Regeneration

Clive Betts Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to introduce the Select Committee’s report on regeneration. The Committee began the inquiry with a view to considering the Government’s statement on regeneration to enable growth—something that we have commented on in our recommendations. We recognised that, in the current climate, resources were always going to be limited. We therefore considered how the resources that were available could best be spent and, from past experience, what was likely to be most effective. We made inquiries along those lines on our visits to Manchester, Salford and Rochdale, and on my visit Liverpool and Bootle, too. During the inquiry, we had to comment on the Government’s reduction in funding to housing market renewal areas. That reduction has made a considerable impact that came up in our evidence.

I will refer to the Government’s response to our report. Perhaps unlike the recent Government response to our report on the national planning policy framework, the Government were not quite so supportive on this occasion as they were to our comments and recommendations on planning. However, I will obviously focus mainly on our report on regeneration.

Some of us—I am looking at you, Sir Alan—have been around this place long enough to remember a time before 2010 and previous Parliaments when the Select Committee, which has gone through various names, was called the Transport, Local Government and the Regions Committee. It conducted an initial report into empty homes in 2002. That was followed by a report in 2005 on empty homes and low-demand pathfinders, when I think that the Committee was called the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Committee. The Committee has had various titles but a constant theme of deliberations on the problems of low-demand areas and regeneration.

As part of the Committee’s evidence sessions in 2002, I remember going to Burnley. Frankly, I was shocked by what I saw. We saw evidence of rows of terraced properties with selective pepper-potting of empty homes—properties becoming empty and no one going back to them as residents. We heard evidence of homes being exchanged in pubs for £2,000. Particularly for hon. Members from the south and other more prosperous areas, the idea of even buying a garden shed for £2,000 is quite ridiculous.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

When the hon. Gentleman talks about the south and prosperous areas, does he accept that even in the south there are areas of high deprivation? For example, in Gillingham and Rainham there is a seven-year life expectancy difference from Gillingham north to Hempstead. Therefore, the regeneration issue cannot be divided between north and south.

[Mr Betts]

I accept that there are pockets—indeed, substantial areas—of deprivation, particularly in parts of London, but in towns and cities in the south as well. That is not something that we want to obscure. I was making the generalisation that house prices are generally more expensive in the south, where we would probably not find houses changing hands for £2,000 in the pub. However, the point about life expectancy is well made. Indeed, I think that at some point the Committee will consider the whole issue of public health and the new health and wellbeing boards in councils. I think that one of their priorities will be to address that issue.

Those properties were changing hands, and landlords who had little interest in their management were buying and letting them, often to people on housing benefit, with little attempt to control antisocial behaviour. Owner-occupiers who had previously spent their money—often their life savings—on their properties abandoned them. They walked out because they could not cope with the area any more. The whole area was therefore in a spiral of decay and decline. Clearly, there was population loss, and there were job losses, too. The relative isolation of some ex-mill towns in those parts of Lancashire was an issue, and one repeated in other parts of northern cities, too. We saw an area that was almost suffering death by a thousand cuts—a decline that was not being managed, because there was no effective public intervention. It was simply a matter of complete and utter market failure. There was no question of the private sector coming in with private investment, because the houses were simply regarded as not having any real value.

As a result of that experience and the report from the Select Committee, the Government set up the housing market renewal areas—pathfinders—and put in substantial amounts of public money. The Select Committee then published another report in 2005, which is interesting because it considered some of the same themes as the new report. One of the recommendations of the 2005 report, in paragraph 19, stated:

“The Government acknowledges that it will take up to 15 years to tackle failing housing markets or undertake market restructuring and many of the mechanisms such as compulsory purchase orders have a long lead-in time before taking effect.”

Setting up the housing market renewal areas and the indication of the need for a long-term programme was absolutely right. One criticism that the Minister has made of the Government at that time, which I accept, is that they should have done then what they did for the new deal community areas and actually made a commitment from the very beginning to 15-year funding. It is difficult for one Government to commit another, but the reality is that these areas have failed so much and the needs are so great and so long term—a theme that came out very strongly in our evidence—that Governments must be prepared to commit for that period.

There were other interesting recommendations in the 2005 report, and the Committee clearly heard conflicting evidence about the benefits of refurbishing homes or demolishing them and the whole issue of heritage. Paragraph 24 stated:

“The potential heritage value of the housing and its contribution to regenerating neighbourhoods should be considered an important part of any appraisal but houses should not be preserved for the sake of heritage if there is not the demand for them.”

That is a real issue. It is no surprise that many of those areas have failed markets with failed demand. Demolition has been the right solution locally, providing that it has been done in conjunction, consultation and agreement with local communities.

As part of collecting evidence for the current report that we are debating today, the Committee went to Manchester and Rochdale, and I went to Liverpool and Bootle. We saw streets of old properties that were in the process of being demolished. We talked to residents there, and to residents who had moved into new homes. Overwhelmingly, people said to us that the right decisions had been made. Some of the houses had been subject to housing action areas. I do not know how many people in the Chamber are old enough to remember housing action areas and to have been involved in them. The hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) is nodding from across the Chamber. Homes in those areas have been through one process of regeneration in an attempt to keep them going for 30 years. Those 30 years have now come to an end, and there was little point in trying to do them up once again.

I went to a home in Bootle—I remember it very well—where the property was right out on to the street. The backyard had two wheelie bins in it. They took up half the space, which illustrates how big the backyard was. I could hear water rushing underneath the property through the cellars and water coming through the roof. It is right that there should be local decisions about the future of those areas. In the vast majority of housing market renewal areas, there was full and proper consultation with local residents about what the future held for them and their properties, how they were moved on and decanted into properties nearby and an attempt to keep communities together. That was the right approach. Of course, some properties were capable of refurbishment—perhaps bigger and more substantial properties with the potential to be family homes when they were done up—but local decisions were the right ones to take.

Ros Groves lives in the Anfield area of Liverpool and gave evidence to the Committee. I remember her saying to me that it took a long time for communities to work through the order in which demolition and refurbishment took place. Someone had to be at the end of the queue; but even if they were, the promise was always that their home would eventually be dealt with. Everyone would have the same treatment as their neighbours. She said that the most demoralising thing she had to do as an elected local representative—someone who had been just a local resident and was elected by her colleagues as chair of the residents’ group and eventually chair of the collection of residents’ groups for the whole housing market renewal area—was to stand up at a meeting and say, “I’m sorry; we made promises in good faith that your home eventually would be subject to this renewal programme, either by demolition or refurbishment, and now the money has stopped.” She said, “I felt responsible for telling my neighbours that what was being promised them was not going to happen.”

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend describes the situation in Merseyside well, including in Bootle, my constituency neighbour. There are 6,000 empty properties in the borough of Sefton. He rightly says that people want these properties to be redeveloped and want the work carried out. I hope that he agrees that a combination of private and public money is needed to achieve that. In my constituency next door, people want those properties developed as well. The pressure knocks on, into the green spaces and the green belt. He touched on planning policy frameworks. All these things are linked up. Unless regeneration is done properly, particularly in respect of empty homes, other strong pressures come into play.

[Mr Betts]

I agree. Whether it is demolition or refurbishment, there is not one right answer. The right answer arises in the context of a local community making decisions. The worst thing that can happen is leaving the areas to decay, because housing pressures, which are not being responded to there, spill over into greenfield sites, although we would rather have houses either demolished and rebuilt or refurbished on existing brownfield sites.

In the end, the criteria are simple. Communities considered whether the areas had a future, whether there was demand for the properties and community support for refurbishment or demolition, whether houses had already been refurbished once, 30 years ago and whether they were adequate. For example, the house that I described in Bootle was built straight on to the road, with no back yard and little prospect of being made into a substantial family home. A number of properties in Skinnerthorpe road in the ward that I used to represent in Sheffield, which is now part of the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), are tiny little homes that are damp and inadequate and were subject to demolition, but the larger homes on the road next door, which could be refurbished as family homes, were refurbished properly as part of an ongoing programme, generally with community support.

[Rehman Chishti]

The hon. Gentleman talks about housing regeneration, but does he not agree that wider regeneration is related to providing the opportunity of hope and aspiration and linked, for example, to facilities in the area? There is a high level of deprivation in Gillingham north, for example, and an £11 million sports facility—Medway Park—which will host Olympic teams. Health, housing and providing such facilities in those areas are part of a combined approach, as the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) said.

[Mr Betts]

I shall make some points about that in a minute. The hon. Gentleman anticipates what I am going to say and makes a valid, correct point.

Our fundamental criticism of the Government—it will be interesting to hear what the Minister says—is that we did not believe that they had a strategy for dealing with the issue. We did not believe that there was such a strategy in the Government’s report on regeneration. We even contrasted that report with the approach to regeneration in Scotland, where the Government seemed to have an overall view of what should happen. It is not just a party political point. I am sure that the Minister will be relieved about that.

In the 2005 report, when we had a Government of a different persuasion, the Committee was critical of the Government allowing the pathfinders to go their own way, but not of drawing together themes and trying to enable them to learn lessons from one another. Our criticisms reflect those of a previous report on a previous Government. We do not ever seem to have had an overall, clear national framework.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

From the inquiry I recall conflicting evidence about what we mean by regeneration. A lot of the evidence we heard was that people could not give a single, coherent definition of what regeneration was. Will the hon. Gentleman give us his definition of regeneration?

[Mr Betts]

I will explain what I think it is about. The hon. Gentleman anticipates me. I do not know whether it is helpful to give a simple definition of regeneration to cover all possible examples, but it should reflect some elements of regeneration schemes.

The hon. Gentleman’s first point is right. There was a lot of mixing up of regeneration and growth. For example, High Speed 2 and Crossrail were mentioned in the Government’s regeneration paper as examples of funding to help regeneration. It is a fairly big stretch of anyone’s imagination to link HS2 and Crossrail to the potential for regeneration schemes. That is a little step too far. I am happy to support those schemes and believe they will help economic growth nationally, but I am not sure whether they really relate to particular regeneration.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a great presentation and has produced an important report. In respect of Crossrail, particularly, Committee members were able to get a station in Woolwich, which was an important part of the process in this House that will have a massive effect on regeneration in that area, which so badly needs it. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should be a little careful about sizeable projects and their impact on specific communities.

[Mr Betts]

I am all in favour of HS2, which will be good for growth in northern cities, such as Sheffield. I am a strong supporter of that and have been for a long time. When considering specific areas—coming back to the point made by the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris)—regeneration is a response to market failure, as we saw in Burnley, where houses were sold for next to nothing. To take the point made by the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti), there is a wider issue of failure of environment, dereliction, failure of skills and lack of employment opportunities.

[Rehman Chishti]

The hon. Gentleman is right, but in terms of the definition of regeneration, does he agree that one could easily say that regeneration means different things to different people, as with subsidiarity in European law? Linked to regeneration are key attractions, for example, the Dickens festival and the Medway Queen, which is a historical attraction that people come out to see. European funding for such projects is crucial. Ministers should come and visit Gillingham, and I hope that the Minister will visit.

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[Mr Betts]

Regeneration is defined widely. Different areas will have different needs and a different response will be required. I agree with the Minister that that is why, in the end, a localist approach to what works in an area is important.

With regard to my comments about Crossrail and HS2, which are massive, major projects involving billions of pounds of expenditure, if a tiny bit of that affects one area, then good, but it is a little bit difficult to recognise such projects as regeneration funding as a whole. In Burnley, Liverpool and Rochdale, we saw market failure and nothing will happen without some public funding. That was the message that came over to us. If the public money is not there, the private money will not be there either. The two need to go hand in hand. As witnesses said to the inquiry, no regeneration is happening in Britain at present, because it has virtually come to a standstill. There is a bit of the tail-off of housing market renewal in respect of schemes that are being wound down, but that is all. There is a need, potentially, for the private sector to invest with some gap funding, which, again, may be available through the European Regional Development Fund, which I will mention in a second.

Regeneration and market failure is not just about bricks and mortar; it is about the environment, as well as various facilities, skills and jobs. If we are going to tackle the difficult, fundamental problems that we see in some of the worst areas, there probably has to be some concentration of whatever public money can be found—recognising the issue of the public finances—in those particular areas. I have made the comment already, but the previous Government’s failing was not in making the money available, but in not committing it for a long enough period to see the schemes through to a successful conclusion.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I am mindful of the advice from the mayor of Newham, because there is rather more to regeneration than continually putting in public money. The mayor’s evidence was that, despite 20 or 30 years of continuing investment, the indices of deprivation had not moved. It is sometimes a matter of attention, not only of continually putting the money in.

[Mr Betts]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. It has been said, in particular about helping with skills and improving people’s availability for employment, that what happened was that people in Newham who got that help then moved to other areas. There are clearly challenges to making regeneration successful. One of the criticisms we made in the Select Committee report was about learning lessons from the past. We should look at where money has been spent—the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) was keen on that in the Committee—and at what was got right and wrong.

We took evidence from Lord Heseltine and went to Hulme to look at the city challenge area which, in everyone’s view, was a success. It was, however, a 20-year project and, to begin with, did not go well. Lessons were learnt from initial failures, but it was a 20-year programme with the public and private sectors working together; it was about not only buildings but skills, employment opportunities and the general environment of the area. It was also a lot about demolition of some really bad properties, and their replacement with new, attractive properties in the private as well as the public sector, as we saw on our visit.

The issue of the long term is so important. The hon. Gentleman is right that we can have long-term projects that still go wrong, but if we do not do things for the long term we will not get some areas right at all. There was a lady in the community centre in Rochdale who said to us—she had not been briefed and she put it in her own way—“It is a bit like going on a weight-loss course. It is easy to get a few pounds and even a few stones off at first, but it gets harder and harder. You have got to keep working at it. If you don’t keep going at it for the long term, you clap the weight back on and all the hard work of the previous time has been lost.” That is a real worry now in some housing market renewal areas—that the investment has gone in but stopped halfway, so some of the benefits will be lost. That lady’s comments always stuck in my mind. She was so enthusiastic about her area because it had been about improvements to the school and to employment opportunities. I remember she said, “I used to be ashamed to bring visitors. In fact, I used to pretend that I didn’t live here. Now when they come to visit, I walk down the street with pride because of what has been done.” That is an awfully good testament to what happened.

We ought to learn lessons from the failures. I am trying not to be party political, and the single regeneration budget had some successes but, very often, it was spread too thinly around the place, to give everyone a little bit but without achieving any long-term benefits. Let us learn from the problems of the past as well as from the successes achieved—that is a bit of common ground with the Minister at least. The regional growth fund was proposed as a possible solution, but Lord Heseltine has told the Committee, absolutely bluntly, “This is not about improvements for housing. There is no money here for those sorts of initiatives.” He told us that, in words of one syllable. He basically said, “It doesn’t matter what the Minister says, I am in charge of this”, and I am sure that the Minister does not want to argue with Lord Heseltine on such points.

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

wondered whether the hon. Gentleman had noted that two major housing market renewal areas were covered by the £2.4 billion regeneration money.

[Mr Betts]

Some schemes will affect HMR areas but, in terms of pure concentration on regeneration issues, Lord Heseltine was quite clear to us that the focus of his scheme was about jobs and not about improving homes in any shape or form.

[Grant Shapps]

Will the Chair of the Select Committee accept my point that people in regeneration areas really do not give a damn which budget is being used to regenerate the area?

[Mr Betts]

Most of the people that I have spoken to simply hope that some budget is available—that is our criticism about identifying what budgets were available. We had the Growing Places fund which seemed to be mainly about benefiting places that are growing, rather than places of market failure.

I will make one aside, which is probably party political. Yes, of course there are reductions in public expenditure, but is it really fair to have a 19% overall cut in public expenditure in the current spending round, a 28% cut in local authority grants, a 50% cut in funding for social housing investment and a 100% cut in regeneration funding through the HMR scheme all at once? That is to put the situation in stark terms.

Let me continue, however, by saying that the Select Committee recognised some really positive developments. We certainly welcomed tax increment financing and local enterprise partnerships, but we wanted to be sure that LEPs were aware of the need to link into regeneration areas. If LEPs are creating jobs, how can they then help to benefit people in some of the poorest communities? That is a positive point. TIFs of themselves are not aimed in particular at regeneration schemes, but they can of course create projects that benefit people in regeneration areas, although how that funding can then be properly linked is a challenge.

We were pleased by the Government commitment on the European regional development fund and their intention to spend all the ERDF budget. Indeed, the Committee will do a further report on that. That has potential for the gap funding to which I referred. The challenge is ensuring that the funding is used and that it is used as constructively as possible in regeneration areas.

We also very much welcome the extra transitional funding of £35 million that the Government found. That was helpful, because of the despair in some of those areas, where only one in 10 houses are lived in and people are struggling in desperate circumstances. To have the funding simply cut off was a real blow, so it was good to have a bit of money put back in the five worst areas, with matched funding from councils, to help people in such conditions. I am sorry about comments in the press in the past few days from some people, who do not live in those areas, complaining that the Government are funding demolition. Of course they are. If nine out of 10 houses are not occupied and we still have to deal with the one that is, the only logical conclusion is to demolish, and to create the area for future regeneration. Of course that is the logic. The Government should be supported in doing that and in working with councils on the problem—I certainly do so.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is describing well the need for massive levels of investment in such areas, but the mention of Lord Heseltine made me want to contribute. There is a rather unfortunate association with the early ’80s in Merseyside, given the release of Cabinet minutes suggesting that the idea of managed decline was something that the Government of the time were considering. Lord Heseltine was of course the one who made sure that that did not happen—to his great credit, and he has recognition for that on Merseyside. My concern, however, is that unless what is recommended in the report is put in place, we could see that managed decline happening in all sorts of places up and down the country.

[Mr Betts]

That is a worry and it is why intervention by public bodies, whether Government or local authority, is necessary. I am sure that Merseyside will be in there fighting its corner.

We paid a visit to Greater Manchester and had an interesting briefing, not merely from the local authorities, cross-party and working together, as they do, on a strategic partnership basis, but from the private sector as well, arguing the case for the infrastructure and skills budgets for the city region to be brought together under local control. The Government have responded positively through the community budget “whole place” initiative, and the revolving infrastructure fund for the Greater Manchester area is another positive step forward. The city deals that the Government are trying to reach are also to be welcomed. Hopefully, more powers will go down to the local level. If cities choose working together to target resources in particular ways to stimulate and to help regeneration, they will be free to do so. Those are a welcome response to the report and the issues we identified.

To conclude, we are dealing with some of the poorest areas in the country—yes, some in the south, as well as in the north and the midlands. Such areas have already had years of decay and decline. If there is no recognition of that, no intervention and no public money made available, those areas will simply get worse, more areas will fall into similar decline and the cost of putting the problems right in the long term will be even greater. In the meantime, the cost in human misery will be substantial.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Sir Alan, to serve under your chairmanship again. We spent two and a half years almost living together on Crossrail, and if you would like me to define that further, I am happy to, but perhaps you are pleased to let it go. It is good to be working with you again.

I again congratulate the hon. Member for—is it Sheffield, Brightside?

[Mr Betts]

Sheffield South East.

[Mr Binley]

I apologise. Perhaps it is my history that takes me back to Brightside.

The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) has, with other Committee members, done a remarkable and important job. I also congratulate him on obtaining this debate on regeneration, which is a vital part of coming out of recession. This is an opportune time to be discussing the subject.

I welcome the report. I understand the Government’s emphasis on a localist footprint, which is very encouraging, and that was echoed by the hon. Gentleman. However, some resonances in the report caused me concern. The anticipated absence of funding must be taken into account. We created local enterprise partnerships from a perspective of getting local involvement, but we rather underestimated the importance of funding, particularly in the early stages of their work. That is not directly under the Minister’s control, but it is an important part of the subject.

Too much emphasis can be placed on changing the planning system to solve our problems. The issue is not all about what the Government and local government organisations can do. Planning always needs changing. It never pleases everyone at the same time, and can be over-bureaucratic, but its reformation—we have seen a number of reforms over the years—is not necessarily the great Aladdin’s lamp that it is painted as being. I have some concern about that.

The Committee’s enthusiasm for a national regeneration strategy could muddy the waters if done incorrectly. That needs careful consideration but, having known its Chairman for a considerable time, I know that that will be in his mind.

The trouble with our economy at the moment is that we are faced with a massively changing dynamic within the economic world, which has created a heavy price for some localities. De-industrialisation has left a vacuum in many communities and needs special attention. I am thinking particularly of the coal community, and communities that relied on heavy manufacturing. It is not a new problem, but it is an existing one, and we must recognise it. It brings with it a changing pattern of employment and lifestyle, which has often rendered existing infrastructure outdated and sometimes even irrelevant. That adds to the problems that regeneration revolves around, and we must be careful to take those matters into account.

A very disturbing problem is young people who have struggled to find their place in the labour market. When I left school at 15, I knew that I would go straight into employment. I knew that there would be a job. It was in a shoe factory, which was the local industry, but that did not matter. I went into the workplace, and working has always been an integral concept and part of my life. It affected and moulded my lifestyle and my attitude to life. If we allow a generation to continue to think that life can be about not working, and if we allow some people even to see that as a potential career, we will do massive damage to their chance of enjoyment and achievement in life. We must take that into account when talking about regeneration.

The mindset about regeneration is often negative and backward looking in that many people grow attached to a specific area and the work they are involved in. Often, regeneration, if done badly, can create the mindset of backward-looking negativity. We must be aware of that.

I beg the Minister to recognise that risk aversion is almost a national disease now. If many of the risk management techniques that we have now had existed at the time of the industrial revolution, many projects would not have got off the ground, and Britain might still be messing about in a pre-industrial age. I want to change the concept of risk management. It should not be about stopping things happening, but it often becomes that, because that is an easy way of looking at it. I beg the Minister to see risk aversion as a problem instead of an answer.

If we are to make regeneration effective, we must focus on the positive. When regenerating an area, we must encourage people to feel part of that regeneration. Investors need to experience the confidence of the knowledge that people are involved and have ownership of their areas. All too often, regeneration has been seen as a council responsibility and, by golly, we know that when government becomes involved in projects, as many things go wrong as go right. I want people to be involved so that they can check, police and give to a regeneration policy, to avoid such negativity. I want regeneration to be owned by the local citizenry. We must find ways of involving them. It is no good just putting up posters advertising a 12-week consultation. If a project lasts 10 or 15 years, they must be involved for 10 or 15 years. We must listen to them, and react to what they say. Otherwise, they will not feel that they have ownership, and that is important.

I turn to Northampton, as the Minister knew I would. It is one of the fastest growing towns in the country, which also creates problems. Housing was the object of the previous Government’s growth agenda, as it is of the present Government. By about 2030, our population will increase by 50%, which is a massive change. It is a difficult change, whether for good or bad, and it needs to be managed properly. I have some leaflets here if anyone wants to know about the Northampton Alive project in more depth. You allowed me to get away with that, Sir Alan. The 10 to 15-year project involves heritage, and Northampton has a long heritage. Parliament met there during the days of Edward II and Edward III. Thomas à Becket was there but, not surprisingly, shot out of town quickly when the king asked,

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

Sadly, we saw the result of that later.

Northampton enjoys a massive heritage, and we must include that in our view of regeneration. It is central, well connected, and has an enviable record of world-class business investment with the prospect of an even brighter future. The Northampton Alive project consists of a series of 14 or so ambitious regeneration schemes across the piece including, hopefully, an iconic new railway, a landmark waterside development, new and improved shopping—I could go on. The project has captured the people’s imagination, which is what this is all about. We are not focusing on missed opportunities from the past, but preparing to optimise our chances for the future. That is about involving people and getting them excited. When I knocked on people’s doors in the election, some said, “Northampton’s been dead for 40 years.” Reinvigorating those people is a vital part of regeneration. We must understand that regeneration changes the mindset of individuals, as well as the structure of towns.

The real strength of Northampton Alive is that it reaches beyond the confines of development to involve our university, our schools and colleges, local businesses, the borough and county councils, political parties across the piece, West Northamptonshire Development Corporation and the local enterprise partnership. Ownership is diversified because all those organisations are involved in at least one project, and many are involved in several.

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[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

Thank you, Mr Howarth, for your chairmanship in the second half of this debate. It has been an enormously good and welcome discussion, and I congratulate the Communities and Local Government Committee on having instigated and written the report and pushed it through to a conclusion, including this valuable debate. It has given us the opportunity to air a subject that, as hon. Members have said, is not always aired as much as it should be. It is a matter that is vital to our citizens and the economic future of the country.

Unlike many Select Committee reports that I have largely welcomed, on this occasion—as a one off, I am sure—I think that the Committee has got it wrong. My reason for that was revealed in the contribution made by the excellent Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), whose opening speech concentrated almost entirely on what one might call the housing element of regeneration, and in particular the ending of the housing market renewal programme. Indeed, he went so far as to say that things to do with economic change in the country, such as High Speed 2 and Crossrail, could not be counted as regeneration. That theme was picked up in other contributions, particularly from Opposition Members, and led to the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson giving the reasons why, in her opinion, the Supporting People programme has nothing to do with how we regenerate communities.

There seemed to be, however, some cross-party agreement about the idea that we cannot just regenerate. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) made the excellent point that we can go ahead and rebuild and reshape the physical nature of a community—I am very familiar with the Stonebridge Park estate, which I know well—but 20 years down the line we could end up with the same levels of deprivation, and if we do not tackle those problems, we will not truly regenerate. The Supporting People programme is an important element of that. I do not seek to wrap it up and claim that the regeneration fund is bigger than it is, but if the £6.5 billion is not viewed in the context of regeneration, in many ways it will be wasted in the overall scheme of what it actually means to change lives and regenerate communities for the future.

[Mr Betts]

I hope that the Minister did not misunderstand the Committee’s comments. No one was denying the benefits of the schemes in the Government’s report, but he says that because a scheme such as HS2 will benefit areas that require regeneration, along with the rest of the country in terms of economic growth, it should therefore be counted as regeneration funding. That is in absence of a strategy for how that stream of funding will connect with other funding and benefit the poorest areas where market failure has occurred. That is the problem with the Government’s approach.

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[Grant Shapps]

Here we have the fundamental difference of view. I think that we cannot simply do regeneration to people or communities. When we try to do regeneration without improving the economic viability of an area, it simply fails and 10, 20 and 30 years later we are left in the same mess that we were in initially. There can be no finer illustration of that point than the housing market renewal programme. As I listened to some of the contributions from across the Chamber, my blood was starting to boil. The description of the housing market renewal programme that I heard this afternoon was so distant from the reality on the ground over the 13 years for which it was in place—in fact, it was slightly less than that—as to be a grotesque bending of the truth.

This is what one independent group called Save Britain’s Heritage highlighted about the housing market renewal programme. It said that Government inspectors condemned whole rows of terraced houses based on 10-minute visual inspections, even though it would have been cheaper and much more sustainable to refurbish those houses. In fact, the Select Committee in, I think, 2005 said that the designation of areas for demolition in effect increased deprivation in those areas. Many social landlords prepared the ground by voiding and boarding up properties. In turn, that undermined the housing market values. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey)referred to the hope value—he did not quite describe it in that way—of the private sector waiting for the public sector to come in and improve its returns. The Select Committee describes that as deliberately managing decline to make the notional benefits of wholesale demolition and redevelopment more attractive, ensuring larger windfall gains for the state.

Managed decline was precisely the right description of the housing market renewal programme, which I believe was a national scandal. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the housing market renewal programme was ultimately a huge disappointment. I have the figures with me. It destroyed 10 times more homes in this country than it built. Nothing—no programme—did more to destroy homes and communities in this country than the Luftwaffe in the second world war, but the housing market renewal programme did more housing destruction and community destruction than there has been at any time since the war.

[Mr Betts]

I want to say how fundamentally I disagree with the Minister. I just wish that he would make the visit that I made to Merseyside and talk to people about how the programmes there were developed in consultation with and with the agreement of the local community. The problem, of course, is that before we do the rebuilding that the Minister is talking about, we have to do the demolition. The rebuilding has been stopped to a large extent because the Government have now cut off the funding. That is the reality of the situation, is it not?

[Grant Shapps]

The reality of the situation is that more than 10,000 homes were destroyed by the housing market renewal programme and just 1,000 homes were built. That is the reality of the programme. The Chairman of the Select Committee should be aware that I have visited Liverpool, Sefton, Hull and Stoke-on-Trent on numerous occasions. I went to Stoke-on-Trent to launch the £35 million, doubled up by local spending to £70 million, in order for there to be an exit from the housing market renewal programme. I recall that I met a woman there who described the programme: how people had come in from outside, it was called a consultation, but the community hall was so full that the meeting had to be broadcast outdoors. They were told that their streets would be knocked down. They are still suffering to this day from the damage that the housing market renewal programme did. It was a national disgrace, and I was pleased to bring it to a close. The programme was an enormous mistake.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Betts]

I echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) about Kevin Maddison and Committee staff for the excellent work that they did in producing our report. I thank all Members for contributing. We have certainly had a lively and stimulating debate. If Select Committee reports do nothing else, they clearly generate a bit of interest and contention among Members.

Clearly, we differ about the nature of the funding streams to which the Government refer and whether, simply because some regeneration areas will benefit from national schemes, that can therefore be labelled regeneration funding. It certainly does not amount to a regeneration strategy. There is still a need for area approaches, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) called them, or a wholesale approach, as the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) described it. They must certainly be localist, in that a different approach must be taken in different areas, but that does not mean that the Government cannot evaluate what has worked in the past, propose ideas from other areas to communities, promote good initiatives and determine where money can best be spent. The Select Committee might well return to the topic in two or three years’ time to review what progress has been made.