Examination of Witnesses (Questions 700
- 719)
WEDNESDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2004
MR JON
ROUSE AND
MR DAVID
HIGGINS
Q700 Chairman: Good afternoon, welcome.
I think you are aware of the time constraints that we have this
afternoon; I am very grateful to you for coming along. Can I kick
off by just asking you to explain, very simply, your respective
roles? You are both, I know, involved in the provision of affordable
and social housing but how, very simply, do you carve out your
responsibilities?
Mr Rouse: Shall I go first? The
Housing Corporation is, I suppose, the affordable homes agency
and responsible for regulating and funding Registered Social Landlords,
which are largely housing associations, and through them we will
provide this year some 27,000 new homes. We regulate in total
two million homes which are provided at sub-market levels, either
through social rent or various forms of low cost home ownership.
Mr Higgins: English Partnerships
is the Government's national regeneration agency, primarily focused
on land release, land development, major exercises, decontamination,
regeneration, master planning and regional overriding infrastructure.
Q701 Chairman: Can you, having explained
that, explain how both of you slot into the Government's Sustainable
Communities Plan, what you have been doing?
Mr Rouse: From the Housing Corporation's
perspective we are earmarked to provide most of the affordable
homes element of the Communities Plan. We invest all over England
and, since the Communities Plan was published we have, in line
with regional housing strategies, pushed more of our investment
into the growth areas in London and the South East and into the
Pathfinder Areas in the north of England and the West Midlands.
Q702 Chairman: You say that you will
be developing those homes but presumably it will actually be individual
housing associations.
Mr Rouse: Through housing associations;
housing associations are our intermediary for all new development
at the present time, albeit that quite a significant proportion
of that development, some 49%, is actually done through section
106 schemes, so it is private developers working with housing
associations in partnership.
Mr Higgins: Five areas of activity:
direct development through our own strategic sites, particularly
in the Growth Areas and in the Northern Way; secondly, we work
on brown field regeneration, primarily coalfields but also in
areas like the Thames Gateway; thirdly, surplus public sector
land, firstly creating an asset register of surplus Government
sector land, then ensuring that we can get Government policy on
that land released; fourthly, making sure communities are developing
in affordable ways, so we focus particularly on affordable housing,
we work very closely with the Housing Corporation in this area
and, finally, best practice, i.e. quality, so we drive the whole
quality agenda in association with CABE and the Housing Corporation,
so that is the whole issue of sustainability and coding.
Q703 Chairman: When you say you are
heavily involved in brown field land, are you responsible for
cleaning it up?
Mr Higgins: In many cases, absolutely
right, a hundred coalfield sites around the country or big contaminated
sites like Greenwich or Barking Reach.
Q704 Chairman: The Sustainable Communities
Plan and the Barker Review—which obviously is relevant to
our enquiry here—both put a lot of emphasis on social and
economic issues, but very little, we feel—or we have found
so far—on environmental issues. Is that a position which
you are happy about?
Mr Higgins: We would see that
the Sustainable Communities Plan in March 2003 gave a 20-year
framework, a policy framework, within which we as one of the Government
agencies could work. We certainly understand the need to balance
the social issues along with environmental issues and community
involvement, so Barker really came up with a series of scenarios,
a series of growth scenarios, recognising that supply was not
meeting demand. How those match, we see the issue of development
as far more than just a set of numbers, so while large numbers
are talked of across the region, the challenge is to create a
sustainable community, so what we do is we demonstrate exemplar
sites where we balance these economic, social and environmental
issues.
Q705 Chairman: We will come on to
those in a minute, but you basically go along with Barker then,
saying that houses should be built in areas where there is the
greatest demand, which is a fundamental economic proposition.
Mr Higgins: Barker came out with
a series of different levels of numbers that were required, a
series of scenarios. We certainly recognise there is a mismatch
between demand and supply, that is for certain. Barker came up
with a series of recommendations and some of those the Government
has accepted, so the Infrastructure Fund, to a certain extent
the idea of joining spatial planning with the Regional Housing
Boards seems to make sense, it is out for consultation at the
moment. Many of the others the Government is yet to respond to.
Q706 Chairman: What about you?
Mr Higgins: Our position is that
from a planning point of view we do not really have a direct involvement
in planning, because planning is an issue that starts with regional
plans, sub-regional plans and city plans. We get quite directly
involved in the growth areas with city plans, for example, so
in Milton Keynes, so where we intervene in growth areas and do
major developments we ensure that our developments complement
the overall regional planning policy, we do not have a great involvement
in determining the overall spatial development plans for the regions.
Q707 Chairman: I am just trying to
tease you out of your box, if I may, a little bit on this. Barker,
for example, went as far as to say that there were certain areas
that she felt might have to be abandoned altogether; do you think
that there are places which it is not worth trying to regenerate
any more, and we might as well put everything down into the South
East where, as we heard last week from Sir John Egan, there is
enormous, rapacious demand, and the rest can go to the devil?
Mr Higgins: We do not see that.
We see significant regeneration and development in the North.
Some of them are areas of high demand and issues of affordability
of course are in the North, so a lot of our investment goes into
the northern Growth Areas and the eight core cities. Our position
is that it is a much more than numbers, it is a lot more than
housing numbers. Developing sustainable communities is incredibly
complex, so what we do is focus on demonstration, we look at how
you can balance social and environmental needs with the economic
needs.
Q708 Chairman: Barker also makes
very controversial proposals in relation to the planning system,
recommending that there should be changes and that effectively
it should be marketised. Do you have opinions on that? Do you,
Mr Rouse, have an opinion on that?
Mr Rouse: My specific interest
here is affordable housing and section 106, which is a key area
which Kate Barker focused on, and is critically important in terms
of the delivery of affordable housing and, indeed, mixed tenure
communities which we feel are the most sustainable forms of community,
where you actually mix income groups within the same development.
So our main concern here in terms of planning is to ensure that
the provision through section 106 is maintained, adopting a wide
definition of sustainability.
Q709 Chairman: But you do not have
views on the fundamental changes that she recommends towards the
whole planning system, the way that demand triggers the release
of land, side-stepping traditional planning systems and structures?
Mr Higgins: This is the whole
suggestion of buffer zones, triggered by a market response.
Q710 Chairman: Yes.
Mr Higgins: I think it is more
complex than that, particularly when you consider that a number
of the buffer zones around the Growth Areas have local authorities
as major landowners. The key to development is not just about
land release, the key to development is about infrastructure provision,
both physical and social infrastructure, and unless that is built
in advance of need, which is the key issues, you will not have
a sustainable community.
Chairman: Thank you. Helen Clark.
Q711 Mrs Clark: Thank you. The Barker
Review has also put forward some proposals for actually merging
the Regional Housing Boards and the Regional Planning Bodies,
and in fact the Government has accepted this and agreed to it.
I would be really interested to hear what changes you think would
result from this, and in fact whether you think they are going
to be beneficial or not.
Mr Higgins: I am not sure that
I would accept that. I believe there is a discussion paper out
at the moment on that which we are responding to, but John.
Mr Rouse: From a Corporation perspective
we are pretty positive about this shift, to be quite honest, because
we think there are many benefits from having true spatial planning
at the regional level that can take into account transport requirements,
economic development, planning in general terms and housing.
Q712 Mrs Clark: A combination then
really.
Mr Rouse: It is strategic co-ordination
and strategic decision-making and, from the Corporation's perspective,
we are currently members of the Regional Housing Boards, as are
English Partnerships, and as long as we can continue to have a
voice in that apparatus to ensure that affordable housing needs
are properly represented, then we can see many advantages in bringing
in the new arrangements that have been proposed in the consultation
paper.
Q713 Mrs Clark: So joined-up government.
Mr Rouse: At the regional level.
Q714 Mrs Clark: At the regional level,
okay. Specifically to English Partnerships, you are actually playing
a very major role and a key role actually in the growth areas
in the South East, of which my constituency, Peterborough, is
certainly one, and the nine actual Renewal Pathfinders in the
North. The emphasis that we have in the Communities Plan is really
very much centred on growth in the South East. We have had evidence
expressing concern actually about this emphasis, is it the right
thing, should we be concentrating on the South East all the time
and, in fact, the ability of the South East to really absorb this
level of growth. Are you concerned as well, have you had representations
on this topic?
Mr Higgins: The advantage of co-ordinating
the social and economic infrastructure, the physical infrastructure
and the economic development is that you have jobs to match this
growth and you have the physical infrastructure. One of the advantages
of Peterborough is that it has a significant investment, because
of its history as a new town, in major infrastructure, so the
roads infrastructure, so it can cope with that level of growth,
hence the extension of the Cambridge Corridor Growth Area to include
Peterborough some months ago. I would say that certainly there
should be a focus on looking at growth in other areas, and I am
sure that the Department is looking at that growth because there
are now increasingly hot spots that are emerging in the Midlands.
Q715 Mrs Clark: I was going to come
on to that, I was going to come on to the fact that perhaps the
vast majority of land that you are administering is actually in
the South East, for development, and I would really like to hear
a bit more about the other areas that you are planning to open
up.
Mr Higgins: If you look at our
outputs from employment land and from housing, it is balanced
between the South East, particularly the legacy sites in Milton
Keynes, and the other vast majority comes from our coalfield sites.
If you look at our major housing output it actually comes from
major regeneration of initially 52 sites, now expanded to over
100 sites.
Q716 Mrs Clark: You mentioned the
Midlands, whereabouts in the Midlands?
Mr Higgins: There are very significant
investments around the coalfields areas of the Midlands and Telford,
of course, where we have historical sites as well and very large
coalfields. We have four big projects going at the moment totalling
around 8,000 houses that are underway there.
Q717 Mrs Clark: And spreading out
to the North as well as the Pathfinder Areas.
Mr Higgins: Certainly we are looking
at Stoke and we are working with Pathfinder in Stoke to work out
how we get involved, we are looking at areas like Haters Pey,
for example, and we are working with that. In Manchester we have
significant work and in Salford we are supporting the proposition
that Salford be created as a URC, and we have a lot of investment
in Liverpool and Sheffield.
Q718 Mrs Clark: You mentioned affordable
housing earlier, and I am going to ask you now what proportion
of the housing with which you are involved is actually social
housing—I do not like the word social housing, but it is
a phrase we have to go with—and affordable housing, what
proportion roughly would you say percentage-wise is that?
Mr Higgins: It depends on the
region and it should be driven by the regional housing strategy
in terms of needs determination, but in most areas it is somewhere
around 30%, 25 to 30%, in London and some areas it is higher than
that. We skew it in our partnership with the Housing Corporation,
we are focused on a series of sites there and there it is well
in excess of that. It really depends on local authority negotiation
and the regional housing strategy.
Q719 Mrs Clark: If I could but suggest
I think you ought to contact those local authorities, particularly
in the South East. If you are thinking of somewhere like Cambridge,
my goodness the housing prices are like Notting Hill in some parts
of it so there is a real need for affordable housing in areas
like that. On a final point, I am delighted to actually meet you
today because in my whole seven and a half years as a member of
Parliament, despite the fact that English Partnerships has actually
got a great interest in my constituency, there has not been a
single person from English Partnerships who has wanted to meet
the local MP or find out about how we can work together, so I
hope that that will happen next week. I would hope also that you
are going to be involved in communications with the other Members
of Parliament, whether in the Midlands, in the North or in the
South East, because it is very important not just to deal with
the local authority but actually people like myself who are responsible
for 160,000 people who all need homes.
Mr Higgins: I think we understand
that very clearly, and the process of development of communities
is very much around public consultation, and if we get reminded
about that regularly with our parties in the end. It is a democratic
process and we are going to win the debate that development is
good, then we have to bring the community with us.
Chairman: It sounds to me as though you
have received an invitation which you would be unwise to refuse.
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