Housing Market Renewal

Annette Brooke Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Luciana Berger]

We have had similar experiences in Liverpool. It is devastating for the cities and towns concerned, as there are literally acres of flattened land with nothing on them. Near Smithdown road in Picton, there is nothing but green-grey grass, but people know that houses once stood there.

In Kensington and Picton, which are two wards in my constituency, some dilapidated housing stock sits mostly empty and boarded up. Some people live in what have become ghost towns. Eight out of nine houses are unoccupied. The people still living in those areas feel desperate and let down. They put up with living in decaying conditions because they were promised that they would be rehoused. People across Liverpool knew that if they lived in an area in a certain phase—one of phases 1 to 8—at some point they would be moved out their housing and the area would be regenerated. They now face the disappointment of having to stay.

If progress is not made on demolition, the shell of these properties will rapidly deteriorate, and that will increase the risk of collapse, which could endanger residents. Worse still, the land next to the residents lies idle. As I said, new homes were meant to be built there, but that will not happen because the funding has been withdrawn. The majority of people remaining in the clearance areas are vulnerable, elderly or have health problems. Residents would like to stay in the local area, but they do not have that choice because there are no new or alternative houses.

This is happening not only in Liverpool, as I am sure we will hear from other hon. Members, because it is a familiar story in the other pathfinder areas. The Audit Commission report into HMRI states:

“At this stage there are too many isolated and vulnerable residents still living in poor housing”.

Mike Gahagan, the former chair of the Transform South Yorkshire pathfinder, has said that

“the sudden termination in HMR funding has left many families in distressed surroundings”.

Stuart Whyte, the former chair of Gateway Hull and East Riding of Yorkshire pathfinder highlighted the fact that the areas have increasingly become a magnet for crime and antisocial behaviour.

These residents are already vulnerable and living in these areas for an extended period is likely to have a major impact on their health and well-being. Empty homes attract the theft of valuable metals and lead. The other weekend, I visited Ben Kwonko, a constituent who lives in an area where eight out of nine homes are tinned-up and unoccupied. His home is damp and lead has been stolen from his roof numerous times. He and his family are desperate to move out of that property, but he has no choice. There is also an increased likelihood of arson attacks in these areas.

The Minister might have realised the damage that ending HMRI has done to these areas, as he announced in May that a £30 million transition fund would be made available to the five most deprived HMRI areas— Merseyside, east Lancashire, north Staffordshire, Hull and Teesside. I welcome that announcement as a first step. Liverpool has been comparatively lucky by being able to access some of that money, but the reality is that such figures are a drop in the ocean when compared with the scale of the challenge. The money will not deal with all the outstanding housing renewal problems in some the neighbourhoods in Liverpool.

I refer to an example in Anfield, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), who I am sure will reinforce the point. In his constituency, areas in phases 6 and 7 do not meet the transition fund criteria for occupancy, and there is a requirement that the fund should not open up new phases of redevelopment. However, people are stuck in those areas. The funding decision also leaves four pathfinder areas with no extra funding and no clear idea of why that is.

Will the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), share with us how the figure of £30 million was arrived at? How was the decision reached over which pathfinder areas are to receive money from the transition fund? What were the criteria and who set them? What support, if any, does he plan for those pathfinder areas not eligible for the transition fund? The transition fund does not address the fact that a large amount has already been spent on pathfinder schemes—thus far for nothing. We have seen £2.2 billion of taxpayers’ money invested in housing market renewal since 2002. What assurances can the Under-Secretary give that these areas will not regress, and that money already spent will not be wasted?

It is not only taxpayers’ money that is in danger of being wasted. Ros Groves is chair of the Anfield and Breckfield housing and physical regeneration group in Liverpool. The Minister for Housing and Local Government—I keep referring to him because I was expecting him to answer the debate—was in Liverpool when he announced the transition fund in May. Ros Groves said that he

“went on about how we need to get private sector involvement and I said: ‘We’ve got that. We’ve had £207 million spent here by businesses. What do you do with that? Just throw it in the bin?’ And he didn't have an answer because there is no answer.”

I hope that the Under-Secretary will be able to answer that today.

As well as a clear lack of a strategy on how to deal with residents living in pathfinder areas, there has been complete confusion over what funds will be available to finish the planned development in these areas. In October 2010, the Housing Minister said:

“We will complete all the committed HMR schemes, and we will then roll the funding up into the regional development fund to continue the good work.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 1114.]

That gave hope to pathfinder areas that they would be able to maintain funding for these projects—albeit on a reduced scale, but still at a reasonable level. However, the Minister’s commitment was left in tatters just over two weeks ago when Lord Heseltine, the chair of the independent advisory panel for the regional growth fund, told the Communities and Local Government Committee:

“The regional growth fund is not in any way a replacement for the housing market renewal funding...There is no way in which we are doing housing renewal.”

That is a complete rejection of what the Minister said to the House in October and of what he told my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton and me in a meeting in Liverpool. He gave false hope to those in Liverpool and other pathfinder areas that a solution may be found.

We are left with a lot of unanswered questions, so I hope that the Under-Secretary will answer some of them today. What discussions has he or his colleague had with Lord Heseltine regarding using the regional growth fund to develop the HMRI pathfinder areas? When was the decision made not to allow regional growth fund money to be used for housing? Who made it and when did the Housing Minister find out? Did the Under-Secretary or the Housing Minister know in advance of Lord Heseltine’s Select Committee appearance that he was going to veto the use of regional growth fund money for housing market renewal? When the Housing Minister gave his commitment to the House in October, had an agreement been reached to provide funding from the regional growth fund, which has subsequently been breached, or was he hoping that the funding could be used, but had not yet received concrete assurances that it would?

In addition to explaining how the Government made the decisions that have got us into this mess, I hope that the Under-Secretary will finally give us some clarity and provide an indication of how we can move forward and complete the housing projects, which is ultimately what we all want to see. I believe that the Housing Minister is interested in finding a solution.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I am here simply out of interest. Will the hon. Lady give us some indication of how much money is needed to complete the projects in the way in which she is talking about?

[Luciana Berger]

The transition fund that was announced was £30 million. If the projects had continued in Liverpool alone, £120 million more would have been needed over the next seven years. However, there are another eight pathfinder areas. We expected some scaling back, but there are areas in my constituency and others across the pathfinder areas in which people are living in dilapidated housing. Those people were supposed to be decanted in a few years’ time. Their properties were expected to be regenerated and rebuilt, thus bringing much needed jobs to local areas and improving people’s surroundings, as they all deserve.