Examination of Witnesses (Questions 43-59)
17 SEPTEMBER 2003
TRACEY HEYES,
SAJJAD HUSSAIN
AND HUGH
BROADBENT
Q43 Chairman: Can I welcome you to
the second session of the Committee's inquiry into social cohesion
and ask you to identify yourselves for the record?
Ms Heyes: I am Tracey Heyes. I
am from West Pennine Housing Association.
Mr Hussain: Sajjad Hussain from
Aksa Housing Association.
Mr Broadbent: I am Hugh Broadbent,
Chief Executive of First Choice Homes, Oldham.
Q44 Chairman: I will give you a chance
if you want to say anything by way of introduction, or are you
happy for us to go straight to questions?
Ms Heyes: Yes, straight to questions.
Q45 Mr Clelland: Before I start is
it possible to get an assessment as to what percentage of the
housing in Oldham is managed jointly by your organisations?
Mr Broadbent: Jointly I guess
we probably manage about 20 per cent.
Q46 Mr Clelland: Oldham has been
described as having acute residential racial segregation and members
of the Committee saw this for themselves yesterday. Would you
like to offer some explanation as to why this has come about?
Mr Hussain: I think it is a historical
factor that, despite all the efforts in recent years, will take
a long time to deal with. Oldham appears to be a unique area where,
for whatever reason, segregation has existed.
Q47 Mr Clelland: You do not know
why it has come about?
Mr Hussain: From my perspective
I think it has been the fear factor from both communities to a
certain extent: from the Asian community the racial tension, the
fear of race|
Q48 Mr Clelland: But that is not
peculiar to Oldham.
Mr Hussain: It is probably unique
in the sense of the segregation factor. I am from the Midlands
and you had the fear factor there but you still lived in predominantly
white areas. That does not appear to be the case here where the
white community perceives the Asians to a certain extent as a
liability because of the fact that if they move into your area
the property values will go down, so the segregation is not purely
on race but there are other factors that are taken into consideration.
Mr Broadbent: One of the issues
that the Committee ought to understand is the background to Oldham.
Of the homes that we manage more than 50 per cent are small homes.
The demand from the minority communities is typically for large
family homes and that is a historic and cultural background which
will still be there for some time. Just to give you an example,
we manage only 270 four-bedroom homes out of our 18,000 homes
and yet on our waiting list at any one time there are more people
from the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities wanting homes of
four bedrooms or larger than we manage in their entirety.
Q49 Mr Clelland: Does that mean that
the four-bedroom homes are all in one place?
Mr Broadbent: No, not at all.
Typically, most council estates that have developed over the last
30 or 40 years did have a range of property types. As an example,
the estate closest to Westwood that we manage is our most minority
occupied estate, and 37 per cent of the tenants on that estate
now come from the local Bangladeshi community. The stark reality
is that a number of the properties in that area are small flats
which are not suitable to the demands of the local Bangladeshi
community who are still predominantly wanting large family accommodation,
although that is changing.
Ms Heyes: Typically within our
stock traditionally it has been two-bed terraced housing but that
has been occupied by the Bangladeshi community predominantly because
that is the area where they first settled when they came into
Oldham and there has not been the accommodation that they could
move out of those areas into, so they stayed in an area that they
have seen as being safe for them to stay in albeit the property
types that they occupy do not suit their aspirations or their
needs.
Q50 Mr Clelland: Does this manifest
itself in the private sector as well, the same sort of segregation,
so that people are buying properties in particular areas in order
to keep their particular communities together?
Mr Broadbent: There are some very
interesting factors in the market. You will see in certain parts
of Oldham, particularly those areas of Oldham which are occupied
by those communities, that estate agent boards are virtually absent
because the local community deals with the market itself. There
are enormous levels of overcrowding. Typically in parts of Westwood
and Glodwick that you have been to see you might find that 40
per cent of the households statutorily are overcrowded. Part of
that is to do with the cultural desire to live together as well
as, as Sajjad has said, some of the negative factors that affect
choice which are around fear.
Q51 Mr Clelland: Is it realistic
to assume that we can create racially mixed residential areas?
Mr Broadbent: My own view is that
clearly efforts need to be made in order to try and spread opportunity,
to establish a framework that enables people to make positive
choices, and that was something that came out of David Ritchie's
original report. From a housing provider point of view, providing
socially aware and socially sensitive services, providing the
language speaking, all the things that you have heard from our
health partners, are just as important to us as having appropriate
accommodation that those families need and demand in all locations.
The reality is that we have so few larger family homes; we have
probably got less than Sajjad has and yet his is a small organisation.
Providing larger family homes in all communities is one way in
terms of the actual accommodation in which we can allow a framework
for integration to start to occur.
Q52 Chairman: How many four-bedroomed
and larger homes are you building at the present moment?
Mr Broadbent: As an arm's length
management organisation from the council, none, but certainly
our partners in the housing association sector are.
Ms Heyes: We have got two significant
developments in the town at the moment and they do comprise some
larger family housing, but obviously the aim is to work towards
integrated communities, so we are looking at developing a mix
of accommodation and a mix of tenure that will meet the aspirations
of both the white community and the ethnic minority community.
Mr Hussain: The ADP programme
has a development mechanism to provide large family housing. We
have got the largest allocation of 48 units, but comparing that,
as Hugh said, to the actual need, it is just a drop in the ocean.
It is going to be a long term programme. We have examples of moving
people on to the fringes and into the mainstream of society, if
you like, where there are mixed schemes and there are good examples
of people living together within Oldham, but it is a slow process.
Q53 Dr Pugh: You have in part answered
my first question, which is, what actions have you taken to promote
integration in the community by your own services?
Mr Broadbent: A very good example
that has been in partnership between the council, ourselves and
the housing association is in an area called St Mary's which is
close to the town centre and was traditionally perceived as a
very white dominated community. Through a package of redevelopment
where some five acres of former council flats which were in low
demand have been cleared, the development brief for that site
is mixed tenure, mixed types of properties, large and small, with
the housing association providing probably about 20 per cent of
those homes which will be four-bedroom homes, and will be let
through their allocation policy based on need. Clearly there is
a recognition amongst the partners that the bricks and mortar
are only one side of the problem here. The chances are that without
a great deal of support within the community, both the existing
community and the possible new communities that go into that area,
there could be some real problems of racial tension, so one of
the things that has been going on that we have done in partnership
with a variety of groups is a community development project on
that estate to encourage more mixing between the communities,
traditionally a white community living there and the neighbouring
communities, many of whom are Bangladeshi and Pakistani, again
to set the framework for when this development comes out of the
ground, hopefully next year, so that all members of the community
will be able to make a positive choice to live on St Mary's whether
they are buying or renting and whether they are from minority
communities or not.
Q54 Dr Pugh: So you are saying that
when you plan a new estate you take into account the health implications,
the policing implications, all the implications of building a
new community?
Mr Broadbent: Indeed. One of the
fundamentals of the planning brief is particularly to pick up
all those issues about whether the estate will work well in terms
of community safety.
Q55 Dr Pugh: What about Aksa? They
mostly target Asian communities?
Mr Hussain: No, we do not target
the Asian community, but that is the natural consequence of having
large family accommodation where we have 70 per cent of our tenants.
Q56 Dr Pugh: Do you wish to have
an agenda of trying to create more integrated communities as well?
Mr Hussain: That would be great.
Q57 Dr Pugh: Housing allocation and
school choice are deeply embedded in one another in Oldham, are
they not? Do you take that on board when you consider housing
developments, exactly where these people who will be living in
these houses are going to educate their children?
Mr Broadbent: The reality is that
the scale of new development is still tiny compared to the existing
levels of population and the existing issues around segregation.
Perhaps one of the most interesting features in the rented housing
market today is choice of housing, people exercising choices of
their own. Indeed, many organisations, and certainly ours, have
introduced choice-based letting schemes and new ways of ensuring
better access for all members of the community to social housing
which might otherwise have been perceived as low demand. We have
a thing called Instant Homes which gives people a first through-the-door,
no questions asked (apart from tests of rent arrears or anti-social
behaviour) instant choice and that has been successful in broadening
access to the people in minority communities in all parts of Oldham,
and particularly the young population. We recognise that doing
that is going to be our future.
Q58 Dr Pugh: Would it be fair to
say that whatever you do in the way of housing development it
is not going to have much significant impact on the choices people
make with regard to schooling? The schools remain just as segregated
even if you devise the most integrated housing developments?
Mr Broadbent: I think that is
true.
Mr Hussain: I certainly would
agree with that because we have got schemes which are on the fringes
which are adjoining predominantly white schools and the choice
factor has come into play and now they are predominantly Asian
schools. It is just moving the problem on and that has been a
big difficulty in Oldham.
Q59 Chairman: How far is it the physical
types of buildings you have got or the tenure which is the biggest
problem in trying to increase cohesion?
Ms Heyes: I think it is a significant
issue, certainly the type of property and now we are paying much
more attention to that. We have just done the first phase of a
development which was predominantly larger family housing and
there is an opportunity in that area to mix and work towards segregation
but we realised that in the second phase we were going to have
to pay much more attention to widening the diversity of the size
of accommodation and the type of accommodation to appeal to all
the aspirations of the different aspects of the community, to
reiterate something that Sajjad said.
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