Memorandum by North West Housing Forum
(GRI 35)
INTRODUCTION
This document is submitted to the Select Committee
on behalf of the North West Housing Forum. The Forum represents
the views of housing providers in the North West of England, and
membership comprises local housing authorities, registered social
landlords, and representatives of the Chartered Institute of Housing,
the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the House Builders Federation,
Housing Federation North, the Local Government Association, and
the Northern Housing Consortium. Some of our members will be submitting
their own views in detail to the Committee—this submission
is intended to briefly suggest some more general lessons from
across the North West. The North West of England is a diverse
region, stretching from Crewe to the Scottish border, and including
large rural and semi-rural areas as well as the more familiar
industrial and post-industrial urban areas. Consequently, there
are few, if any, Government regeneration initiatives which have
not been applied somewhere in the North West.
HOUSING AND
REGENERATION
Because of the nature of the problems faced
by many communities in the North West, it is increasingly difficult
to distinguish between housing and regeneration activity—for
example, the Housing Corporation report that 97 per cent of their
2001-02 Approved Development Programme in the North West was spent
on what they define as Regeneration schemes. With growing recent
acceptance of the language of housing market renewal, housing
strategies in the North West increasingly seek to work toward
sustainable neighbourhoods, linking investment in housing to parallel
action on improving local services and the physical environment,
reducing crime, understanding local markets and helping to reduce
social exclusion. In rural areas, the need for affordable housing
provision is tied particularly closely to the need to sustain
local employment and economic development. Housing agencies, particularly
registered social landlords (RSLs) and local authority housing
departments, find themselves closely involved in community consultation
and capacity building, "planning for real" events, etc
since they are often the agency with the skills and infrastructure
to support this kind of activity.
OBSTACLES TO
SUCCESSFUL REGENERATION
Many of the areas now benefiting from the latest
regeneration initiatives have repeatedly received attention from
previous programmes. While this is far from being a universal
truth, it is sufficiently so to suggest that Government's past
interventions have not achieved success in producing real, sustainable
improvements in the relative fortunes of some of our poorer communities.
This was acknowledged by Government when it published "A
New Commitment to Neighbourhood Renewal" in January 2001:
"Departments have worked at cross purposes
on problems that required a joined-up response. Too much reliance
was put on short-term regeneration initiatives in a handful of
areas and too little was done about the failure of mainstream
public services in hundreds of neighbourhoods."
The issues arising from this can be categorised
as follows:
1. The machinery of regeneration
It is now accepted that successful regeneration
needs to be a comprehensive, joined up exercise. Experience has
shown the folly of investing in physical housing stock improvements
when those living in the properties still have to tackle problems
of crime, poor educational services, lack of healthcare facilities
and poor employment prospects. Conversely, one of the key lessons
of the "M62 study"[24]
is that creating employment opportunities without tackling the
other problems of deprived neighbourhoods often leads to newly
better off households moving away, further fuelling the exclusion
of those remaining. But it's far from clear that the practical
task of joining up all of these aspects (and others) is significantly
easier now than it was five or 10 years ago. The number of "players",
even just within the public sector, who should be expected to
contribute to a comprehensive regeneration partnership is almost
endless.
Taking a step back to look at the structures
engaged in regeneration in its broadest sense, the complexity
is clear. At national level, we have the traditional government
"silos" with an interest in regeneration—ODPM
(itself a collection of silos—housing, planning, etc.),
DTI, English Partnerships, the Housing Corporation and the Countryside
Agency. Alongside these we have units such as the Social Exclusion
Unit, Neighbourhood Renewal Unit and the Urban Policy Unit. At
regional level there are Government Offices, Regional Development
Agencies and Regional Assemblies. All of these organisations (and
more) produce strategies and guidance, expect to be able to influence
or lead those acting at local and sub-regional level, require
monitoring of outcomes, reporting of outputs and targets to be
met.
Streamlining of these structures to any significant
degree is an unrealistic expectation in the short term, so we
must seek ways of making them work more effectively. Experience
suggests a number of features which might improve the effectiveness
of regeneration activity:
— Comprehensive approaches rather than
multiple, small, single-themed, short-term, centrally-controlled
initiatives coming down each governmental "silo".
— Relatively few, relatively high level
aims or targets, with the flexibility for those leading each scheme
to tackle local circumstances as they see fit within broad parameters.
— Clear leadership and decision structures,
including strong community involvement and influence.
— Proper understanding of the needs
of an area before an initiative is designed and implemented, rather
than simply trying out the latest flavour of the month idea because
some money goes along with it.
— Emphasis on monitoring changes in
the target area rather than micro-management based on process
measures. There also needs to be monitoring of the impact of improvements
in one area on surrounding neighbourhoods or districts, to ensure
we are not simply moving deprivation around.
— Boundaries set according to the scale
and extent of the problems being addressed, rather than to reflect
the administrative accident of existing boundaries.
— Effective pressure on other agencies
to bend their mainstream activity to maximise the impact of the
programme as a whole—our understanding of the cross-benefits
of investment in (say) restructuring the housing and environment
of an area for health, police, social services is weak. The principle
behind the Invest to Save Budget is a sound one which could perhaps
be more broadly applied. Many local authorities now routinely
examine their service provision in terms of broader impacts on
neighbourhoods within their area, but there is much less evidence
that other public services adopt the same approach.
— Clear mechanisms for ringing alarm
bells and taking appropriate action if the activities of one agency/initiative/authority/Department
are adversely impacting on those of another.
— Strategy development, planning and
monitoring activity appropriate to the scale of the project as
a whole—resources going into bureaucracy, payments to consultants
and complex assessment procedures rather than delivering change
for the better are often (rightly) a huge concern to residents.
2. The tools for the job
Whatever the framework set by Government for
regeneration, local authorities and their partners in regeneration
need effective tools to allow them to make real progress. For
example, the North West Housing Forum has been part of the consortium
arguing for the establishment of the Housing Market Renewal Fund,
which we see as a welcome and crucial addition to the equipment,
addressing many of the points made above in terms of "machinery".
But declaring Market Renewal Areas will only work if this high
level strategy, with broad partnerships, "real" boundaries,
programmes based on thorough research of each area's housing markets
and comprehensive approach are accompanied by:
— Sufficient money to get the job done.
In the case of market renewal, this will need to be committed
over a period of at least 10 years and probably more. This kind
of commitment from Government is exceptional, but provides better
long term value for money, not least since it provides much greater
confidence for potential private sector investors.
— Adequate powers and mechanisms to
deliver change on the ground. One crucial example in the case
of HMRF is an effective CPO system, something Government has been
reviewing in various ways for several years now. The Committee
have previously pointed out the need for a replacement of the
gap funding scheme. New tools are being developed in areas such
as equity release, equity sharing, helping homeowners trapped
by negative equity and so on, and the recent Planning Green Paper
contained potentially significant new mechanisms. Government needs
to be quicker on its feet in assisting the development and implementation
of new approaches to regeneration if it is to deliver on some
of its own commitments regarding neighbourhood renewal. For example,
the Housing Corporation has helped to fund a number of "New
Tools" pilot projects in the North of England. One project
was a pilot of a shared appreciation mortgage product, designed
to enable some of the value tied up in existing property to be
released to fund improvements to benefit the (volunteer) homeowners.
This has been subjected to lengthy, extremely detailed scrutiny
over two years by both Financial Services Authority and Office
of Fair Trading officials, despite the clear (publicly funded)
intention of the project being to try out the approach on a small
scale to see if it worked. There seemed no opportunity for Housing
Corporation or DTLR/ODPM officials to persuade their colleagues
that "joined-up" government might justify a lighter
regulatory touch for what was a small-scale experimental project.
— A pool of people with the skills,
knowledge and experience to make the system deliver the outcomes
we are all seeking. The complexity of the business of regeneration
makes the core group of practitioners with the talent to bring
about real change a vital resource—"key workers"
to borrow a phrase from a slightly different context. We need
to do more to understand what the key skills actually are, how
they can be developed informally and formally. Alongside that
are what we might call related trades—architects, engineers,
construction workers, housing managers, community workers, etc.—all
of whom have significant roles in delivering different types of
regeneration programme. Shortages of some of these groups are
known to exist—this may well act as a brake on the effectiveness
of regeneration activity if it is not dealt with.
CONCLUSION
In this region, as in others, there are many
successes attributable to the Government's past and current regeneration
initiatives. We have put forward a number of ideas for improvement,
each of which will have greater or lesser importance according
to the varying aims of regeneration activity in different parts
of the North West and elsewhere. Many of these are already being
reflected in parts of Government policy and activity, but there
is more to be achieved.
24 Changing Housing Markets and Urban Regeneration
in the M62 Corridor, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University
of Birmingham. Back
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