Examination of Witnesses (Questions 248-259)
MR GRAHAM
GARBUTT AND
MR STEVE
GREGORY
5 MAY 2004
Q248 Chairman: Since everyone is here,
we might as well make a start and welcome you to this Select Committee
inquiry. For the sake of our record, could introduce yourself,
please?
Mr Garbutt: Yes, I am Graham Garbutt,
Regional Director at the Government Office for the West Midlands.
Mr Gregory: I am Steve Gregory,
Executive Director of Sandwell Council and I Chair the West Midlands
Regional Housing Partnership.
Q249 Chairman: Welcome. Would you like
to make a brief introductory statement or go straight to questions?
Mr Garbutt: We have submitted
a paper, Chairman. I would only summarise that, if you want me
to.
Q250 Chairman: We have all got the papers.
Mr Garbutt: Okay.
Chairman: So we will go on to questions.
Chris Mole?
Q251 Chris Mole: Good morning, gentlemen.
There are three bodies now after the first year divvying up housing
funds to the ODPM and the Housing Corporation and the Regional
Housing Boards. What impact would you say, as a Regional Housing
Board, you have had on the way public housing funds are being
spent?
Mr Garbutt: Two, I think. Firstly,
I think for the first time . . . I should say, I am a civil servant,
a Director of ODPM. That is my formal role. So, I think, for the
first time we are in a position where advice to ministers is being
formulated in the region and is being submitted direct to ministers.
In our case it was unamended. It was agreed unanimously by the
Housing Board. So in effect there has been a real shift, I think,
in the way in which policy is formulated and its geography, if
you like, but also that process was done, as I said, with unanimous
agreement after a long debate around the Housing Board table,
so with the direct input of Directors from the Regional Development
Agency, English Partnerships, the Housing Corporation, the LGA
and the Regional Assembly. So for the first time we have made
that shift of advice from Civil Servants being formulated in the
region, going to ministers and being approved in, I think, a way
that has been shown to be effective. The second thing we have
done by adding the regional geography is to develop a greater
awareness, particularly in the formulation of policy proposals
in the housing strategy and the funding proposals that go with
it, of sub-regions—of the notion that housing markets can
be defined at a scale which is sub-regional and which is cross-boundary
in Local Government terms. I think, as the Barker Report showed,
that is a very important dimension which has been missing in the
past. I think our work on that is still formative and embryonic,
but I think we have begun to get into that kind of discussion;
and certainly part of our work, and one of the outcomes of the
first round of the work by the Regional Housing Board has been
to define a series of studies through which we will look in greater
detail at sub-regional markets in the current year.
Mr Gregory: Yes, I would agree
with everything that you have said there, Graham. I think we have
effectively tied together regional planning guidance with a regional
housing strategy, with an early regional housing strategy, which
has identified the key housing issues for the region, very closely
tied to planning. We have been able then to apply the funds we
have had to implementing that regional housing strategy which
is helping us implement regional planning guidance. For the first
time, I think, those issues have been able to be researched and
evidenced at a regional level, at a level that works with housing
markets rather than at a local authority level.
Q252 Chris Mole: So you are giving advice
to ministers. To what extent should regional housing boards make
sure they take account of the national priorities like Decent
Homes Standards?
Mr Garbutt: Very much so. I think
the question that hangs over the debate is not uncommon to other
areas of regional policy, which is the extent to which those,
as it were, policy directives should be established at a national
level and how that is balanced with regional discretion and indeed
local discretion. The notion of clarity in the way that policy
decisions are, as it were, delegated from the centre to the region
and to localities is another area we would like to see for the
future, but it is entirely necessary and right that ministers
at a national level should set some parameters within which the
rest of the process takes place. The debate, I think, is over
the level of delegation.
Q253 Chris Mole: So it is not just about
delivering government programmes, it is about giving it a regional
dimension would be how you would summarise what you are trying
to do?
Mr Garbutt: Yes, and also, I guess,
injecting a process which is two-way, which is iterative. Ministers
set the broad policy parameters, we translate that, we relate
it to the needs of the region and, as it were, we match it with
bottom-up process of local plans being developed, as Steve has
said, relating that also to planning, economic and other strategies.
Q254 Chris Mole: You are not worried
about tensions between the centre and the regions?
Mr Garbutt: We do not worry about
it; that is our job. Our purpose is to manage those. The whole
planning process, to a degree, is about managing tensions and
managing conflicts, and we are very comfortable in that role.
Q255 Chris Mole: Are you worried about
how independent you might seem to be. You are a creature of government
as a Regional Director. You are Chairing this RHB?
Mr Garbutt: Sorry, Steve. Please,
I am not worried about it, if that is the question. I think there
is an issue about building consensus and building trust.
Q256 Andrew Bennett: Wait a minute. Are
you having a success if everything runs smoothly, or are you having
a success if the regional body stands up to the Government and
says, "Hi, we are not getting enough resources or the policy
is wrong"?
Mr Garbutt: I think we are having
a success if we uncover any tensions, if we define conflicts and
if we manage them, if I can put it in this way, in a mature way
so people understand that not all conflicts can be resolved but
we achieve the best balance. If your question is about lobbying
government on behalf of the region, I think that is not my role
and I would not see it necessarily as the Regional Housing Board's
role. That is the purpose of Regional Assemblies as they are currently
constructed, and, of course, if and when elected assemblies are
set up in the English regions, that whole set of relationships
begins to change.
Mr Gregory: I think it is important
though where we through our research programme identify areas
where the region, the national targets are not appropriate for
the region, it is appropriate that we raise that as an issue,
so we need to do something slightly different because the issues
for our region are slightly different than the national picture.
Q257 Mr Clelland: Could you say a bit
more about your relationship with the Regional Assembly and how
you think that might change?
Mr Gregory: We are fairly unusual,
I think, in the regions, in that we began to produce a regional
housing strategy before we were required to. We had been working
on it for a couple of years before hand. We have quite a strong
and well-supported Regional Housing Partnership that we have had
for three or four years. As the Regional Assembly was created,
recognising that the Regional Assembly was responsible for the
Regional Economic Strategy, the partnership asked the Regional
Assembly if it would like to, in effect, host the partnership
and make the partnership a creature of the Assembly. We asked
the Assembly to delegate to us the production of the regional
strategy. So we have tied the Regional Housing Strategy into the
Assembly in that way. The Regional Assembly signed off the Regional
Housing Strategy, which was then submitted to the Regional Housing
Board and ODPM, and thankfully everybody agreed.
Q258 Mr Clelland: Would that relationship
change if there was an elected Regional Assembly?
Mr Gregory: Yes.
Q259 Mr Clelland: How would it change?
Mr Gregory: I think if the Regional
Assembly were elected, it would take greater responsibility for
those actions. There would not be a following on from the Regional
Assembly to ODPM; they would be responsible for implementing the
strategy that they had agreed.
Mr Garbutt: If I could add to
that, I did quote in the paper, paragraph 436 of the May 2002
White Paper, your Region your Choice, which is very explicit in
the sense that the responsibilities currently carried out by both
government offices and the Housing Corporation would in future
in regions which have an ERA would be transferred to the Elected
Regional Assemblies. So I think the question is whether we at
the moment are, as it were, trying to create conditions which
could ease that transition in the future or whether we are trying
to create something which is simply satisfactory to the existing
regional partners, if you like. It seems to me quite important
that we do not do anything which impedes the opportunity to move
in that direction in the future. But, to use your earlier word,
Chairman, I guess the question is whether there are tensions in
managing that process in the immediate future within the current
assemblies, which, of course, are not directly elected, but as
I am sure everyone knows, bodies of about 100 people drawn from
different sectors, and they may feel now that they would like
to have a greater role in making decisions and, as it were, containing
accountability through those assemblies. That is difficult for
me, because my accountability, of course, as Chairman of the Board,
is to ministers.
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