Examination of Witnesses (Questions 760-774)
11 FEBRUARY 2004
YVETTE COOPER
MP, MR JOHN
BRIGHT, FIONA
MACTAGGART MP AND
MR ATUL
PATEL
Q760 Chairman: That is 18 months away.
Fiona Mactaggart: I understand
that. We have long-term contracts and we did that in order to
get value for money for the taxpayer. We will be in a position
to develop much more sensitive letting. I do not accept that we
have completely overrun local desires. That is one of the reasons
why we are regionalising the NASS service in order to ensure that
we can get effective co-operation with local authorities, and
so on. I do not think that it is sensible to say that a class
of people should not be able to live in a place. I actually think
that we might reasonably say that we might want to control some
of the activities of some landlords. But I do not think you can
say that a whole class of people should not be able to live in
a place—because frankly that is what feeds racial discrimination.
Q761 Chairman: While we are on people
coming to this country, there are a significant number of imams
who get into this country with work permits, could it not be a
reasonable condition of those work permits that they had a command
of English so that when they come to serve their communities they
can serve them both in religious terms and in contributions to
the community?
Fiona Mactaggart: Yes it would
and we will be introducing that.
Q762 Mr Cummings: This is to the ODPM,
the ODPM has defined a sustainable community as one in which there
is a diverse, vibrant and creative local culture. Can you tell
the Committee what practical steps you are taking to ensure that
the new housing developments in London and the South East will
promote both diverse and cohesive communities?
Yvette Cooper: I think the housing
and the wider community issue is particularly important, it is
something that we are very conscious of in the work both round
the growth areas, the Thames Gateway areas, and so on, but also
in the housing market renewal pathfinders as well. What we need
to do is recognise many of the mistakes that were made in the
past in terms of responses to local communities. Previously we
saw things very much as just about bricks and mortar for housing,
do we have enough houses, enough blocks, enough units in the right
place to get everyone into and the approach was very much about
dormitories and things like that. The work being developed round
the Thames Gateway and the other growth areas is very much about
the need to sustain proper communities and that has all sorts
of different dimensions, it means looking at public services,
employment, transport and all of those sort of things. It also
means looking at issues round community facilities, ensuring that
you have ways for people to gather, to meet, to really live as
a local community rather than simply being people living in a
dormitory that then travel somewhere else and never see each other.
Community cohesion is very much a part of that whole approach
and part of the development of those communities. I think that
also applies in housing market renewal pathfinders, there you
probably have even more difficult questions to address because
in housing market renewal pathfinders you are dealing with communities
which are already in place and sometimes where there are already
tensions in place and actually using the housing market renewal
pathfinders is an opportunity to address those as well.
Q763 Mr Cummings: Who is going to monitor
this? Who is going to monitor proposals put forward by housing
market renewal pathfinders to ensure that you are promoting community
cohesion?
Yvette Cooper: The Government
Office is looking immediately at the housing market renewal pathfinders.
We look at these very carefully when each housing market renewal
pathfinder bid comes in. Already, interestingly, the Oldham and
Rochdale Pathfinder and also the East Lancashire Pathfinder have
very much identified community cohesion as one of the key issues
for those pathfinders which they need to address. Many of their
suggestions in terms of the short-term ideas they have, the quick
wins are focused round community cohesion. As they draw up their
longer-term plans it will be one of the factors that will be taken
into account by both the Government Office and by the ODPM in
terms of approving the Pathfinders and giving them the go ahead
and giving them the money to get on with it.
Q764 Chairman: The Northern Way came
out with fanfare this week, how does that deal with social cohesion?
Yvette Cooper: A lot of it was
about economic growth along the M62 northern corridor and a lot
of other issues there. One of the things I think was critical
both to that and to the original sustainable communities plan
was the idea that the community is about people, it is not simply
about bricks and mortar. One of the main things which was announced
as part of that was the liveability fund and the support for different
areas.
Q765 Chairman: Would it not have been
useful to have headlined one of the paragraphs "social cohesion".
Yvette Cooper: We could have done.
You can always find particular re-drafting changes that could
have been made, and so on. There is a strong focus on cohesion,
on building strong communities throughout the document, it is
very much the same approach.
Q766 Chairman: You have to read between
the lines.
Yvette Cooper: It has to be everywhere
in it. It has to be everywhere, when you are talking about how
you develop parks and green spaces in a local community, how you
deal with your housing market renewal pathfinders and housing
issues and tensions there, how you deal with all sorts of things.
I think it is a sort of implicit part of all of it, really.
Q767 Mr Betts: What particular help are
you giving to places like Oldham and Burnley where there is quite
a substantial, in Burnley's case anyway, over-supply of houses
but at the same time there can be shortages of a specific type
of property, particularly large properties which cater for extended
families and therefore you can find some communities end up in
very poor accommodation because there are not the right houses
for them.
Yvette Cooper: The whole approach
of the housing market renewal pathfinder is to look at housing
as a market rather than simply look at it as a sort of provision,
are there enough units, you should look at it as a market, where
it is that people want to live, what kinds of housing they want.
A lot of the areas that are picked up as part of pathfinders are
areas where often demand for housing seems to have collapsed in
the particular area. Often the houses may be very good quality
houses, there may be some very nice houses in some of those areas
but they are the wrong kinds of houses, they are not the kind
of houses that people want, sometimes the area has become stigmatised
or caught up in a whole spiral of different problems. It is about
recognising what kind of housing it is that people want, maybe
there is more need for smaller houses for single people to live
in, maybe it is a need for more family houses with gardens in
a particular area, where you often get streets of houses where
none of the houses have any gardens, they only have tiny yards
and families do not want to live in them any more, recognising
the sort of changes and the sort of things that the market want.
One of the things that is an issue in terms of community cohesion
is actually starting to address as part of that the fact that
you get these huge barriers between different communities, in
particular areas you one have community and you can have strong
segregation that can lead to all sorts of tensions and recognising
that as part of the work on the pathfinders too. One of the things
which I think is important in terms of addressing some of those
sort of tensions is some of the work that some of the areas which
are pathfinders have been looking at, Rochdale is a good example,
round the sort of choice-based lettings, you give people more
choice about where they want to live, the different things that
are coming up, and so on, and you do it with the right kind of
support. If it is an area where there is nobody from that particular
minority ethnic group living at the moment actually arrange support,
somebody goes with them to visit the property, somebody arranges
introductions with the neighbours, talks to the neighbours and
tries to address some of the kinds of prejudices that can prevent
people living in different areas and can lead to some of the hostility.
Q768 Mr Betts: I have a scheme in my
constituency, we see it operating more openly, people understand
it better, it enables people to have a choice in the sort of house
they want, just as somebody who is buying a house would have a
choice about where they wanted to go. On the other hand is there
not a danger it might lead to community fragmentation and people
start to choose to move into a white area or an Asian area according
to their own particular ethnic background.
Yvette Cooper: I think that is
why you cannot see it as a sort of stark choice-based lettings
without actually consciously addressing some of the cohesion issues
with it. Some of the choice-based letting programmes have been
very good at doing the kind of thing I talked about, encouraging
people to visit a house in an area they might not have otherwise
thought about because they thought, "our people do not live
in a place like that, there is going to be too much hostility,
we are going to have too much of a hard time" and working
with the tenants and residents association, maybe with the local
neighbours to support the choice-based lettings, and some of the
evidence so far suggests that it is quite an effective way of
addressing some of those tensions between areas and some of the
ghettoisation that people can fear.
Q769 Chris Mole: The Home Office did
a number of PIs for community cohesion, can you tell me why you
think public opinion surveys are a good tool for measuring the
success of community cohesion?
Fiona Mactaggart: The reason we
produced that guidance about measuring community cohesion in that
form was firstly because we wanted to give people measures which
were not new measures, which were easy to operate. There was very
strong feedback saying, we cannot have another complete set of
figures to count. We had to try and find things which were relatively
easy to count. It is certain that it is not enough to reduce inequalities
in order to build cohesive communities, you have deal with people's
relationships with each other and their shared vision. If you
do not deal with that you do not deliver cohesive communities
just by dealing with inequality.
Q770 Chris Mole: Surveys are the only
way you can get a handle on it.
Fiona Mactaggart: We were told
by those in local authorities that they wanted not to have new
complicated measures. We looked at a way of building in to present
measures finding out that answer.
Q771 Chris Mole: We have also heard the
difference between pathfinders, shadow pathfinders and local government
renewal support beacons round this agenda, can you say something
about how you think best practice is disseminated from pathfinders
and beacons?
Fiona Mactaggart: One of the things
we had was a national conference in November this year where we
looked at some of the lessons that had happened so far and shared
them. On the website are a series of case studies and examples
of things that the pathfinders and beacons have delivered, we
embed them into documents that we publish. There are a series
of ways that we get it out there.
Q772 Chris Mole: If you have got a council
that is struggling to promote cohesion that is not a shadow pathfinder
what does help does the Government give it?
Fiona Mactaggart: The website
has a lot of examples. We have a series of publications and guidance
which come out of this. The publication that was produced at the
first conference of the pathfinder has quite practical guidance,
we have a video—
Q773 Chris Mole: By making information
available.
Yvette Cooper: Making information
available, that includes workshops on the beacon councils and
the progress they have made, they have been pretty well attended
and also just embedding the whole idea of community cohesion in
the performance management framework. You have a mechanism to
follow it up, if you have an area that is really doing badly you
make a mechanism for working through the government office to
address it and to give them additional support.
Q774 Chairman: Do you think real progress
has been made since the riots?
Fiona Mactaggart: Significant
progress has been made, a lot done, a lot to do.
Chairman: On that note thank you very
much indeed.
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