Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
SIR BOB
KERSLAKE
18 FEBRUARY 2008
Q1 Chair: Can I welcome you, Sir Bob,
to this hearing and make a start by asking you what skills and
experience you think you have that make you particularly appropriate
to head the Homes and Communities Agency?
Sir Bob Kerslake: Thank you very
much for the question. Can I first say how much I am genuinely
looking forward to this afternoon's discussion and I am grateful
that you have given me a chance to talk to you, really, before
formally starting the job in April. I think what I bring to this
job is a great deal of experience, practical experience, of housing
and regeneration delivery on the ground. I have been the Chief
Executive of a local authority for over 17 years now, firstly
in West London, the London Borough of Hounslow, and secondly for
the last decade in Sheffield, in both instances places that went
through a lot of change. I particularly focus on Sheffield for
this afternoon's discussion. You can in many ways in microcosm
see many of the issues that will be the preoccupation of the new
Homes and Communities Agency in how Sheffield as a city has developed
and indeed transformed over the last decade. I think the skills
that that time has given me are, firstly, an understanding of
how we develop places, the so-called place shaping role, which
I see as critical to this new agency's success. The second thing
I have learned from Sheffield in terms of skills is collaborative
partnership. Very few of the things we do, even in a relatively
big place like Sheffield, we do on our own. We have to work collaboratively
with others at regional and indeed national level. I have had
practical experience of working with both the Housing Corporation
and English Partnerships and, of course, the RDAs. A third skill
that has come with this job has been the ability to make things
happen. That sounds a fairly bland thing but the ability to programme-manage
effectively, to ensure that ideas and visions become practical
realities, is a tremendously important part of what I think is
essentially a delivery agency, the Homes and Communities Agency.
I would just pick out perhaps one last thing that I think is critical
in the skills, which is this ability to both do big city things,
which has been a key part of the job in Sheffield, so major transformation
of our city centre, but also working with neighbourhoods and communities
to achieve the transformation that they require. In Sheffield
that has been an important part of the agenda. Yes, the city centre
has been important but the neighbourhoods have been important
as well, and those are the skills that I think I bring.
Q2 Chair: Can I then start with a
more specific question and ask you about first on the progress
that you are making, or will be making rather, since you do not
start till March, in establishing the new agency and bringing
together at least three different parts to form the new agency.
What do you think are the main challenges to getting it up and
running by April 2009?
Sir Bob Kerslake: Although I have
not formally started, we have already made some useful progress
on a number of key issues and I will just highlight some of those
now. The first thing is to clarify the transfer of functions from
the Department. That was a critical thing for me and I was delighted
that that was done just after Christmas. That was a critical step
forward. So the clarification of the things that we are transferring
from the Department to the agency was very important.
Q3 Chair: When you say the clarification,
do you mean there is still some doubt about precisely which functions
are being transferred?
Sir Bob Kerslake: No. At the point
I took on the job in December there was still an announcement
to be made, and that announcement was made post Christmas so I
was very pleased that that was resolved. The second thing I have
been very pleased to do is to establish a start-up team with Trevor
Beattie, who heads the team working to me, and that has enabled
us to get a sharper focus on the work. The third thing is to look
to see if we can accelerate the process of establishing the agency
and see whether it is possible to bring forward the formal start-up
date from April.
Q4 Chair: How far forward?
Sir Bob Kerslake: We have not
determined that exactly yet; potentially somewhere around November/December,
obviously subject to the Bill and its timing and how fast that
goes through. What I would say is that there will still be a phase-in
period between then and April, so there is still work to be done
between then and April but there are some advantages in moving
early. In terms of the challenges, a key challenge here is to
create a new agency that is more than the sum of its parts. It
needs to have its own culture, it needs to bring something that
the existing agencies do not, to add more to the mix. It needs
to make the best use of the public resources it has. A second
challenge is that it needs to be very powerful, as I said earlier,
about working in collaborative partnership, particularly with
local government. I have described its role as being local government's
best delivery partner and I think it has to be that. It clearly
has some very challenging targets to deliver and that is right
and proper, so it will have to be geared up to delivering those
targets. Also, I think it has to understand the market well.
Chair: Can we put the local government
aspects to one side for a moment because we want to explore them
later.
Q5 Mr Olner: Can I just say a couple
of things, Sir Bob? You have set a few alarm bells ringing. I
know very well the work of English Partnerships and I know very
well the work of the Housing Corporation—not in cities but
in shire towns. There has been regeneration and there has been
a housing impetus as well. It just concerns me that you will be
the worst of both things. You will not be concentrating enough
on housing, you will not be concentrating enough on regeneration,
and one of the things that plagues organisations like English
Partnerships, quite frankly, is the moneys they have already committed
to schemes and whether that is going to eat up some of the moneys
that are going to be available. It is all right having nice words
but are you actually going to be able to deliver it?
Sir Bob Kerslake: I think there
is a lot we can deliver. The first thing to say is that when the
analysis was done to make the case for the new agency, it found
that two-thirds of the activities between the two agencies were
in some ways linked. I do not think that is a surprise because
to make a success of achieving more housing and more affordable
housing you have to regenerate places. The two things go hand
in hand. Far from stretching you, I think having the two things
together enables you to deliver powerfully on both agendas. I
think it helps enormously; in fact, I think it would be a problem
to achieve these more challenging targets that we have without
having housing and regeneration together. Yes, there are funds
committed, and rightly so, but I think there is still quite a
lot of resource going forward in the agency that is flexible and
we can, over time, look at the way we use those resources and
seek to get more from the same.
Q6 Mr Olner: One of the biggest problems
in the past when English Partnerships was involved, from when
it was an idea on regeneration and re-housing, was that time had
elapsed so the funds that were originally earmarked were not enough
to complete the scheme. I just wondered how much of that bad debt
you are going to pick up as a new agency. There will be schemes
out there that need a lot more money than they did when they were
first envisaged.
Sir Bob Kerslake: I hope not too
much. Clearly, every scheme goes through a process of change and
development and some end up costing more, some actually go ahead
with less subsidy, and I have had both experiences in my time
as Chief Executive of Sheffield. That, I think, is the skill of
an agency, to be able to adapt and flex the resources it has according
to the needs of a particular scheme. I think both the Housing
Corporation and English Partnerships have good track records of
making schemes happen and I think they do have a very good understanding
of where individual schemes currently lie. I do not believe there
is a huge hidden problem there at all but there will be changes
on individual schemes that we will have to respond to.
Q7 Sir Paul Beresford: You made a
comment about "It depends how the Bill goes" or something
along those lines but of course, this is a skeletal Bill. In fact,
this one has osteoporosis because the real meat of the Bill is
going to be in the secondary legislation. When do you expect that
to be completed? Are you involved in the development of the secondary
legislation? Will it delay you?
Sir Bob Kerslake: There is a close
discussion going on at the moment and we are looking at the timing
for when the secondary legislation, as you say, would come forward.
That is part of the calculations about when the agency might formally
come into being. We have taken that into account in our thinking
on the timetable.
Q8 Sir Paul Beresford: So when do
you think that will be finished?
Sir Bob Kerslake: I cannot give
a precise date at the moment but, clearly, you would want to have
the key elements of that secondary legislation necessary to start
the agency in place by November/December but some of it may well
come after that date, moving forward[1].
It depends on which aspects of the secondary legislation we are
talking about here. I cannot give you a precise date here and
now.
Q9 Sir Paul Beresford: It is like buying
a car and developing it with spare parts, is it not?
Sir Bob Kerslake: I do not see
it quite that way. I think the issue for us with the agency is
to try and get it formed and up and running and able to operate
as soon as possible but the reality with the agency—and
that is why I used the phrase "phase-in"—is that
it will need to develop things like its corporate plan and some
of its projects over time beyond that and it makes absolute sense
to try and do that in that way. The key test and the thing we
are looking at is whether enough progress will have been made
on the Bill and the secondary legislation to enable it to be functioning
by those dates. We need to review that in detail. As I said, I
am giving you an indication of what our ambition is. We are very
confident we will have it there by April and, if we can bring
it forward, I think that will be worthwhile.
Q10 Chair: I am having a bit of difficulty
with this. What sort of things would be in the secondary legislation
that would alter the new agency?
Sir Bob Kerslake: I do not think
there is a lot really in terms of its impact. I was simply saying
that that is something we are looking at as part of the detailed
timetable.
Q11 John Cummings: Can you give the
Committee some idea of what budget you are working to?
Sir Bob Kerslake: If you take
the combined budget, we are talking about a budget of over £5
billion a year, so it is at that scale, if you bring together
the different funding streams that will come into the new agency.
Q12 John Cummings: So you will be
working towards an establishment within £5 million?
Sir Bob Kerslake: Sorry. We are
talking about the total budget for the agency?
Q13 John Cummings: The total budget
for the agency.
Sir Bob Kerslake: That is about,
as I say, in excess of £5 billion, if you add its total investment
funding.
Q14 John Cummings: What size do you
anticipate the agency being in terms of manpower?
Sir Bob Kerslake: In terms of
staffing, we calculate of the order of 820. That is the number
we are currently calculating.
Q15 John Cummings: Would you tell
the Committee what your particular salary will be?
Sir Bob Kerslake: Yes. My salary
will be a base salary of £220,000 with up to £20,000
on bonus.
Q16 John Cummings: Which other agencies
will you subsume into your particular agency?
Sir Bob Kerslake: What comes into
my agency is the Housing Corporation investment functions, English
Partnerships, and certain delivery functions from Communities
and Local Government, including, as you have probably picked up,
the Thames Gateway and, of course, the Academy for Sustainable
Communities as well.
Q17 John Cummings: Will you have
lay members sitting on the agency?
Sir Bob Kerslake: There will be
a non-executive board.
Q18 John Cummings: How many?
Sir Bob Kerslake: The numbers
have not been fixed. The advert is out now for the Chair of the
agency.
Q19 Sir Paul Beresford: Is the staffing
level of the sum of the agencies and organisations you are absorbing
greater or less than 820?
Sir Bob Kerslake: That is the
calculation of the numbers in the current bodies.
1 Note by witness: Almost all the Agency's
powers and functions are specified on the face of the Bill. However,
where powers will not be needed in every case, the Bill will enable
the Secretary of State to confer certain further functions on
the Agency, such as planning functions, by way of secondary legislation
in appropriate circumstances. In addition, secondary legislation
will be needed to implement the Bill; to bring the Agency into
existence; to transfer assets and liabilities from the existing
agencies to the new Agency; to dissolve the existing agencies;
and to make transitional and consequential amendments to existing
legislation. Back
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