Regeneration

Debate between Clive Betts and Rehman Chishti

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.”

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[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.

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[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.