House of Commons - Regeneration - Communities and Local Government Committee

Regeneration - Communities and Local Government Committee Contents

2 The Government's approach: regeneration to enable growth

6. Regeneration to enable growth sets out the role the Government will play within its new, "localist" approach to regeneration:

Central government's role will be strategic and supportive:

reforming and decentralising public services;
providing powerful incentives that drive growth;
removing barriers that hinder local ambitions; and
providing targeted investment and reform to strengthen the infrastructure for growth and regeneration and to support the most vulnerable.[7]

The bulk of the document consists of a series of tables, including sections targeted at the private and voluntary and community sectors and local government. These tables "set out a range of policies, rights and funds that are available to help [the private and voluntary and community sectors] drive forward or influence plans for [their] area" and "a range of policies, options, powers and tools that [local authorities] might find helpful in driving forward regeneration". There are also sections outlining "other Government policies and investments that support regeneration" and aspects of Government work that provide specific "support for vulnerable individuals".[8] The document is clear that the measures are not intended to be universally applied, stating: "The actions taken and tools employed from this menu will vary from place to place and need to happen at the right spatial level".[9]

7. Amongst our witnesses, reaction to the document was largely negative. Keith Burge, Chair of the Institute of Economic Development, stated:

When I read the document I wondered if it was not sinking in or whether a number of pages were stuck together, because by the time I got to the end of it I could not believe just how limited it was in its appreciation. No consideration has been taken of the nature and scale of regeneration that is required, where it is needed and where the opportunities lie. There was no review of community-led regeneration, of what has worked, what has not worked and why. None of these things were included; it is just really a hotchpotch of spending commitments and little more than that.[10]

Asked to give their view on the document in "tabloid language", witnesses described it variously as "thin, weak and disappointing",[11] "vacuous",[12] and "The Emperor's New Clothes".[13] Neil McInroy, Chief Executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies said, "If one of our junior members of staff had written this after two weeks, I would be disappointed".[14]

8. Particular criticisms focussed on the lack of any clear narrative or strategic coherence. Julian Dobson of consultancy Urban Pollinators said:

I am not sure that you could say that the Government's document is an approach; it does not have any clarity about it. As [another witness] said, it lacks a narrative. It is not clear what regeneration is or why regeneration is needed. It is not clear how regeneration is to be attained, so it is really difficult to know where to start with it.[15]

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation agreed, pointing to the document's failure to provide a definition of regeneration: "No attempt is made to define regeneration (and specifically what is meant by community led regeneration) or explain why and where it is needed most".[16]

9. When asked about the document, the Minister, Mr Shapps, insisted he was "very proud of it", arguing that "the size of the Government document does not deliver the strategy".[17] He said it was intended as "toolkit" to support a localist approach:

This is a regeneration toolkit: it is largely about the graphs and tables at the back of it. It is not about the narrative at the front of it, otherwise we would have written a 20, 50 or 100-page document, which would have been fine, warm words without any purpose to it. We nicknamed it a toolkit because it is devised for those purposes, and it is certainly not intended to be the be all and end all when it comes to regeneration. It is supposed to be a very deliberate attempt to move from the top-down, centrally driven, bluntly unaffordable and certainly unsustainable approach to redevelopment and regeneration that has not always delivered what was intended despite the many thousands of pages of words.[18]

10. Paul Evans of UK Regeneration acknowledged that there was "a logic to the proposition that, if you are going to adopt a policy of localism, you do not prescribe too much how you intend it to happen".[19] However, in their joint submission, the Chief Economic Development Officers' Society and the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (CEDOS/ADEPT) argued that within a localist approach there was still an important role for central government:

Whilst we support the focus on local leadership, if the Government is to support community based regeneration, some overall assessment/strategic guidance on regeneration needs, approaches and resources would be helpful.[20]

11. We do not consider Regeneration to enable growth to be adequate as a statement of the Government's approach: it lacks strategic coherence and does not seek to define what is meant by the term "regeneration". It is unclear about the nature of the problem it is trying to solve and to what overall outcome the measures set out will contribute. We accept that, as part of a localist approach, there is merit in including a toolkit of options from which local authorities, businesses and community groups can draw. However, within such an approach, central government still has to play its part by setting the national policy direction. Regeneration to enable growth fails to do this and provides no evidence that the Government has a clear strategy for regeneration.

Targeting those most in need

12. Discussing the "new approach" to regeneration, Regeneration to enable growth suggests such an approach is needed "to ensure that local economies prosper, parts of the country previously over-reliant on public funding see a resurgence in private sector enterprise and employment, and that everyone gets to share in the resulting growth".[21] The Government's memorandum states that regeneration is a "vital component" of its "approach to growth and to rebalancing the economy".[22] It explains that regeneration is needed to address issues in "declining and static local economies" which it says "act as a drag on the performance of the UK economy as a whole":

We therefore need every part of the country to fulfil its potential if we are to maximise national economic growth. Every place has the potential to grow, but growth may be harder for some areas to achieve. Regeneration plays a vital role by addressing local failures in the land market, labour market and capital market which in turn remove market barriers that prevent economic growth.[23]

13. A number of our witnesses, however, questioned the extent to which Regeneration to enable growth focuses on those areas where growth may be more difficult to achieve. Allan Haile of Cumbria County Council said, "we [...] feel that [the measures in the document] are likely to be more successful in areas where there is greater potential for economic growth and job creation, and not so successful perhaps in areas like Cumbria, where there is some market failure".[24] Katie Schmuecker of the Institute for Public Policy Research North (IPPR North) noted: "The Government's approach appears to be to target growth. [...] That leads to the question in our minds: what happens to those places that fall outside of that, often places that are lagging and, if anything, are potentially going backwards?"[25] Josh Stott of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation felt that there was a "lack of strategy for places that will not be able to benefit from the proposed growth incentives" and seemed to be "an assumption that the trickle-down effect will work". He warned that "a rising tide will not lift all boats".[26]

14. It was suggested that some of the proposals could have a detrimental effect on attempts to rebalance the economy. Cornwall Council felt that "the paper's geographical perspective sub-nationally is mainly skewed toward London and the South East (e.g. Crossrail, Thames Gateway, even arguably [High Speed 2])".[27] The Centre for Local Economic Strategies made a similar point:

It is disappointing to see that the 'targeted investment' list contained in the document is limited only to controversial and 'big-ticket' infrastructure projects for the Greater South East and amounts to a de facto growth strategy which does nothing to re-balance the economy away from the [Greater South East] and towards the structurally and spatially unfavoured northern regions.[28]

15. The London Borough of Newham warned that any rebalancing had to account for the fact that there were also deprived areas in the South East:

We are concerned that the Government's focus on rebalancing implies a reduced commitment to areas in London and the South East which are among the most deprived in the country; which are also dependent on a shrinking public sector economy; and which have the greatest potential to drive and generate private sector growth for the country. Any rebalancing of the UK's economic geography will need to be a managed process that takes into account the particular circumstances of each functional economic area, and the needs of particular locations within these.[29]

This view was echoed by the Thames Gateway London Partnership which argued that the area it covered was "more similar to areas in the Midlands and North of England, where the government has focussed more support".[30]

16. These comments raise the question of where the limited resources available for regeneration can best be applied. Chris Brown, Chief Executive of the regeneration company Igloo, raised the prospect of places being left to "sink or swim" if resources were not transferred to more deprived areas:

in regeneration, you absolutely have to have a locally-led process, so localism is absolutely the right approach to regeneration. However, you also have to transfer resources from wealthy places to places in need. The danger of the localism agenda is that neighbourhoods are left to sink or swim, and the deprived neighbourhoods will sink.[31]

Consultancy firm Urban Pollinators stated that "the logic of a localism that ignores market failures and seeks to pick winners may well be that some places will die" and added, "Ministers should be open about whether they consider that an acceptable consequence of their approach".[32] Julian Dobson, who runs Urban Pollinators, felt that there was a moral case against abandoning places:

in those areas where [the] private market has failed and where public policy has failed, there are hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been messed up for one reason or another, and it is ethically unacceptable just to say, "Fend for yourselves."[33]

Mr Shapps agreed that it was "absolutely unsatisfactory—worse, unacceptable—to leave areas languishing and not being regenerated".[34]

17. In Greater Manchester, we saw a recognition amongst local partners that regeneration involved linking more deprived communities to those areas with greater potential for economic growth. Business leaders saw the need to work with public bodies to create opportunities for people across the wider area. The Media City development, for instance, had sought explicitly to maximise the benefits for Greater Manchester as a whole: it was recognised that the "trickle down" effect alone would not be enough, and considerable work had been undertaken to maximise the links between local communities and the opportunities available at the site.

18. In all regions of the country there are places in which, for a whole host of reasons, deprivation and disadvantage are particularly acute. In such areas, the market alone is unlikely to resolve the deep-seated issues the communities face. Regeneration is fundamentally concerned with addressing these issues of deprivation and market failure. In doing so, it requires a comprehensive range of social, physical and economic interventions; it cannot rely solely on the growth of the wider economy. The overwhelming focus of Regeneration to enable growth, however, appears to be upon achieving this economic growth. There seems to be an implicit assumption that wider growth will "trickle down" to the most deprived areas. However, we are concerned that, as communities with greater potential absorb the benefits of economic growth, the most deprived areas could be left further behind. It is not clear that the measures in the document will help to rebalance the economy towards less prosperous parts of the country; indeed, there is a risk that some could have a detrimental effect. It is not in anyone's interest for places to be left to "sink or swim". We welcome the Minister's acceptance that it would be "unacceptable [...] to leave areas languishing".[35] However, his approach to regeneration does not do enough to mitigate the risk of this happening. The Government has to recognise that resolving issues of deprivation requires a long term, concerted and targeted effort, and therefore to ensure that its scarce resources are being used to help the people and places most in need. We recommend that the Government develop and publish a strategy that recognises the deep-seated problems faced by the most disadvantaged communities, and sets out measures explicitly focussed upon tackling these issues. We have more to say about what this strategy should contain throughout the rest of this report.

Resources

19. In December 2010, DCLG published an economics paper commissioned by the previous Government, Valuing the Benefits of Regeneration. That paper estimated spending on "core" regeneration programmes by DCLG, the Homes and Communities Agency and Regional Development Agencies to be £11.189 billion in 2009/10.[36] At our request, DCLG provided us with further financial data which showed that this spending fell to £7.926 billion in 2010/11 (revised from £9.1 billion after taking account of in-year adjustments) and is estimated to fall to £3.872 billion in 2011/12. The 2011/12 figure includes approximately £2.9 billion on continuing programmes and just under £1 billion on "additional programmes", including the Regional Growth Fund, the New Homes Bonus and the FirstBuy scheme. In addition, the table highlights a number of funding streams across the spending review period totalling £12.428 billion, including Crossrail, High Speed 2 and the Olympic Park legacy.[37]

20. Witnesses expressed concerns about the scale and speed of the funding reductions. CEDOS/ADEPT said that "there must be sufficient public funds available to achieve the necessary regeneration projects in urban and rural areas across the country" but suggested that there was "little likelihood" that this would be the case, "certainly in the short/medium term"; it pointed to the reductions in funding for local authorities and Regional Development Agencies and the termination of specific programmes such as Working Neighbourhoods Fund and the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative.[38] Pennine Lancashire expressed concern about the "front loading of spending cuts" which "doesn't allow for an orderly transition of programmes and will leave big gaps in projects which have either been significantly scaled back in a short time frame or halted mid-way through the programme"; it added: "We do not believe that these policies [in Regeneration to enable growth] will be sufficient to fill that gap".[39] The Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders Chairs spoke specifically about the sudden cessation of their funding, warning that "some neighbourhoods where renewal has been only partially completed may well regress because of the unsatisfactory state of the half completed environment".[40]

21. In its memorandum, the Government acknowledged that the reductions in direct funding for regeneration were "posing challenges for some areas" but stated:

we have taken steps to ease the transition as far as possible, for example:

As part of the local government funding settlement, we included a transitional element to ensure that no area will face an excessive cut in public funding next year.
The Homes and Communities Agency and DCLG are working with housing market renewal and growth areas to help them manage the transition and identify alternative funding sources, including New Homes Bonus, and bring a stronger emphasis on refurbishment including community based renewal projects. A new £5 million transition fund was announced on 31 January to help safeguard and develop expertise and capacity in the five worst affected areas.
The Spending Review provided £1.3 billion to deliver existing Regional Development Agency and Homes and Communities Agency commitments, so that subject to value for money current projects which are valued by local communities are seen to completion.[41]

22. However, Keith Burge questioned the extent to which the Government was easing the impact, and warned that the cuts could create problems further down the line:

I do not see that it is doing anything to mitigate the effects of those cuts. We all understand the situation with the public purse, we do not need to labour those points again, but I think that there is a lack of appreciation of the fact that some of the spending is investment and not just cost. A failure to make that investment is going to have some knock-on effects elsewhere. Failing to continue to work with local communities has impacts on people's ability to access employment and training, their health, crime, on the environment and so on. So it may save money today, but it is storing up problems for tomorrow.[42]

REGIONAL GROWTH FUND

23. The Regional Growth Fund (RGF), at £495 million, is the largest of the "additional programmes" listed in the financial tables provided by the Government.[43] Regeneration to enable growth suggests that it will provide "potential funds to support local schemes that unlock private sector growth".[44]

24. Witnesses have questioned the extent to which the RGF will support regeneration. Michael Gahagan, representing the Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder Chairs, thought RGF was "the right approach to tackling the loss of public sector jobs" but said: "you should not present it as being the answer to a regeneration problem". Julian Dobson agreed, saying there was a "big, big question about whether that is going to produce jobs and opportunities in the most difficult and disadvantaged areas".[45]

25. Lord Heseltine, the Chair of the RGF Independent Advisory Panel, also said that RGF was "not about regeneration":

The fact is the Regional Growth Fund is not about regeneration. We have never been told to go and regenerate any community or anything like that. What we have been told is very clear and simple: there are some cuts. The cuts are going to affect different parts of the country in different ways. They are going to affect those areas where public expenditure is relatively high more than where it is not, and therefore the Regional Growth Fund is designed to create private sector jobs in areas adversely affected by the cuts. That is it.[46]

Asked about a statement by Mr Shapps that the Government would "roll [Housing Market Renewal] Funding up into the Regional [Growth] Fund",[47] Lord Heseltine said: "There is no way that we are doing housing renewal or anything of that sort. Indeed housing is not high on our list for very obvious reasons. It does not create long-term sustainable private sector jobs".[48]

26. We asked Andrew Stunell MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government, whether he agreed with Lord Heseltine that RGF was "nothing to do with regeneration":

I agree with the terms of reference of the Regional Growth Fund, which you can see I do not actually have in front of me. They do not exclude anything, but they do put the emphasis on promoting regional growth. And primarily, as you can see from the bids that are being accepted, that has been about providing additional employment opportunities. In the case of Hull and Wakefield [where bids covering Housing Market Renewal areas have been successful] the criteria of that had been met and investment has been made.[49]

Mr Shapps added that the concepts of regional growth and regeneration were "absolutely intrinsically linked" and that for "regeneration to be a true success [...] you have to have the jobs, the employment, the enterprise to go alongside and make the thing function."[50] Regeneration, however, aims to tackle market failure through a comprehensive approach, and the growth of the wider economy alone will not be sufficient to address the complex issues deprived communities face.[51]

NEW HOMES BONUS

27. The additional programmes listed in the Government's table also include £199 million for the New Homes Bonus (NHB). However, our witnesses have argued that NHB could "favour high growth areas" over those "where renewal is needed".[52] Newcastle and Gateshead pointed out that it will "work less well in our areas because of both the stage we are at in our carefully phased programme with further demolition being needed, and the historic challenge of increasing effective housing supply in Newcastle and Gateshead". They also suggest that, when in future NHB is funded from a top-slice of formula grant, "there will be a further redistributive effect from poorer to richer regions of the country".[53] Paul Evans of UK Regeneration said that NHB was "about growth and development; it is not really about regeneration as we began to define it at the beginning of this conversation".[54]

28. The Ministers told us that the £199 million in their figures referred to the NHB allocation for the whole country, not just regeneration areas. We questioned Mr Shapps about why, given this admission, it had been included in a table of regeneration spending. Mr Shapps responded:

Let me clarify this. Part of that is right; let me explain. First of all, you are right that the [£199 million] is the entire New Homes Bonus, you are right about that. I just wanted to mention and therefore explain that that is the case and always has been for all the regeneration expenditure, so if you compare it with previous years, the Decent Homes Programme, for example, would have been classed as a regeneration programme. There are many different programmes that you could class as regeneration, some of which will be in regeneration areas and some will not.

We suggested that there was a "dramatic difference" between the New Homes Bonus, which councils were free to spend on a whole range of services, and the Decent Homes Programme, which was specifically targeted at repairs on council estates. Mr Shapps responded:

I accept that. Again, let me take another example, groundwork money is sometimes spent in regeneration areas, it sometimes is not, but it has always been included in the figures. All I am trying to say is actually defining regeneration proves to be quite tricky because some things are included and some things are not. But you have the tables, so you can come to your own conclusions. I do accept your point there, but you would accept that other columns, some of which will be going into regeneration, some would not, have already been included in here.[55]

RAIL INVESTMENT

29. The Government's tables also mention commitments across the spending review period of £750 million for High Speed Rail and £7.5 billion for Crossrail;[56] Regeneration to enable growth refers to these commitments when discussing "targeted investment" in "vital infrastructure to support growth and regeneration".[57] We have already seen that questions have been raised about their impact on the rebalancing of the economy and tackling deprivation in the most deprived communities. Such a view was also raised by Urban Pollinators, who said:

While there is a strong case for better and more reliable public transport between cities in the North and Midlands, we need clarity about what kind of activity this is likely to enable and what benefits will accrue to the most disadvantaged communities. The caveat about infrastructure development as a regeneration tool is that it relies on a trickle-down theory of benefits that remains unproven. Enabling more law firms to locate in Leeds is unlikely to provide tangible improvements for the residents of Beeston or Harehills.[58]

30. Igloo also commented on the fact that High Speed Rail was a long-term initiative, saying: "while HS2 may provide a boost for Birmingham Eastside and in future decades for similar areas in Manchester and Leeds, this impact is not going to be seen any time soon". It added that "from a regeneration perspective, [HS2] would not be seen as a value for money investment although its long term positive impact on subregional economic development is welcome".[59] Mr Shapps suggested initiatives such as High Speed Rail would play an important role in regeneration:

With things like High Speed Rail, being prepared to put the infrastructure in place to join the country together is absolutely a really important part of regeneration. Crossrail is an excellent example.[60]

RESOURCES: CONCLUSION

31. The Government's figures apparently show annual spending on "core" regeneration programmes (excluding the additional cross-spending review streams such as rail and Olympic investment) being halved in 2011/12, with a 65% reduction over the two years since 2009/10.[61] In the current climate, reductions in public funding appear inevitable. However, regeneration appears to have been affected much more severely than other parts of the public sector; local government formula grant, for instance, will fall by 9.9% in 2011/12.[62] The scale and speed at which programmes have been cut does create significant cause for concern, particularly when considered alongside reductions to local authority budgets. The abruptness with which money has been removed and initiatives cancelled will create substantial problems for many communities.

32. Regeneration to enable growth places undue emphasis on schemes such as the Regional Growth Fund, New Homes Bonus, High Speed Rail and Crossrail; while these programmes may have their own merits—and may even bring some benefits to deprived communities (although in the case of High Speed Rail not for over a decade)—their primary focus is not on tackling deprivation in disadvantaged areas. Moreover, as the Centre for Local Economic Strategies said, "It is hard to see how the infra-structure projects of HS2, Olympics, Crossrail and the New Homes Bonus contribute towards the objective of community led regeneration".[63]

33. Unless alternative ways of funding regeneration can be found, there is a risk of momentum and investment being lost and problems being stored up for the future. Later in the report, we consider possible ways of bringing further resource into regeneration.

Private investment

34. Witnesses raised concerns that the Government's approach does not give sufficient consideration to how private sector investment can be encouraged. Chris Brown stated:

I do not think that the document faces up to the lack of private sector funding that is out there at the moment. It is not just the lack of public funding for regeneration; it is the lack of private funding for regeneration as well. The mechanisms that you would need to bring what private funding there is available to bear on regeneration are just not talked about in the document, so that is things like aligning the public funding flows from all sorts of different programmes so that we can use what public money there is to attract private money, and doing things like rental guarantees perhaps, or using public assets to attract what private money is out there. None of that stuff is really picked up in the document.[64]

CEDOS/ADEPT argued that stimulating private investment should be central to the Government's approach:

The context of public sector cuts emphasises the importance of attracting funding from the private sector, which has been hit by weakening market conditions and a fall in investment returns. Restoring the necessary level of confidence to attract private investment into regeneration should be a key a key plank of policy for Central Government and local authorities. It will be important to provide certainty on: the delivery of necessary public sector infrastructure provision; on developer contributions e.g. via Section 106, Community Infrastructure Levy; and on development timescales. Whilst risk cannot be removed, incentives and safeguards need to be considered to help lessen risk and make regeneration schemes attractive to private investors.[65]

35. Witnesses expressed particular doubts about whether the private sector would invest in regeneration areas without some form of public sector assistance. Keith Burge, for instance, asked:

Why would the private sector step in any more now than it has in the past? It will step in where it perceives a decent return on its investment and where there is an acceptable level of risk. The public sector has a role to play in facilitating private-sector investment. There are a number of things in the document that are possibly seeking to do that, but I am not sure that it goes far enough. The private sector is the private sector; it is there to get a return on its investment.[66]

Michael Gahagan believed that public money was needed "to take the risks out of a site, because in a time of recession developers go [...] to the lowest risk areas".[67]

36. Witnesses said that Regeneration to enable growth gave insufficient consideration to gap funding as a potential means of levering in private investment. Pennine Lancashire Local Authorities stated:

In areas with low land value, gap funding represents the most appropriate vehicle for levering in private investment and the development of capital schemes. Deprived areas are regarded as high risk in investment terms and will continue to need public sector support to lessen risk and attract investors to bring forward developments.[68]

Allan Haile of Cumbria County Council said that "one of the missing things is the ability to provide the gap funding that is required to assist the private sector to develop, and that addresses the cost versus the value of property".[69] Nottingham City Council suggested that the "proposed financial tools will not provide the necessary gap funding required in areas which experience market failure or abnormal development costs".[70]

37. Regeneration focuses on areas where the market has failed; it follows that the private sector is unlikely to invest in such places without some form of public assistance. Regeneration in the past has involved levering in private sector investment alongside public sector investment to deliver projects in the areas of greatest need. At a time of public spending restraint, when the Government must consider how to get the maximum benefits from the funds it has available, this becomes especially important: limited public resources have to be used in a way that stimulates further investment from the private sector. We recommend that the Government develop and publish a clear and coherent strategy for how private sector investment can be attracted into areas of market failure. This strategy should, amongst other things, identify potential sources of gap funding that can be used to stimulate private investment. It should also explore how public funding flows can be aligned to ensure they lever in the maximum amount of private capital. We consider this further when discussing the Community Budgets programme in Chapter 6.

Planning

38. Regeneration to enable growth suggests that reforms of the planning system will provide significant benefits for regeneration. Measures set out in the "toolkit" include: the "abolition of regional planning and the creation of neighbourhood plans" to provide "greater control and power for local authorities and communities over the way in which their area develops"; the "consolidated National Planning Policy Framework" to give communities "greater ability to attract new housing and economic development"; and Local Development Orders which "could be used for a variety of purposes from encouraging investment in derelict sites to permitting minor developments across a wider area".[71] Asked why these reforms were so important to the delivery of regeneration, Mr Shapps said that:

We see the planning changes being absolutely fundamental to this regeneration approach. The idea of having a sustainable pro-growth agenda is to enable more economic activity, to make it easier to grow if that is what the community wants to do, and the planning reform, as you know, is rather like our toolkit. It takes something like 7,000 pages of planning law and guidance and crunches it down to about 50 pages of a new national planning policy framework. And I guess in percentage terms, in ratio terms, that is an even bigger cut down than on the planning toolkit guidance. We believe in letting communities get on with the job, and we think that is why it is important to rationalise it.[72]

39. Among our witnesses, the development company Kier Group raised concerns about the speed of decision-making, talking of "a need to address the slow pace of making and resolving planning applications at all levels of development, including regeneration."[73] Other witnesses, however, questioned the extent to which the planning system impeded regeneration. Michael Gahagan of the Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder Chairs and David Orr of the National Housing Federation stated that, in their view, planning had not been a major issue:

It never impinged on me, to be honest, it is not a problem. In all my time in regeneration, I have only once known it be a problem. That was in Hulme, where the local authority soon overcame it. My experience of the planning system is, outside of AONBs and greenbelt, where there is a will, there is a way.

I think that is probably true. It is often harder to get consent for half a dozen new homes. Regeneration schemes tend to be larger scale, tend to be a bit more strategic, and they tend to have the engagement of the local authority across the board so there is a greater understanding of what people are trying to do. No one suggests that the planning system is presently perfect, but in terms of regeneration it is not one of the major difficulties.[74]

40. Responding to the same question, Julian Dobson pointed to what he considered to be one of the benefits of the planning system:

I will add one thing to that, which is that one aspect of the planning system has been particularly helpful: the concentration on town centres first, and the way that the planning system has militated against out of town developments over the last decade or so, and that has been hugely helpful in terms of keeping a lot of town centres alive and helping a lot of city centres to thrive that otherwise would have lost a lot of trade to out of town shopping.[75]

Michael Gahagan's colleague Jim Coulter added that "a substantial commitment to know what you are planning, with significant community engagement, has been a critical part of making sure that people understand the process of what is going on, and support for it gets generated through that means."[76] The Campaign to Protect Rural England also spoke of the positive role planning played in regeneration, including the 'town centre first' policy:

In CPRE's view, three planning policies introduced in the last two decades have in particular been tremendously successful in promoting regeneration, and subsequently protecting greenfield land from unnecessary development. The first is a national direction on a minimum density for housing development; the second is a national target for the proportion of homes to be completed on previously-developed—or 'brownfield'—land; and the third is a 'town centre first' approach to retail development.[77]

41. Richard Summers, President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, made a robust defence of the planning system when asked about criticisms by the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills:

Planners are not the enemies of enterprise. They are not the Town Hall bureaucrats who obstruct economic growth. On the contrary, they provide policies that are integrated across areas to promote both growth and regeneration. They provide land allocations to enable commercial and industrial uses to be developed where they are needed. They also provide a basis for co-ordinating delivery to make sure that things happen, so I reject the criticism.[78]

Mr Summers also criticised the Government's proposals for neighbourhood planning, saying: "it will be very difficult for people to grapple with the enormous complexities of regeneration projects at a local level through that means".[79] Chris Brown, while claiming to be "a great fan of neighbourhood planning", argued that amendments to the Localism Bill proposing the involvement of businesses in neighbourhood planning would "scare a lot of communities off".[80] He added, "Actually, it would probably have been better for regeneration if we had just left the planning system alone, because the planning system has not really been a problem for regeneration."[81]

42. The Government may have good reasons for its proposed reforms to the planning system, but it is not clear that they will have a significant bearing upon regeneration. We question their inclusion within Regeneration to enable growth and the emphasis placed upon them by the Minister. Planning has in fact brought significant benefits to regeneration, in terms of co-ordination, community involvement and town centre preservation.

Evaluation

43. Regeneration to enable growth does not discuss how the new approach will be measured or evaluated. It talks only of a policy of transparency, in the form of "publication of local authority and central government data", to give people "a clear view of what is being spent and where, therefore enabling them to challenge decisions that are made about their area".[82] The Government, in its memorandum, explains that it has chosen not to introduce any formal assessment framework:

The Government believes that top-down performance management frameworks, such as target setting, not only create inefficient bureaucracy but also distort the outcomes that local professionals pursue on the ground, to the detriment of meeting the needs of local people.

[...]

In line with the Localism agenda, the Government will not be imposing any performance management frameworks on local partners to assess the success of its approach to regeneration. It will be up to local partners to determine the success or otherwise of their plans, and for local people to hold each other to account if their expectations are not met.

[...]

Ultimately, success of our approach will be measured by the strength and balance of the UK economy. Whilst there will be no formal evaluation or assessment, national statistics relating to employment, civic action, the wellbeing indicators being developed by the Cabinet Office, and the Index of Multiple Deprivation may be helpful to all of us interested in regeneration.[83]

Mr Shapps told us that there would also be monitoring in place for each of the programmes within Regeneration to enable growth:

I talked about all these different things in the toolkit, and every programme is monitored as well. So with the New Homes Bonus, for example, we will be monitoring the success of the programme.[84]

44. A number of witnesses, however, called for a more formal approach to evaluation. Professor Paul Lawless from Sheffield Hallam University commented:

it is vital the Government's new approach is assessed. Its markedly more market-orientated, 'disengaged', approach provides a clear counterpoint to previous regeneration strategies. It is in everyone's interest, including the Government's, that change associated with this new approach is identified and lessons learned from it.

Because of the localist theme inherent to this new strategy, there will be a temptation for Government to withdraw from any notion of 'monitoring or evaluation', on the assumption that this is best done 'locally'. That is precisely the wrong thing to do.[85]

BCSC, which represents businesses in the retail property sector, stated:

It is crucial that the Government does commit to review its policies, perhaps at five yearly intervals, as to continue further along this policy path without an understanding of the consequences would be ill-advised and possibly undermine regeneration aspirations in the long run.[86]

45. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation argued that qualitative intelligence was as important to measuring success as statistical information:

Our research has also highlighted the limitations of a purely statistical approach to identifying issues, barriers and solutions to enhancing the socio-economic status of individuals in deprived communities. Effectively monitoring change and the impact of initiatives can also not be measured by statistics alone. Developing qualitative intelligence is critical to informing effective regeneration strategy[87]

The Institute for Economic Development suggested: "In general terms, success will be determined by the extent to which communities are vibrant and sustainable without the need for significant levels of ongoing public sector support".[88]

46. The fact that Regeneration to enable growth represents a new and to some extent untested approach makes evaluation particularly important; without it, there is a risk that investment could be wasted. The Minister's assertion that individual programmes such as the New Homes Bonus will be monitored misses the point: it is their combined impact on regeneration—tackling market failure in deprived communities—that has to be considered. We recommend that the Government identify a set of clear objectives to enable the success of its approach to be assessed at both local and national level. These should form the basis of an ongoing evaluation that looks at both quantitative and qualitative information; this should include consideration of the extent to which communities have become more self-sustaining and less reliant on public sector support.

7 Regeneration to enable growth, Introduction Back

8 Regeneration to enable growth, Tables Back

9 Regeneration to enable growth, Conclusion Back

10 Q 78 Back

11 Q 39 [Josh Stott, Joseph Rowntree Foundation] Back

12 Q 76 [Julian Dobson, Urban Pollinators] Back

13 Q 76 [David Orr, National Housing Federation] Back

14 Q38 Back

16 Ev 134 Back

17 Q 356 Back

18 Q 350 Back

19 Q 106 Back