Examination of Witnesses (Questions 154
- 159)
MONDAY 20 MARCH 2006
MR PAUL
SPOONER, MR
JIM GILL
AND MS
HEATHER EMERY
Chairman: Can I welcome Paul Spooner
from English Partnerships, Jim Gill from Liverpool Vision and
Heather Emery from the North West Development Agency. I am here
to invite my colleague Alan Keen to start the questions.
Q154 Alan Keen: Good evening. Heritage
perception and regeneration go hand in hand, but presumably it
is not quite as straightforward as that. Do the developers agree
and make it easy? What are the problems basically?
Mr Spooner: I will kick off, if
I may. First of all, there is growing recognition within the private
sector that historic assets play an important role in regeneration,
in creating, protecting and preserving a sense of place within
an area. You referred just now to city centre schemes; many city
centre schemes are built around historic landmarks. English Partnerships
has been involved in supporting the Grainger town development
in Newcastle which is a very historic quarter of the city centre.
I think the private sector and developers recognise that these
assets do have an important role to play in maintaining that sense
of place but also in creating attractions in their own right which
will bring more visitors and investors to the area. For example,
I can think of Brindley Place in Birmingham, which we mentioned
just now. Brindley Place is particularly attractive because of
its canalside setting which is a very important industrial and
historic feature of the city but provides effectively the attraction
for private investment alongside the canal which has brought further
development. Whilst obviously there will be times when you will
hear comments that suggest perhaps in some cases developers may
see heritage from time to time as a constraint on their investment,
in our experience at English Partnerships providing you work very
carefully in the masterplanning of the schemes with private sector
investors, landowners, and closely with people involved in supporting
heritage, English Heritage, for example, we can achieve an outcome
that everybody benefits from.
Mr Gill: Just to follow that up,
if I may. Developers are interested in making money, so they will
invest where they can make a return on that money. Some developers
will see themselves as making a longer-term investment; some see
themselves as making a shorter-term investment. If you are making
a short-term investment, you will be less concerned about issues
about heritage and sense of place because you will be in and out
quite quickly. Our experience in Liverpool increasingly, and I
think in the majority of cases, is that investors do recognise
the added value of a sense of place, and where heritage assets
help to create that sense of place, they recognise the benefits
that arise from it. I think the sorts of issues that arise are
largely to do with details of interpretation of appropriate design.
That may arise out of financial considerations or sometimes it
may arise out of a different view of juxtaposition, different
architectures for example. I think by and large, developers in
the city centre are sufficiently mature to understand the benefits
that arise from creating quality places that add value to their
investment.
Ms Emery: I think the quality
of place and the sense of place is something that at the Agency
we have recognised and that, as a public body, we want to help
investment and encourage investment by developers into a place.
Therefore if we have supported people like Liverpool City Council
through the URC in the investment in the public realm, that is
giving a basis on which the developers can see a confidence in
the place. It all helps to generate that feeling of achieving
a sense of place and at the Agency we understand and value just
what that can bring.
Q155 Alan Keen: I think Adrian has
already mentioned the fact that we are not going to see the same
growth in funding going in. We have got the Olympics, that may
take some money away from the Lottery for heritage. We have obviously
learnt a lot over the last 10 to 14 years or so. How do you see
the picture over the next five or 10 years and is there anything
that needs to be addressed by government?
Mr Gill: I will try and address
some of those issues. Liverpool in particular has had an awful
lot of funding over the past 40 years or so, maybe 50 years, from
a variety of public sector interventions. What we are trying to
achieve in the city now is removing that sense of grant-dependency,
the sorts of things Mike Burchnall referred to earlier, and we
are making progress. We are using public money to encourage individual
developments and also to create public spaces that in themselves
add value. I think today you have been in the Ropewalks area.
That was an area which received a chunk of public funding, particularly
in the 1990s and in the earlier part of this century. That public
funding went into creating quality public realm and a number of
individual developments; some of them to do with residential,
with leisure and commercial spaces and with the arts, like the
FACT centre which was actually a brand new development in the
middle of a conservation area. In 1996-97, you could not get £100
per square foot for residential development in one of those areas,
so you needed grant support to make it work. Nowadays, for new
build residential development of high quality in the city, you
will get £300 plus. Now for some of the renovation, restorations
and existing buildings in the Ropewalks for residential and leisure,
you do not need grant support. The amount of activity we have
seen going on in that area does not need public funding any more,
although there are still some parts of the area where the public
realm has not been completed and there you will see continued
dereliction. We are moving to a situation in which less public
sector funding is required for any one given development. I think
there is a significant issue in respect of some tensions between
developer requirements to make a commercial return on their investment
and some other requirements that may arise from heritage or perhaps
more appropriate conservation issues. There are still occasions
when conservation issues impose a cost, which without some public
funding is not worthwhile to the developer achieving that. My
overall impression is that the level of funding which is available
through the heritage and conservation network is nowhere near
large enough to meet the demands of that network to allow us to
maintain the progress that we make.
Q156 Helen Southworth: English Partnerships,
in your evidence you gave quite a focus on consulting local people.
I think you said, "Consultation with the local and adjoining
communities and stakeholders is key to our approach, particularly
in relation to heritage buildings which are central to local community
identity". Can you give us more on that? Can you give some
examples of where you have carried out that consultation, what
kinds of things you have done and perhaps where you have changed
some of your proposals as a result of it?
Mr Spooner: It is true, as we
have said in our evidence, in local communities—I do not
just mean residents but businesses and people living in the local
area where there is meant to be regeneration and there is a need
for improvement in the area, indeed where they have sought those
improvements in terms of improving the environment and housing
and creating the basis for greater prosperity in their area—it
is absolutely essential that the community is fully involved in
the design and development of the planning of the areas as well
as the detailed implementation of those plans. I think we all
learn from experience. In one particular example in East Lancashire,
the regeneration plans the local authority had in around 2002
were to demolish a significant number of older houses, many of
which were in very poor condition, but following an unsuccessful
CPO in that area, the plans were reviewed. English Partnerships
worked closely with English Heritage, the Prince's Foundation
and the local authority to come up with an alternative proposal,
which is not our own proposal but developed by local people through
a whole long week of Enquiry by Design. That is a process which
involved local residents and businesses, in this case about 300,
sitting around the table with professionals like ourselves and
agencies providing support and jointly coming up with a scheme
which met local aspirations. In that particular case, the scheme
has led to a completely revised proposal where a large number
of properties will be retained, albeit converted for modern use,
and they will be changed to meet the needs of local people in
terms of expanding families, but relatively few properties will
be demolished. That plan has now been approved and with the local
community we have established a regeneration partnership which
is going to appoint a design and architect-led development consortium
to design improvements to those homes and build new houses where
demolition has to take place. I think involving the community
is central to any planning and development in terms of regeneration,
but from our own experience we have learnt lessons from involving
the community early in the design of their own communities. It
is quite important that agencies are able to be flexible and not
necessarily see that the first proposal they had in mind was the
right one. In this case, I think we have got a much better scheme
and one which we know, from the response of the private sector,
that the development community is very interested in implementing.
That is an example in East Lancashire; there are many other examples
where involving communities at the early stage through Enquiry
by Design and detailed consultation on the planning of areas have
led to schemes which not only have been fully supported but also
were schemes which have been very attractive to the private sector.
Q157 Helen Southworth: Does Liverpool
Vision have something to comment on that process?
Mr Gill: Liverpool Vision was
created in 1999. In 2000 we published the Strategic Regeneration
Framework for the city centre which set out, I suppose in one
sense, a vision for the future of the city which included statements,
really fairly simple stuff, on where one would expect the city
to go and where the strengths of the city are. The process of
getting to that Strategic Regeneration Framework and the 12 months
involved included very wide consultation with the general public,
in fact from all over Merseyside, not just from Liverpool because
the city centre, of course, serves a much wider area than just
the city itself. There was broad consultation on and I think broad
acceptance for the strategy that emerged. In terms of the implementation
of that strategy, obviously individual projects will go through
detailed consultation and the larger and more contentious those
projects are, usually the wider and longer the consultation. In
the last six months or so, we have been working jointly with the
City Council and we have been developing not masterplans but planning
frameworks to help advise development control. In moving the work
in the Ropewalks to the next stage, looking at areas like the
Baltic Triangle, which is the area between the Ropewalks and the
waterfront of King's Dock, we have been involved in consultation
again with businesses and residents in looking at the way in which
those areas should be developed. Otherwise the danger is that
the pressure of demand, in particular for new residential and
leisure development in the city centre at the moment, will swamp
areas which have got a history and a heritage. They do not have
the same sort of iconic status as some of the buildings on the
waterfront for example, but still are important areas where we
trying to maintain a mix of uses that are probably a bit truer
to the history of those areas than simple, straightforward residential
development. So we undertake a fairly broad consultation which
varies from project to project. One of the other thing we have
tried to do in the past few years is to explain what we are doing
to school children, so we have a dedicated part-time education
liaison officer within Liverpool Vision, partly funded by ourselves
and partly funded by the Regional Development Agency's SRB programme.
What we are trying to do there is find a way of introducing what
the city centre is and all of the projects we are promoting in
the city centre into the curriculum, so that school children can
understand the way in which what is happening in their city fits
into some of the things that they are learning at school. I think
that is quite important particularly because it is getting at
children early. I hope it is broadening the range of information
that they get about what is it that makes their city work and
what is important in their city.
Q158 Chairman: Just following on
from Helen's question, earlier today the Committee went to the
Welsh Streets and obviously that is a part of the city where quite
a number of demolitions are proposed. We stopped outside a house
that had in its window, "Save our homes. Stop the demolitions".
Would you, therefore, accept that this is a scheme that has not
yet carried the community with it and might there not be a case
for, as Mr Spooner described, going back and looking at it again
to try to get a scheme that will demand the support of the community?
Mr Gill: Welsh Streets is outside
my area of capability. Liverpool Vision operates in the city centre,
it is a fairly tight city centre, so I am relieved to say that
it is not my area of responsibility. I am sure that the conclusion
which you are suggesting might be one that people would arrive
at quite easily, but then what you have seen is one response to
a proposal and not the community's response, I guess.
Mr Spooner: I think it is very
true that in many areas where there is planned major change, there
is recognition through very detailed analysis of the condition
of properties that some of those, indeed quite a lot of those,
properties do not have a long-term, viable future life where there
needs to be demolition and redevelopment. I think it is absolutely
essential in those cases that the process of change is well communicated
to all the community and all the community has the opportunity
to be engaged in understanding those plans and indeed contributing
to them. The example I gave was a situation in which what was
decided at the very beginning in East Lancashire was the easiest
way to deal with a lot of very poor housing, to clear a larger
number of houses and start again effectively. I think you can
take a more balanced view of that, as indeed was the case through
the consultation in East Lancashire, but in some areas there is
a need for considerable demolition. We have to recognise that
many poorer older houses are not necessarily fit for purpose,
not even fit for the families that currently occupy them in terms
of their own growth and expansion, and do not provide necessarily
the public space or amenities that people would expect. Also many
of those houses have been, for perhaps 50 years, going through
a period of general repair and maintenance, obviously drawing
on grant funding wherever possible, but at some point for those
houses it will need to be considered that that continued repair
and maintenance will not produce the types of homes that are now
needed. Provided local people are involved in the process of change
and fully aware of the reasons—and particularly the physical
condition of properties means that they do not have a future viable
life—then I think it is quite reasonable they should be
considered for comprehensive redevelopment. What is important
is those people who are affected also have the opportunities to
participate in the design and development of the future and indeed
to find homes within the future plans. What we found in Liverpool
and indeed in East Lancashire was that alongside investment in
new property, there must be an equal amount of investment in providing
people with access to the finance, the sort of financial support
to enable them to bridge up to buy new homes and/or rented property
within the development.
Q159 Chairman: To follow that up
slightly, this is obviously a policy which is not just happening
in the Welsh Streets, it is happening in a number of areas in
the North West. It is argued by some that the homes are not fit
for habitation, yet it is the people who live in them who are
arguing that they are and who are objecting, or at least in some
cases are objecting. It seems to me that at the very least what
you failed to do is persuade people what is on offer to them,
if their homes are demolished, is a better standard of accommodation
and better homes. If you succeeded in persuading them of that,
then perhaps you would not encounter the degree of opposition
that exists. Can I ask North West Development Agency—since
this is a regional policy—whether you would accept that
is not something you have yet succeeded in persuading people on?
Ms Emery: I can answer but the
North West Development Agency is not involved in housing, so I
can give an answer, but it is not based on our policy as an Agency.
I think as Paul pointed out, very often it is not taking the community
along with the proposals right from the beginning. Another observation
I would make is that often the case is that they are not putting
the time in at the beginning to do the analysis and maybe the
characterisation work that is required to have a full and informed
understanding about what it is you are dealing with in terms of
those homes. It is not just about the physical, it is also about
the social. It takes time to assimilate that sort of information
and I think—and it is a personal observation—that
perhaps that time has not always been spent.
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