Examination of Witnesses (Questions 465-479)
MRS MARGARET
FORD AND
MR DAVID
HIGGINS
14 JUNE 2004
Q465 Chairman: Good afternoon and welcome
to the Committee and what is a slightly strange construction of
an inquiry but the first part, as I think you are aware, is to
do with our inquiry into the Housing Corporation, so we will deal
with questions about that, and then we will move on to a one-off
evidence session about English Partnerships. For the sake of the
record, would you introduce yourselves, please.
Mrs Ford: My name is Margaret
Ford and I am the Chairman of English Partnerships.
Mr Higgins: I am David Higgins,
Chief Executive of English Partnerships.
Chairman: I understand that you do want
to make a statement but that you want to make that at the beginning
of the second session which is about the general work of English
Partnerships. So, we will begin with questions on the Housing
Corporation now.
Q466 Christine Russell: Some of the submissions
we have received for our inquiry into the Housing Corporation
have suggested that there is perhaps some confusion between the
Corporation's role and your role in housing. Would you like to
clarify how you see your role.
Mrs Ford: I think that, on the
face of it, the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships may
look like similar bodies: we are both NDPBs; we are both engaged
in the provision of social housing; we are both interested in
developing sustainable communities. I think the similarities between
the organisations are mostly superficial. I worked for the Corporation
many years ago as an executive director and indeed, the new Chief
Executive of the Corporation, Jon Rouse, has worked for English
Partnerships. We were discussing just recently the areas where
we could legitimately work together and the areas where it did
not actually make much sense I guess that if you think of the
Corporation primarily as an investor, a funder and a regulator
of housing, very much about securing outputs in the short term
year by year, and English Partnerships as a developer and a catalyst
for regeneration and much of our investment that goes in this
year and next year will not bear fruit until six, seven, eight,
nine, ten years out because of the nature of regeneration, then
the kind of value for money models and the way in which our organisations
operate are actually quite different. So, although we look on
the face of it like quite similar bodies, I think what we do is
complementary but quite distinctive. We have worked quite hard
over the last few years to try and make that plain to our partners
in the regional development agencies and the local authorities
and particularly with the private sector who often feel that confusion
when they come to English Partnerships and when they come to the
Corporation. I think that the joint unit that we set up with the
Corporation. The Housing Partnership, has done a reasonably good
job so far—we have only been going for just over a year—at
looking at those areas where there is genuine overlap and making
sure that we are getting the value of the organisations working
together. So, I think there is some scope for confusion but we
are working hard at explaining why our bodies are actually quite
distinctive.
Q467 Christine Russell: Whose role do
you see it as to actually provide the strategy for something like
affordable housing because you just mentioned that you are engaged
in the process of trying to provide affordable housing?
Mrs Ford: In a sense, English
Partnerships, as a delivery agency, tends to work to other people's
strategies, notably either Government's, for example, in the growth
areas or the regional development agencies economic strategies.
We are much more focused on particular, usually large-scale projects,
within an area in terms of the contributions of affordable housing,
but we do not tend to go in and dream up those strategies. We
very much work with the grain of either Central Government plans
or regional plans and sometimes at the level of individual local
authorities as well. The regional housing boards—and David
might want to say a word or two more about that—are a big
improvement in terms of making the priorities in particular regions
much more explicit.
Mr Higgins: English Partnerships
is represented on all the regional housing boards and these are
very important forums now where we look at the combination of
those three major issues: the economic strategies driven by the
RDAs, the housing strategy which the Housing Corporation takes
the prime role in and then the spatial development plan which
Government offices are very importantly involved in. We work to
make sure that projects we act on as land procurers or master
planners are consistent with those three plans.
Q468 Christine Russell: Do you see a
role greater than that perhaps in areas where maybe the Housing
Corporation or in particular the housing associations in the locality
just do not have the capacity to deliver?
Mrs Ford: If you take the nine
pathfinder areas as an example, they were set up specifically
to address that very point: how do you get good quality master
planning and design into areas which need to be in some cases
quite radically reshaped? English Partnerships, in terms of our
role in the pathfinders, see our role as helping with that whole
process of master planning but, to be honest, our organisation
was heavily criticised at the time of our five-year review, and
indeed the last time that I was here at the Select Committee for
its paternalism and its previous history of dictating to local
communities what was right and what was not right. We have changed
that attitude to still be very heavily involved in those first
stages and to work and bring professionalism into that master
planning but to try and do it very much with the grain of local
communities rather than the kind of paternalism that characterised
some of the work we had done in the past.
Q469 Christine Russell: But you still
find it necessary to do a little bit of handholding in certain
instances?
Mrs Ford: It is not so much handholding
as bringing a lot of experience and expertise around what has
worked in other places into those particular instances of master
planning because what we desperately do not want to do is repeat
some of the mistakes that were made in the fifties and sixties
in particular and we are trying very hard not to do that.
Q470 Chairman: You say in your submission
that one of your core tasks is to create sustainable communities
and you have a major role in delivering the Government's Sustainable
Communities Plan, but that is also a core objective of the Housing
Corporation as well.
Mrs Ford: Yes.
Q471 Chairman: Do you think there is
concern about the potential for overlap in the fact that you are
both doing the same job?
Mr Higgins: I think it is a case
of complementary skills. I will answer it with an example. There
is a major project in Sheffield, the Park Hill Estate, a 1,000
house estate. It has been there for many years; it is listed by
English Heritage—with complexities of structure and cost.
The council have looked to rework that site for many, many years
and nothing has happened. It is a real social problem. We have
worked with the Housing Corporation and with Sheffield City Council
to come up with a solution where we are going to the private sector
at a very advanced stage, a very early stage now in the concept
of developing this as well as inviting RSLs, housing associations,
to put in proposals as well. The method that we have brought forward
on this particular proposal is to engage in the private sector,
underwriting the market risk for a substantial part of that site
which will be put up for private housing as well as looking at
underwriting the actual structural and construction risks. So,
it is a really interesting example of where, together with the
Housing Corporation, they have used their skills in understanding
what the housing associations would need and we have used our
skills on the OJEC process bringing in private developers to look
at finding a solution for that very complex site.
Q472 Chairman: And there is no overlap
at all? It is all harmony?
Mr Higgins: It is working very
well. Like in all things, it is a matter of relationships and
complementary skills. The skills are reasonably different. We
do not try and teach the Housing Corporation how to regulate RSLs
or to understand the funding of that, but we need to know enough
of that and then work with them.
Q473 Chairman: Who actually owns the
overall plan for that?
Mr Higgins: That overall site?
Q474 Chairman: Yes.
Mr Higgins: Interestingly enough,
Sheffield City Council own the whole site but what they really
want back from it is around one third of that site back as social
housing fully refurbished at no cost to themselves and they are
prepared to pass on the rest of it to private developers to develop
in the open market using the profits to pay for the refurbishment.
Q475 Mr O'Brien: Housing funding and
land assembly. The Housing Corporation is responsible for funding
and you have the land; is there a proposition to combine the two
for EP to take over the funding responsibility?
Mr Higgins: The Housing Corporation
funds the social housing component of projects going forward and
EP purchase the land. So, if you look at the example of the Greenwich
Peninsula site, there English Partnerships purchased the site
originally over a period of time and the Housing Corporation are
making grant available to the housing associations that have been
nominated to deliver the social housing on the site but they are
not actually putting money into the land or into taking the development
risk on delivering the large component of over 10,000 houses.
Q476 Mr O'Brien: Do you think there is
any value in English Partnerships taking over funding for social
housing?
Mr Higgins: The new Housing Bill
that is before Parliament provides flexibility for the Housing
Corporation to provide funding to private developers as well as
housing associations to deliver affordable housing. It is very
important that we work with the Housing Corporation because we
too have housing gap-funding powers to ensure that we do not confuse
the market. So we are working closely with them on how we use
both of those mechanisms.
Q477 Mr O'Brien: The Audit Commission
suggested that the collaboration with the Housing Corporation
and English Partnerships can only bring limited benefits and therefore
they are suggesting that perhaps this should be looked at with
a view of one organisation being responsible for all the issues
involving social housing. Have you given any thought to this?
Mrs Ford: Was that the Audit Commission
evidence you were quoting?
Q478 Mr O'Brien: Yes.
Mrs Ford: I was puzzled by the
Audit Commission evidence because we have never had any conversation
ever with anyone from the Audit Commission around what we do in
English Partnerships. They do not audit us; they do not have any
locus in our work and, before they gave that evidence, they never
had a conversation with anyone in my organisation as far as I
am aware about our powers or how we go about our business. So,
with respect to the Audit Commission, I think the picture they
painted was not the full picture and I do not understand the conclusion
they drew from what I see day in and day out is the guts of our
work and the guts of the Corporation's work. When we are planning
land acquisitions and projects, as I said earlier, anything from
five to 10 years out, we make it very, very clear with the Corporation
that, in terms of the plan for the Approved Development Programme,
they know when there will be a call on social housing grant for
those components of our developments that are going to require
that grant. So, I think we can achieve exactly what is intended
by Government by working cooperatively together and I really do
not pretend to understand how the Audit Commission drew that conclusion
because I do not see the case myself for it.
Q479 Mr O'Brien: The Housing Partnership,
which is a partnership between yourself and the Housing Corporation,
is a joint initiative that has brought together the skills and
assets of English Partnerships and Housing Corporation.
Mrs Ford: Exactly.
| 
