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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Yvette Cooper): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I know that he has long experience and expertise in housing, as was evident in what he said not just about low demand but about wider issues. I agree with much of what he said, particularly on the importance of sustainable communities and the need to treat housing issues as part of broader concerns for communities rather than thinking only of the physical structure of housing stock.
As my hon. Friend says, the signs of low demand can be very obvious and can cause considerable problems for communities. They include boarded-up houses and abandoned streets, and they are magnets for petty crime and vandalism. There are also less visible problems for those who cannot afford to leave such areas. Children's education suffers, for instance. School rolls fall. It can be hard to find work, there is poorer health, and local services decline.
My hon. Friend is also right in suggesting that areas of low demand have often been the subject of regeneration approaches that have not been effective for a number of reasons, even when they have been well intentioned. Those examples are worth learning from, and both the pathfinder programmes and our broader approach across the country should take account of them.
I do not think that those earlier approaches provided the right links between economic and housing issues. A regeneration programme might look at housing stock but ignore the fact that as there were no jobs in areas of low demand people would inevitably want to move away to find work, or suffer a series of social problems
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that would be concentrated on the area as a result of high unemployment. Alternatively, the approach would focus on economic regeneration and help people to find jobs. They would then leave, because they did not wish to live in an area where housing stock problems were not addressed. Then again, the approach might concentrate too much on social housing without taking account of the private rented sector and the private housing market; or it might fail to see housing as part of a wider market and a wider sub-regional issue. People's decisions about whether to stay in an area might depend on what alternatives there were, not in the next street but perhaps across district boundaries.
We have tried to incorporate all those aspects in our current approach to the housing market. The nine market renewal pathfinders are intended to tackle the low-demand problems of the most acutely affected areas. They bring together local authorities and stakeholders with the aim of developing long-term holistic solutions linking wider economic issues with issues of housing infrastructure. Six of the nine have been awarded grant of nearly half a billion pounds; £48 million has already been spent, and is starting to bring benefits to the communities involved.
The programmes concentrate on sustainable housing, the refurbishment of poor housing, the demolition of obsolete property and better management of estates. They take account of the nature of housing stock and housing supply and of the nature of demand—not just the level of demand, but the types of home that people want. They may want flats, or they may want family houses. The programmes also take account of the nature of the local economy and the community pressures that may exist. We are beginning to share the lessons that pathfinders have given us with areas affected by low demand and abandonment.
My hon. Friend rightly pointed out that low demand mainly affects small pockets of areas—even areas with a thriving housing market. There may be problems involving specific houses in a street or on an estate. A spiral of decline may be linked with antisocial behaviour or poor housing management in the private or the social housing sector. In larger areas, there may be wider problems caused by broader economic factors.
The pathfinders have concentrated on the widest areas of low demand and the most intense problems, but my hon. Friend is right that the lessons of the pathfinders need to be applied not simply to those areas, but to the small pockets of low demand.
I was interested in my hon. Friend's points about the new towns experience, which can be relevant in two ways: first, in terms of the lessons of the new towns and their success in building sustainable communities from a standing start in many cases; and secondly, in terms of the problems that they can face with housing stock. They may face similar problems at a similar period and that brings pressures.
We are putting a package of measures in place to equip local authorities with the powers to tackle low demand, including in smaller pockets, whether they are in a pathfinder area or not. Those include the provisions in the Housing Bill for selective landlord licensing to improve management in the private rented sector and to
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deal with bad landlords in that sector. The Housing Corporation is helping housing associations working in partnership with local authorities to improve and to stabilise local housing markets. The new tools approach is in place. New compulsory purchase measures in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 should assist authorities to deliver the step change that is needed in some areas.
We have published a housing market assessment manual that provides a framework for the analysis of local housing markets, and we want such tools to be used by local authorities in addressing particular low-demand problems in particular areas.
My hon. Friend talked about the progress that was being made in Telford. I welcome the work that he and local partners, including the borough council, have done to regenerate the south Telford estates, particularly in the housing strategy, and the progress that the local partnership has made in the Woodside estate. I was interested in his point about community facilities being a key part of regenerating the area. It is important that other areas should be able to learn the lessons from areas where innovative approaches are being taken, such as Telford.
The West Midlands regional housing board has provided funding for a housing market renewal study covering that area. A total of £1 million has been invested to research the areas where there is potential for housing market failure. We should also look at the issues that link different areas of low demand. We are looking more widely at the problem of low demand. We have the pathfinders and individual tools in place for smaller pockets of low demand.
I was interested in the submission from the National Housing Federation and the Chartered Institute of Housing about how it may be possible to go further and to put together a national low-demand strategy. Many aspects of their submission and many points that my hon. Friend raised reflect many aspects of Government thinking. We recognise that there are areas that are not currently included in the pathfinders where problems of low demand may emerge in future. The right response can deal with problems at an early stage, rather than leaving areas to face a spiral of decline.
Many of the points that my hon. Friend has made and that were made in the submission are already being taken up by English Partnerships, the Housing Corporation or the Government offices to support strategic approaches in different areas. While many of the principles that he raised are important in terms of the approach that needs to be taken in different areas, we need to maintain the strongly regional and sub-regional approach to these issues.
I do not think that there is a uniform national approach that can be applied to that kind of problem. It is exactly those local factors that need to be picked up if we are to address the specific problems that areas face. The issues that are faced in the east Lancashire programme, for example, will be different from those faced in Merseyside. There are different pressures in different places, caused by the nature of the housing stock and by local economic pressures.
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Wider lessons need to be learned and we are looking closely at how to take the issue forward. We are considering, as part of the spending review discussions, a future programme of resources. We also need to ensure the regional elements, and to empower regional bodies to consider the issue and address it effectively. That is why I was interested in my hon. Friend's points about the Midlands Way, which he has raised before. We are interested in that sort of scheme. The more we have a strong regional identity, with each region driving forward its own proposals, working with the regional housing and planning structures as well as the regional development agency, the more chance we have of getting effective local solutions. Perhaps it is through future partnerships between the regional development agencies and the housing and planning sides that we have the greatest potential to address the issue in the right way, instead of repeating our mistake of concentrating either on the economic side or on the housing infrastructure side, and never the twain shall meet.
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We already have a framework in place and we have made considerable progress, although there are further lessons to be learned. There are certainly lessons to be learned as the pathfinders begin their work, and there are lessons to be applied to other fields, too. We are now considering what the approach should be in some of the areas outside the pathfinder areas, and I am happy to discuss that further with my hon. Friend as we have further discussions in the Department and across Government. My hon. Friend has important expertise and experience on this matter, and I welcome the points that he has made this evening. It is welcome that Telford is leading the way and coming forward with different innovative ideas to address these issues. We need to ensure that we learn from that in future.
I congratulate my hon. Friend again on securing the debate.
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