Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480-488)
MRS MARGARET
FORD AND
MR DAVID
HIGGINS
14 JUNE 2004
Q480 Mr O'Brien: Do you think that should
be mirrored on other sites of development in which you are involved?
Mrs Ford: It is being but that
element of what we do that The Housing Partnership is focused
on is about particular aspects of our business and I do not think
all of the mainstream aspects of our business. Where we can put
land and funding together sensibly, we do that. We do it anyway;
we do it across all the programmes. You do not need a particular
vehicle to do that. What The Housing Partnership is doing is trying
new models and trying different things and the things that are
seen to work we will mainstream into both programmes that was
really the purpose of setting up The Housing Partnership.
Q481 Andrew Bennett: But you are actually
pre-empting the allocation of the Housing Corporation's funds,
are you not? If you set up a programme that is going to do this
in each of the next five or six years, then you are actually deciding
how the Housing Corporation spends its money, are you not?
Mrs Ford: I do not know if we
are deciding how the Corporation spends its money. I think what
we are doing is alerting the Corporation to major and significant
developments that are down the line and giving them the opportunity,
in their allocation process, to keep those in mind. I just think
that is common sense.
Q482 Andrew Bennett: What happens if
they do not allocate the money? Can you find it from other sources?
Mr Higgins: In some cases, they
do not. In significant parts of our work at Milton Keynes for
example, there is very minimal, if any, Housing Corporation grant
on those sites because there is sufficient value in the land to
deliver the social housing without any grant. However, there is
some logic in publicly owned land and publicly owned grant and
coordinating the decisions on those prior to putting land out
to tender.
Q483 Christine Russell: Mr Higgins, would
you elaborate a little more on how you see the role of your representatives
on the regional housing boards. For instance, how does that person
pursue what are the priorities, if you like, of that particular
region?
Mr Higgins: We have five regional
directors who are all at the most senior level within our organisation
who report to myself. They all individually sit on the regional
housing boards. They are the most important coordinating body
in the regions for our executives. They are only a year old, of
course. There is also work coming within the Department looking
at merging those with the planning as well. It is very important
now, particularly with the relationships with the regional representatives
from the Housing Corporation and the regional development authorities
work with our regional directors on local issues because, ultimately,
all policies are implemented at that regional level. So, what
do we contribute? We have existing landholdings, our existing
strategic sites, so we can utilise those; we also provide funding,
gap funding or work with local authorities and pathfinders and
the biggest thing we can do is ensure that where we prioritise
our corporate plan, it is consistent with the objectives of the
regional housing boards.
Q484 Christine Russell: You say that
you have regional directors but there are more than five regions.
Mr Higgins: Yes, there are and
we do not exactly mirror each individual RDA.
Q485 Christine Russell: So, how do you
organise English Partnerships? Do you have an organisation that
mirrors each of the English regions?
Mr Higgins: Yes, we have an organisation
structure that is regionally based: we have five major regions
and they do in total tie into the RDA boundaries. We then have
four central areas within our organisation which cover policy,
finance, human resources and strategic partnerships.
Mrs Ford: To specifically get
to the point as to whether we mirror them exactly, no, we do not
and there is a reason for that when we set up the new organisation
structure last year. As English Partnerships is a successor body
to CNT and to the Urban Regeneration Agency, a lot of our business
is dictated by where that legacy business is actually located.
So, to have simply set up regions that mirrored the RDAs would
have meant that, in certain parts of the country, there was not
a huge amount of business to be done there. We do not think that
is desirable and we are working hard to look at balancing our
programme across the country because we think that is appropriate,
but actually we thought that, for the next few years whilst we
have huge amounts of business in certain parts of the country,
we had to resource up to do that.
Q486 Christine Russell: I suppose what
I am really trying to say to you is, in those areas where, to
quote you, you do not have much business but you do have a representative
on the regional housing board, how does that individual actually
know what the housing aspirations/priorities of that region are?
How do you ensure that that happens?
Mrs Ford: Partly we took account
of that when we went through our recruitment process in the last
year. Something like 60% of our senior management group now are
new to our organisation and we deliberately went out to recruit
people who had a very good track record in the geographical areas
where we knew that we needed to increase our business, as it were.
So, that was one way in which we did it. Secondly, by actually
sitting on the regional housing boards; that is the best place
to get real intelligence about what the economic priorities are
for those regions. So, we have tried to do it in those two ways.
Q487 Andrew Bennett: Really, what you
are saying is that you benefit by being on the regional housing
boards rather than the housing boards benefiting by having your
staff on them.
Mrs Ford: No, I did not say that.
I said that we went out to the market to look for people and I
take an example of someone like Paul Spooner who is our regional
director for the North West West Midlands. He is extremely well
known and extremely well respected and has a very good track record
in that area. I think if you asked the regional housing board
there, they would say that they benefited just as much from having
Paul on that board as the other way round.
Q488 Andrew Bennett: You just told that
people went to the regional housing boards to find out information.
Mrs Ford: I think I said they
would learn more there and I think that is just the truth of the
matter.
Chairman: Thank you. That is the end
of the first part of the session on the Housing Corporation.
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