Urban Regeneration (England)

Chris Evans Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I think this is the first time you have been in the Chair when I have spoken, so I welcome you to your position. I also welcome the Minister to his position; I think this is the first time I have spoken when he has been winding up for the Government.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) on securing this debate about an issue that affects us all, wherever we live, whether in England or Wales. There is nothing worse than the situation she cited in her speech: when someone does not have pride in their community because they believe that the Government or society do not care about them—a feeling underlined by boarded-up shops or derelict places in their communities.

I am also pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders). I was very friendly with his predecessor, who was known as one of the great scientific minds of Parliament. I remember how, in one of our last conversations before he left this House, he waxed lyrical about the fact that his successor knew local government inside out. I am glad that my hon. Friend is bringing that knowledge to bear in the House today.

I will try to keep my contribution short, given what we have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston and for Wirral South. I would like to bring two examples before the House. Community regeneration is something I have been interested in for a long time, in particular through living and having grown up in south Wales, where we are part of the post-industrial age.

In all the time I have been a Member of Parliament, I never thought that I would speak in a debate and praise a Government led by Mrs Margaret Thatcher. However, I find myself doing that in drawing attention to the Cardiff Bay development corporation, which was set up in April 1987 to regenerate the 1,100 hectares of old derelict docklands of Cardiff and Penarth.

If anybody remembers Cardiff Bay—as I know you do, Mrs Main, with your Welsh connections—they will know that Tiger Bay was a no-go area. The most famous person ever to come out of Tiger Bay was Shirley Bassey. It was known, unfortunately, for two things—dockers and prostitutes. It was not a nice place to go. However, when people go there now, it is modern—a place where someone can take their children for a day out. It holds modern office blocks. Essentially, it was part of the British Government’s urban development programme to regenerate particularly deprived and run-down areas of British inner cities, and it showed that when a Government have a political will, great things can happen.

The mission statement for the regeneration project was to put Cardiff on the international map. I am very pleased to say that it has done so, and not just with the Ryder cup 2010, held at Celtic Manor just down the road in Newport, or the recent NATO summit. The facilities in Cardiff—including Cardiff castle, where the President of the United States dined during that summit—really put Cardiff on the worldwide scene, and that is because of what is happening in the bay.

The five main aims and objectives identified in the regeneration project were as follows: first, to promote development and provide a superb environment in which people want to live, work and play. Having enjoyed some of the restaurants and the pubs—sometimes too much—I can say that it is certainly a place that I want to visit. My hon. Friends have encouraged the Minister to visit their areas in Merseyside, and I ask him to visit Cardiff Bay, not in an official capacity, but in a personal capacity, with his family. I think he would have a great day out there.

Secondly, the project aimed to reunite the centre of Cardiff with its waterfront, which is, of course, one of the focal features of the city. It has been used as a backdrop for many news programmes and as a filming location in programmes such as “Doctor Who”—unfortunately, a filming request for the new James Bond film, “Spectre”, was turned down.

The third aim was to bring forward a mix of development that would create a wide range of job opportunities and would reflect the hopes and aspirations of the communities of the area. Cardiff Bay is a melting pot; it brings together several cultures, like many dockland towns, such as those in Liverpool. I am glad to say that Cardiff Bay celebrates the integration and diversity that makes our country so great. Fourthly, the regeneration project aimed to achieve the highest standard of design and quality in all types of development and investment. Fifthly, it aimed to establish the area as a recognised centre of excellence and innovation in the field of urban generation.

Some of the significant achievements of the project included the construction of a barrage across the mouth of the bay to create a 200-hectare fresh water lake—I am glad to say that there are many boating trips on there now. There was the construction of new homes, including those at Atlantic Wharf, and the new offices at Crickhowell House, now the home of the National Assembly for Wales. The development also created commercial and leisure facilities, such as those at Mermaid Quay on the waterfront and the Atlantic Wharf leisure village. It is evident that investment in the regeneration of our towns and cities is vital for the most prosperous future. If somebody wants to see the beating heart of that, please visit Cardiff Bay.

My second example, from further afield, is Bedford-Stuyvesant. The change there was brought about by my great hero, Robert Kennedy, when, in 1964, he set in motion a round of legislative action that created the special impact programme, which was an amendment to the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.

Kennedy called for the formation of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Renewal and Rehabilitation Corporation and the Development Services Corporation. Bedford-Stuyvesant, at that time, was a hotbed of crime and urban decay, and many of the brownstone houses that made up that beautiful community during the 1930s had fallen into disrepair. What Robert Kennedy outlined was a conceptual framework for a comprehensive and integrated community planning and development effort. His speech recognised that the efforts of community residents combined with those of the private sector and of Government could bring about economic, social and physical revitalisation of some of the most impoverished areas.

Robert Kennedy identified three critical threads, which I believe also link to Cardiff Bay: co-operation with the business community in self-sustaining, economically viable enterprises; integration of programmes for education, employment and community developments under a co-ordinated overall plan; and drive and direction to be given to those efforts by the united strength of the community, working with private foundations, unions and universities, in community development corporations organised for that purpose.

Many people wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South about her area; if there was the idea of a community development corporation that they could get involved in, I wonder whether they could put their ideas into practice. I see community development corporations, if they are taken up—again, with political will—as using the best expertise of business along with the activism of local communities.

Vital to this approach is the recognition that community development requires the direct participation and involvement of the community of residents. That means that however many Government schemes we have, and however much money is thrown at schemes by Government, they work only if there is buy-in from the communities themselves. That is not only in the decision making, but in the production, management and control of what is being produced. If people feel that a fruit and veg shop is needed in their shopping centre, that should be run as a food co-operative, or there should be some other way of bringing it about. However, that can be done only if we lower business rates and create the environment for it to come about.

The notion of community development connotes not only empowerment of residents, but the formation, development and maintenance of community-based institutions, including churches, schools, day care facilities for young and old, health centres, shops and recreational facilities. Thriving local economies are at the heart of a competitive UK economy, but development is needed to help towns and cities to meet their potential—from the quality and affordability of housing, to the mix of office space and the connectivity of transport links. Anyone who has walked down their high street and seen boarded-up buildings where shops once stood, or who is struggling to afford a decent home close to work, will grasp the scale of the challenge.

For too long, “regeneration” has been something of a dirty word. It is seen as something that Government deals with by throwing money at it. Some people will say that it is a waste of time—too big an effort. That is not helped by the fact that many grand projects have failed to deliver the benefits promised, and public funds have been wasted. But to me, regeneration matters; community and civic pride matters. For communities to thrive and prosper, people need to feel proud of where they are and where they come from. For the public, thriving local communities are about having the amenities that they need on their doorstep: leisure facilities, public services, good transport links and, most important of all, jobs. For businesses seeking to set up in towns and cities, the right environment can be the difference between success and stagnation.

We need a new approach to regeneration in which business, local authorities, central Government and local communities work together to deliver new homes and modern office space, rejuvenate our high streets and develop high-quality infrastructure to connect towns and cities. Even in the digital age, in which connections are increasingly made remotely, place, as well as a sense of being, still matters, providing somewhere to live and work and also the right connections to be able to get around.

According to a recent report conducted by the University of Plymouth, “The Failure of Regeneration Policy in Britain”, there are two main types of urban problem in the UK. The first is problem localities in prosperous cities. The second is depressed towns and cities. In both cases, and despite years of policy intervention, there is little evidence that the situation is improving. There are fundamental economic problems to be addressed on both the supply and the demand side. Preferences will have to be altered so that peripheral regions and problem areas become more desirable.

The changing balance of Government spending and the increased costs of motoring should be priorities. The first group involves the essentially prosperous economies of London, much of southern England and the provincial capitals of which Bristol is a glowing example. The second consists of locations that have struggling economies. They include former mining towns, which I represent, and centres of shipbuilding, which my hon. Friends represent.

The report draws the conclusion that the main solution seems to lie with education and training, design improvements, limited tax changes, proposals to clean up contaminated land, and targets for brownfield land and redevelopment. I think that the Government need to take a two-pronged approach. They need to look at the examples of Cardiff Bay and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Government will in Cardiff Bay has regenerated and rejuvenated that area. Community activism regenerated Bedford-Stuyvesant. At our best, this country does those things better than anybody else. I encourage the Government to promote these issues as best they can.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

I would like to point out that I will be calling the Scottish National party spokesperson at 10 minutes past 5.