of on street stock and redevelopment.
PFI has a number of features that would lend
it to urban regeneration. It is a framework that deals with a
mixture of public and private monies and that encourages innovation
in the procurement of assets and the delivery of services. It
is also consistent with the use of joint venture approaches and
special purpose vehicles. As such, it could prove a useful framework
for urban regeneration projects, able to integrate a mixture of
sources of finance, both private and public and to incorporate
partnerships between a number of bodies, in both the private and
public sector.
In addition, the fact that PFI subsidy is paid
as a revenue subsidy would lend itself to a range of service driven,
post capital works community development issues. This would not
preclude a project from also benefiting from other forms of capital
subsidy.
PFI funding is still only available departmentally
and the prospect of using current PFI processes to deliver say
a school, health facility and housing in an integrated scheme
would require project management skills of Herculean proportions.
If PFI is to be used responsively in an regeneration environment
then a simple mechanism for inter or supra-departmental collaborative
working needs to be provided.
2.2.2 PARTNERSHIP
INVESTMENT PROGRAMME
(PIP)
There continues to be a need for gap funding
to support early private sector investments along the lines of
the old City Grant. The Partnership Investment Programme (PIP)
would seem to be the mechanism currently favoured for use by the
RDAs but there are still apparently legal problems related to
EU regulations on unfair state aid. A resolution to this issue
is essential to engage the private sector at an early stage in
major regeneration projects.
2.2.3 VAT
To achieve the target of 60 per cent development
on brownfield sites or reuse the existing buildings the issue
of VAT differential has to be addressed. The report recommends
an equalising of the rate to 0 per cent in respect of new building,
conversions and refurbishments. This would help significantly
in the reuse of existing buildings although there may still be
a disincentive for those with long term management responsibilities
for older buildings due to costs of repairs and maintenance of
older materials and higher costs of achieving good environmental
standards.
2.3 COMPULSORY
PURCHASE ORDERS
The opportunity for speculators to disrupt,
block or profit from regeneration schemes persist despite significant
existing CPO powers. We have direct experience of this in our
work in Ancoats Urban Village, Manchester. We would therefore
support the inclusion of recommendations 69, 70 and 71. There
are also significant issues around responsibilities of ownership
following CPO action relation to insurance, making safe, demolition,
temporary repair etc.
2.4 BROWNFIELD
SITES
NBHG support the recommendations 54-59 reconciling
housing demand, urban capacity studies and the encouragement of
the use of brownfield sites and protection of greenfield sites
and open spaces.
2.5 DESIGN CODES
Having worked closely on the development and
delivery of the Hulme Guide to Development and subsequent review
of its effectiveness. NBHG consider there are positive benefits
to be achieved from the use of such guides, but as stated in the
Rodgers report "there is no blueprint for success" and
good quality results rely on the partner organisations working
within the spirit of such guides rather than to their letter.
So in short NBHG support an urban design framework but it is only
through the selection of appropriate partners there is no guarantee
that it could deliver high quality urban design.
2.6 TRANSPORT
Strategic affordable transport provision is
crucial to the success of any urban renaissance strategy, it is
of prime importance for business location, access to jobs and
facilities, the breaking down social exclusion and health inequality.
A high priority has to be given to transport policy at National,
Regional and Local levels. National road, rail and waterway infrastructure
is in poor condition, whilst bus services are increasingly being
withdrawn from residual communities and there are few safe cycle
routes in urban areas and even fewer secure places to leave cycles
at popular destinations. Strategic transport infrastructure and
good local distribution networks will become increasingly important
as e-commerce becomes more established.
2.7 HEALTH ISSUES
Despite the fact that the terms of reference
of the Urban Task Force report excluded issues related to health,
it is important that the measures contained in the new Urban White
Paper are integrated with measures recommended in the Acheson
report on "Inequalities in Health". There are significant
areas of over lap in terms of security, housing, transport and
employment. Our experience working with the Manchester, Salford
and Trafford Health Action Zone and involvement with the delivery
and management of an award winning community primary care and
resource project have confirmed the importance of getting this
right. It is not going to be possible to attract residents back
into our urban settlements unless they can be made healthy environments.
2.8 LIFESTYLE
ISSUES
The growth and change of urban settlements is
a complex dynamic with a strong economic thread and the encouragement
of urban living is also complex as is born out by the report.
Sustainable repopulation will only be achieved through positive
choice, and responsiveness to the market. Issues of affordability,
density, quality of life, access to facilities, access to employment
and a healthy environment all have to be addressed.
2.9 FUTURE OF
AREAS SUFFERING
FROM LOW
DEMAND FOR
HOUSING AND
SOCIAL DECLINE
Whilst supporting the general principle of not
sinking large sums of money into unsustainable communities, NBHG
feel that there needs to be a positive and direct engagement with
communities in decline. The loss of a major local employer may
mean that the existing community cannot be supported but there
may be a sustainable settlement that is viable at a lower population
if appropriate, good quality, local facilities and good transport
links are provided to access higher level facilities. It is unlikely
that such circumstances could be achieved without some investment
in high density place making around transport nodes. It is also
unlikely that this provision could be provided entirely through
reuse of existing buildings. Being a national housing group we
have experience of communities in both high and low demand areas.
2.10 THE ROLE
OF HISTORIC
PARKS AND
BUILDINGS IN
URBAN REGENERATION
The Urban Renaissance Report indicates that
"more than 90 per cent of our urban fabric of 30 years time
already exists." It is therefore imperative that we make
the most of our existing environment whether directly listed or
not, and that the quality of the 10 per cent that is developed
or replaced is of a high quality and that new and old are integrated
in a way that enhances both. Mixed tenure housing development
can only work if those with economic mobility choose to live there.
Therefore such places have be of sufficient physical quality and
with sufficiently good facilities (eg schools, shops, leisure
facilities) for positive choices to be made.
2.11 MANAGING
THE RESULTS
NBHG's experience of major regeneration over
20 years has taught us that innovative regeneration is both challenging
and complex, but delivering responsive neighbourhood management
of mixed use developments and mixed tenure housing may well be
more demanding and it is continuous. Such skills are becoming
increasingly crucial to sustainable communities. As a national
group NBHG has learned from a wide range of experience with both
successful and unsuccessful schemes around the country.
eg Scotswood, Newcastle, is a failed City Challenge
project leaving the community with no jobs, no prospects, no facilities
and badly designed housing, resulting in high profile demolition.
The same area team manages a 17 year old 260 unit regeneration
scheme at Clayton Street which is well designed and looks and
works as good as new. Also 350 unit, inner city, deck access scheme
at Stanhope Street where a combination of community involvement,
a strong residents association, good physical security and an
energy efficient Combined Heat and Power system contribute to
a successful scheme in an area otherwise experiencing difficulties.
3. SUMMARY
The Urban White Paper provides an opportunity
to bring together a national strategy to support urban settlements
and transport systems with local mechanisms to deliver innovative
and responsive solutions. NBHG look forward to taking a broad
and active role in regeneration in the future and are happy to
provide any further information that may be helpful.
13 January 2000
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