Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
14 JUNE 2004
MRS MARGARET
FORD AND
MR DAVID
HIGGINS
Q1 Chairman: We now come on to the general
evidence session on English Partnerships and I think it is at
this point that you would like to make an introductory statement
to us.
Mrs Ford: Although the Committee
has heard from English Partnerships a couple of times in the last
two years specially on the Coalfields Programme and so on, it
is a full two years since we had a more general discussion on
English Partnerships. A lot has changed in that period now and
we would welcome a couple of minutes to bring the Committee up
to date. The five year review of English Partnerships concluded
in the spring of 2002 and coincided with my own appointment. The
review accepted the need for a national agency that could lever
a critical mass of landholdings, expertise and finance. Five areas
of core business were identified for English Partnerships at that
time and that is the agenda that we have been working to. If I
could briefly go over those five areas. Firstly, we were charged
with the development of a strategic portfolio of our own projects.
Typically very large, complex projects, mainly requiring pre-investment
in remediation or infrastructure, certainly capable of unlocking
development potential and all capable of demonstrating best practice
in urban design and sustainability. There are over 40 of these
projects across the country and a good example would the Greenwich
Peninsula in East London. Secondly, our role as specialist adviser
to Government on brownfield land. We have significant expertise
and intelligence within our agency on the science and management
of brownfield. In the last two years, we have developed the national
land use database, a great source of information for other public
agencies and developers, we have led the creation of the first
ever brownfield strategy for England and set up the Land Restoration
Trust, a national endowment-based charity for managing brownfield
land into leisure and recreational use. We do not just advise
on brownfield, we roll up our sleeves. Many of our own strategic
sites are on land that is being transformed and the evidence that
we gave to the Committee on the Coalfields Programme I think would
be a good example of that. Thirdly, we have a new role as broker
of surplus public sector land. Within Government, we have a large,
valuable asset base and we now act as a broker with other Government
departments who intend to dispose of land or surplus buildings.
We hold the Register and disposing organisations post their intention
on this Register for 40 days prior to going to the open market.
This gives us an opportunity to either influence the type of brief
that comes to the market, so marrying the best possible capital
receipt with meeting aspirations of housing policy around different
areas or putting different Government bodies with mutual interests
in touch with each other or, in exceptional cases, we purchase
the asset ourselves if it will add significant public value to
those developments and the purchase of the RAF Staff College at
Bracknell might be a good example of this. Fourthly, our role
in housing which we have touched on in the previous session. Simply
put, we have a role in increasing supply and in stemming decay
and abandonment and, through our own portfolio and the Register
I just spoke about, we can identify significant opportunities
for new settlements, for urban renewal or for urban extensions,
especially in the four growth areas. In the Midlands and the North
in contrast, our role is to work with the pathfinders on early
intervention. As we said, master planning, selective demolition
where that is required, new infrastructure and also encouraging
by gap funding private developers to come into areas where previously
they would not have been active. We are not confining that investment
to the pathfinders though they are a focus for us, we are also
active in the new towns and I am glad to be able to say to the
Committee that Woodside Estate in Telford is now a good example
of where real progress is being made. Finally, we have a whole
range of functions that we discharge in support of the urban renaissance.
Funding and support to the 16 urban regeneration companies, delivery
of the seven millennium communities demonstration projects and
general advocacy of the principles of new urbanism. We are piloting
enquiry by design and design coding, for example, in much of our
sites. We also do a great deal of training and development of
the urban regeneration profession and, last but not least, by
the demonstration of best practice in all of our projects, we
really try to practise what we preach. When we report to Parliament
in the next few weeks, I hope to be able to demonstrate a very
significant increase in our investment profile and dramatically
improved outcomes for Government.
Q2 Mr O'Brien: Regional development agencies—and
this follows up with some of the issues arising out of your recent
statement—did absorb some of the roles of English Partnerships
and the Government emphasis on regional strategies which includes
practically all the points you have just raised. Why do we need
English Partnerships?
Mrs Ford: That question was posed
two years ago at the five-year review of English Partnerships
and Government concluded that it did want to retain a national
agency I think for two or three very clear reasons. Firstly, if
you want to be able to recycle capital in Government, then having
a national portfolio which is sufficiently large in size and diverse
in terms of its spread means that capital receipts which you can
raise in one part of the country can be recycled into investment
in other parts of the country which badly need that investment.
It was always a criticism of the Commissions for New Towns which
did not recycle that in that way and that is one of the things
Government decided to do. Secondly, for very large-scale infrastructure
projects of the type we were talking about, you need a serious
critical mass of expertise and funding. If I say to you that English
Partnerships has around 350 professionals from the land disciplines
and an RDA on average would have around a dozen people, it follows
that, for very large complex projects, you need the kind of critical
mass of expertise that our organisation offers and increasingly
we work hand in glove with RDAs to work on their behalf on these
very large projects like the Omega site at the M56/M6 junction,
the old Burtonwood Air Base near Warrington—a massive, massive
site, a 25-year life to the project that needs a lot of particular
expertise in the North-West Development Agency and we are very
keen that we would take that forward. Also, if you are trying
to lever in substantial moneys from the private sector, to have
a balance sheet of the strength of English Partnerships and the
ability to do that across the country, Government determined was
very important. So, for those and other reasons, they decided
to retain a national agency and that is what we have been doing
for the last two years.
Q3 Sir Paul Beresford: Could we turn
the question the other way around. If we have your expertise over
many years, the relationship with the private sector, a portfolio
and we now have these new boys on the paddock, do we actually
need them in the regeneration?
Mrs Ford: I think there is a case
to be made for having a national agency alongside regional and
more local delivery vehicles. In the same way that our focus now
is much, much better than it was two or three years ago because
we are not trying to do everything. We have a focus on very large
significant infrastructure sites that unlock development. We are
not trying to do every mill conversion everywhere that you can
think of. The RDAs are doing much more specific local regeneration
in support of regional economic strategies and we support that
by the larger projects. So, I think there is room for both of
us.
Q4 Sir Paul Beresford: So, in certain
areas, they ought to just back away and hand it across to you;
are they likely to?
Mr Higgins: I think we do that
already. Regeneration is one of eight areas that an RDA focuses
on. Primarily, it focuses on economic employment, skills and regeneration
is one of those eight. We just focus on regeneration. What we
do with all the RDAs now is sit down with them with our corporate
business plan two months in advance of it coming to our board
and meet with each of the RDAs and say, "Here are our priorities"
and we discuss with them their priorities and agree jointly where
we are going to work together. So, in some areas like Plymouth,
we are working on sites beside each other but we have joint marketing
strategies. In other areas, we do entirely separate projects such
as in London, the LDA focus on the Lea Valley and we focus on
Barking Riverside. So, we clearly understand now who is going
to lead on which projects.
Q5 Mr O'Brien: And the duplication of
services there?
Mr Higgins: No, it is a matter
of priorities and skills. One thing about our industry is that
there is a huge shortage of skills. There are just not enough
people to go around. So, our issue is making sure that we really
limit our activities to those projects where we can make some
real difference in terms of sustainability.
Q6 Mr O'Brien: The RDAs acquired a number
of staff from English Partnerships when they were set up, so the
skills were transferred over there. When you refer to skills in
the operations, the RDAs are in a very favourable position. If
I could come back to a point that was made about the fact that
you could transfer resources from one region to another if you
considered that to be a feasible study. Can you give me an example
where a regional development agency would agree to transferring
resources out of their area into another area.
Mr Higgins: Yes, the Coalfields
Programme last year would be a classic example of that. At the
start of the year, each of the regions came up with what they
forecast they would spend for that year but, for lots of reasons—appraisals,
planning, expenditure—it just was not spent in that profile.
So, as we were responsible for the single national pot of expenditure
for that year, as we tracked it every quarter, we would then transfer
money for that year round to other areas which were able to spend
it during that year.
Q7 Sir Paul Beresford: You transferred
the money?
Mrs Ford: With their consent.
Q8 Mr O'Brien: You were referring to
raising money in one region to transfer it to another region.
My experience of the regional development agencies is that not
one has enough resources to meet their demands. So, is it feasible
that they would agree? If there is land in their area that is
available for development and it raises problems, is transferring
that to another region something that you understand will happen?
Mrs Ford: Perhaps I could clarify.
Maybe I did not explain it terribly well. What I was meaning was
that when you have a national programme as we do and you are able
to generate capital receipts as we do, those are not allocated
into particular regions. Capital receipts to English Partnerships
come into a national pot and then, the following year, we would
reallocate those, so it is not done on a ring-fence regional basis.
What I am saying is that when you regard England as a national
proposition in regeneration, you can invest in different parts
of the country depending on need and opportunity. So, we do not
have ring-fence regional budgets that we have to meet or agree,
we have a national programme that happens to be delivered regionally.
Q9 Mr O'Brien: The regional development
agencies do have a ring-fenced budget.
Mrs Ford: They do but we would
have no say over how a regional development agency discharged
its budget, we would only have say over our own.
Q10 Mr O'Brien: Exactly and that is the
point I am making that, on strategic sites in a region, would
the RDAs not be the best organisation to take over those strategic
sites and develop them?
Mrs Ford: I suppose I just come
back to the point that David and I have made earlier. There is
a huge skill shortage in our industry. We have a large critical
mass of people who can handle big, more complex infrastructure
projects and, in those ones, I do not think there is a single
RDA that has approached me in the last two years to say, "We
would be better doing this." The reverse is much more often
the case now.
Q11 Mr O'Brien: How do you address the
point in the east of England where you do not have an office?
How can you be making a meaningful contribution in that area where
you have no presence?
Mr Higgins: We have just appointed
a new executive into that area and we are establishing an office
there now and we have been working closely with Cambridge, for
example, in that area.
Q12 Mr O'Brien: For what purpose was
the executive appointed?
Mr Higgins: To focus on the M11
growth corridor and keep our sustainable communities plan where
we did not have a big presence. We have historical presences in
Harlow; we are doing quite a bit of work in Stevenage and of course
historically in Peterborough now, also part of the M11 growth
corridor, but there was a strong request from Cambridge for us
to become involved in a very complex set of infrastructure developments
and surplus Government land release, so we set up an office there.
Q13 Andrew Bennett: Can we turn specifically
to London. How many agencies and other organisations are really
involved in redevelopment and development generally?
Mr Higgins: In London, really
the LDA and ourselves.
Q14 Andrew Bennett: Why should we have
two?
Mr Higgins: Should there be more
or less?
Q15 Andrew Bennett: I am asking you.
Mr Higgins: Again, it is a matter
of priorities. Our historical interest in London comes from the
Greenwich Peninsula site and, more recently, Barking Reach. The
LDA have much of the land portfolio that was transferred across
from English Partnerships and their major areas of focus relate
to those but also now increasingly to the Olympic site and Lea
Valley. That is taking a large part of their time, plus Wembley.
We have a very open and good relationship with the LDA. They have
asked us to take the lead on Barking Reach; they do have landholdings
in Dagenham but they have asked us to lead on that area there.
Q16 Andrew Bennett: Have they really
enthusiastically asked you to do the Dagenham site? Would it not
be fairer to say that you carved them up?
Mr Higgins: The Dagenham site?
Q17 Andrew Bennett: Yes.
Mr Higgins: No, absolutely not.
In fact, they actually have funded and sit on the steering committee
for the Barking Riverside master planning; they pay equally with
us for the appointment of the master planners to do that and they
sit on a joint committee there with us.
Q18 Sir Paul Beresford: One of the fun
things about regeneration in London and other cities is that,
just as you have everything right, it seems to be going well and
everybody is agreed, along comes some minion from English Heritage
and says, "A gasometer, it is listed!" Do you have this
sort of problem?
Mr Higgins: We have a gasometer
listed on Greenwich, actually.
Q19 Andrew Bennett: So, you think everything
is sweetness and light between yourself and the London Development
Agency?
Mr Higgins: I think we have a
good working relationship. We have prioritised and we will work
on that. In fact, the latest example of where we are working with
the London Development Agency and indeed the GLA is in our focus
on affordable housing across London on an initiative that we call
Londonwide which is focusing on 3,500. We have the full cooperation
from the GLA and the LDA to work with us on that.
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