Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
MR ROY
IRWIN, MR
MIKE MAUNDER,
MS SARAH
WEBB AND
MR IAN
RICHARDSON
28 FEBRUARY 2005
Q140 Chris Mole: You have both suggested
the planning system is not really geared up to address issues
of low demand. What more do you think could be done to make it
proactive in managing the housing supply across districts, both
with low demand and high demand?
Ms Webb: I think there is a very
simple starting point, which is actually that engagement. I do
not think we have seen enough active engagement from planning
authorities yet in the Pathfinder areas generally and in the low-demand
problem specifically. It has been their responsibility as well
as everybody else's responsibility to try and solve an important
starting point. I do not under-emphasise how important that is.
There are specifics around site assembly and the use of CPO powers,
which I think could be improved. It is very difficult to get CPO
powers to work effectively, particularly in areas of mixed tenure.
There is work we can do there to improve how planning legislation
supports that process.
Mr Maunder: I think there is a
major issue in terms of planning and that is to do with regional
spatial strategies and the extent to which they will reflect and
support the work that the Pathfinders are doing. There is a potential
I think—and it is something that we have highlighted in
our best practice handbook—that some regional spatial strategies
could actually work against the success of Pathfinders by potentially
allowing building which would compete with Pathfinders and the
work that they are trying to do. So we highlight a need for some
better co-ordination from a national and local government office
level, to try and ensure that both the regional spatial strategy
and the strategies being developed by Pathfinders complement each
other rather than compete.
Q141 Chairman: Can you give us a concrete
example of where it is not happening then?
Mr Maunder: Regional spatial strategies
are still going through their developmental phase, and they are
each at different positions at the moment, but it does appear
that potentially, with some of the things that are on the table
at the moment, if those discussions proceed in the way that they
are, then there could be that level of competition.
Q142 Chairman: Can you be a little bit
more specific: where is the difficulty?
Mr Maunder: The area that would
give us most concern at the moment in terms of the draft regional
spatial strategy would be in the North East.
Q143 Chairman: What you are saying is
that there is too much greenfield development still being talked
about in the North East?
Mr Maunder: There is too much
development outside the Pathfinder area, whether it is on green
or brownfield sites, that will compete with what the Pathfinder
is trying to achieve in Newcastle/Gateshead.
Q144 Sir Paul Beresford: You have answered
the first part of the question. The second part of the question
was how could planning be proactive in high demand areas. I see
proactive there as helping the low demand areas: proactive in
the high demand areas to stem growth and try to induce it to go
further into the low demand areas.
Mr Maunder: I think what you are
highlighting is tension between what the Government's national
policy might be in relation to growth areas and how that is reflected
through what is happening at a local level through regional spatial
strategies, and the need to ensure that there is clarity of guidance,
I think, to those people who are writing regional spatial strategies.
Mr Richardson: Again, if I can
add to that, I think there is some cause for optimism. It is early
days but the bringing together of the regional housing boards
and the regional planning functions, one would hope, will help
to bring about a culture change that enables planning to serve
as a facilitator of the delivery of the housing market restructuring
generally rather than something which focuses unnecessarily or
unduly on development control, so that it enables rather than
inhibits the delivery of our objectives.
Q145 Chris Mole: Would the Commission
share that view of the coming together of regional planning and
housing boards?
Mr Irwin: I think if there is
some consistency in terms of regional policy that actually links
the planning arrangements for spatial strategy and the resource
distribution issues, then that would make sense. The context that
is slightly different to market renewal currently is the market
renewal funding, and the options and review processes do not go
through regional arrangements in terms of allocation of resources.
That does not mean that that is a problem, but if you do not deal
with it, it could be.
Q146 Mr Cummings: Many of the submissions
made to this inquiry have referred to skills shortages and recruitment
difficulties. Can you tell the Committee how serious you believe
these problems to be.
Mr Maunder: We referred earlier
to people that have been recruited to the Pathfinders, and there
is no doubt that there have been some good quality people that
have been recruited at that sort of fairly high level. I think
there are concerns that there are some shortages of skills within
the regeneration profession, and I think that has been recognised
by ministers with some proposals that have recently been announced,
but those are not going to deliver in the short term and there
is some concern. I think there is concern about the construction
industry. In terms of northern cities that make up Pathfinders,
there is a lot of construction work going on at the present time,
and one is concerned that there will be some competition between
some of the works that are currently going on and Pathfinders,
what that might do to prices and what that might actually do to
the potential for contracts to be tendered and not to find takers.
We in our best practice handbook talk about some prospects for
trying to develop staff by using consultants. We are slightly
critical of the use of consultants . . .
Q147 Chairman: Bringing all these consultants
in is just taking money away from the Pathfinders. It is going
down to the South of England. Almost all the consultants come
from the South of England, do they not? They come up on the train—ever
so expensive.
Mr Maunder: Chairman, I started
by saying that we were slightly critical of the use of consultants,
the over-use of consultants, and what we are suggesting is that
they could be used to try and develop the skills within Pathfinders
and within the constituent local authorities. There is a role
for consultants; there is no question about that. They do have
some skills but the challenge for Pathfinders is to ensure that
they get the best value that they can out of the consultants that
they use.
Q148 Mr Cummings: Who taught the consultants?
Mr Maunder: I am sure that many
of them will have worked in local authorities and other areas.
Q149 Mr Cummings: The people that you
are proposing to train come from local authorities and the private
sector. I am just following on from the comments made by the Chairman
concerning the prolific use of consultants in this particular
dimension.
Mr Maunder: There is no doubt
there has been considerable use of consultants in this area. What
we are saying is we do not think that they have been used as effectively
as they could have been. There is no doubt that they could have
done some very good work, but there is also some work that has
been produced that we would question in terms of the value that
it has added to the work that the Pathfinders wanted to do.
Ms Webb: I think there has been
a clear step change in the last couple of years in some of the
thinking from people who work in the Pathfinder areas, in particular,
in thinking strategically, in project management skills, in working
with the private sector, in linking planning and housing together,
in all those things. What I do not think we have yet is enough
of a critical mass of that. We would see it as very much part
of our responsibility to try and build that critical mass. We
are reviewing our professional qualification at the moment, just
as one example of doing that, and my guess is, without predicting
the outcome of that, that the kinds of skills we will identify
as needing the profession to have in the next five years will
be quite different from the ones before that. But I do not think
there are no skills; I just do not think we have enough of them
yet. Our job is to prepare people to be intelligent clients of
all kinds of support mechanisms, whether it is consultants or
anybody else.
Q150 Mr Cummings: This particular question
is to the CIH. I do notice that you are running some two three-day
residential workshops. They are very short courses indeed. How
are you planning to tackle the fundamental skills shortages required
to manage market renewal programmes?
Mr Richardson: I think we need
to see this in a number of ways. Firstly, we are making a response
to this. Secondly, those three day masterclasses are a first initiative,
short-term bringing together of people who have been developing
those skills, and looking at how that can be replicated more widely.
That is in some senses a short course response, and that is not
unusual in any area of skills development. I think what is important
though is Sarah's earlier point, which is that we are reviewing
currently our whole education and training front, our professional
qualification, with a view to ensuring that we are geared up to
delivering the sort of skills and experience that people need
to deal with the current problems that we are faced with. At the
moment the responses to your questions have concentrated, perhaps
understandably, on the need for project planning and management
skills to deliver the programmes in the Pathfinder, but what I
think is of at least equal importance is the need for skills in
the construction industry. There is major investment going on
associated with the Pathfinders and more broadly with areas of
low demand, many of which have witnessed stock transfer and so
on. There is an awful lot of investment can go on there. All the
evidence points to an acute shortage of skilled labour and craftsmen,
the likelihood that many of those people will be lost in the relatively
short to medium term as a consequence of the age profile of the
people within the sector, and the need for people to come in quite
quickly, otherwise what we will be faced with is poorer value
for money than would otherwise be the case in these investment
programmes, as we compete with each other for the relatively short
supply of those skilled people.
Q151 Mr Cummings: Any thoughts as to
who should fund these programmes?
Mr Richardson: I think, at the
risk of sounding slightly glib, it points to the need for partnership.
Q152 Chairman: Who are the partners?
Mr Richardson: The partners are
those organisations which are commissioning the work, whether
they be local authorities, housing associations, the private builders
and so on, and the construction companies themselves. We all stand
to benefit; we all have a vested interest in seeing this skills
development, and I think it points not only to the need for long-term
apprenticeship that gives people proper skills, but in the short
term we need some quicker fixes. Those investment programmes need
to hit the ground running pretty quickly, so there is a need for
the development of some skills which do not require long-term
apprenticeships and so on but enable people to deliver that investment
programme effectively.
Q153 Chairman: Is there a training levy
left in the building industry? I know most of the others have
gone.
Mr Richardson: I do not know,
Chairman.
Ms Webb: I think there are some
important small scale initiatives happening within individual
Pathfinder areas around apprenticeship schemes and that kind of
thing, but there is probably a need for some kind of DTI/ODPM
level partnership as well.
Q154 Mr O'Brien: Mr Irwin, the Audit
Commission is recognised as a "critical friend" of the
Pathfinders. They are also the auditors of some of the agencies
that are helping with these schemes. How do you reconcile these
two conflicting views that you have?
Mr Irwin: First of all, the people
who do the relative work are totally detached from each other,
so they are not the same people who are auditing the accountable
bodies, which is the audit role, and those people in the "critical
friend" role. The second thing is that, quite rightly, local
authorities across the country ask their auditors for their views
on issues, which you could see in advance of them actually making
a decision could be seen as a critical friend role in another
respect anyway. Is this local, does this comply with national
guidance, etc? So I do not think the two roles are conflicting
at all. One is for the accountable body and one is for the Pathfinder,
which is the oversight . . .
Q155 Mr O'Brien: Which is the accountable
body?
Mr Irwin: The accountable body
will be one of the principal authorities within the constituent
area, so it could be either a metropolitan authority or a county
council.
Q156 Mr O'Brien: But they are helping
with the programme. They want to see the programme succeed too.
You are auditing that.
Mr Irwin: We are auditing their
compliance . . .
Q157 Mr O'Brien: You are also a critical
friend of the Pathfinders. Is there not some conflict there?
Mr Irwin: No, I do not think so.
Q158 Chairman: So you think it is perfectly
easy for the critical friend to say "Yes, go ahead,"
and then the auditor to say "You shouldn't have done that"?
Mr Irwin: I do not think a critical
friend's role is to say "Yes, go ahead." A critical
friend's role would be to say "Have you thought this through
properly? Where is your evidence? Are you sure this is going to
actually make a difference to the programme?" A critical
friend is not about sanctioning actions; it is about questioning
actions.
Q159 Chairman: But if you question it,
and are satisfied with the answers to the questions, it is a bit
upsetting if one of your colleagues, although totally separate,
says "You shouldn't have done it."
Mr Irwin: I do not think that
is likely to be the case. I do not think that the role of critical
friend is to sanction things; it is just to make sure that people
have made their decision, and, by definition, their decision is
not our decision.
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