Regeneration

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Grant Shapps

Thursday 19th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Heidi Alexander]

I agree that community involvement in regeneration is vital. During my time on Lewisham council, I did huge amounts of work on stimulating genuine community involvement. I go back to the point that I made earlier: with the best will in the world, communities sometimes need other help to get schemes off the ground. Sometimes that involves public money. Sometimes it involves initiating a discussion with private sector partners to get them interested in the area to start off with.

Some parts of the country are being hit very hard in the current economic climate. Before coming to the debate today, I looked at the unemployment figures and researched some of the statistics for the constituencies of other members of the Select Committee. In my own constituency, Lewisham East, 29 people are chasing every job, yet in Rugby nearly three people are chasing every job and the position is the same in Welwyn Hatfield.

[Grant Shapps]

Given that the hon. Lady is now making a very coherent argument about jobs and how important they are for regeneration, can she explain why the Select Committee takes the view through its Chairman, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), that job generation through the regional growth fund—some 360,000 jobs—is not regeneration?

[Heidi Alexander]

Regeneration is about jobs, decent homes, improving the quality of the environment—so many different things. It is not good enough to look at big infrastructure programmes and assert that the economic impacts of those new bits of infrastructure will somehow trickle down to some of the communities that are excluded most from the labour market. Given that I represent a London constituency, that issue is very close to my heart.

When the riots took place last summer, a group of people massed outside Lewisham police station at the start of the problems in Lewisham. They stood on the site of a stalled regeneration project. Although it would be too simplistic to say that if only the regeneration scheme had gone ahead, we would not have had the riots—there is not a direct correlation between all the places where riots happened and all the places in need of regeneration—areas with significant economic and social problems experienced some of the worst rioting. If we are to give hope and aspiration, jobs and opportunities to the next generation, we must invest in the areas where those people live. It is about so much more than putting up shiny new flats. It is about giving people the skill and opportunity to access jobs and about quality of life and life chances. We know that in some parts of the country hope, determination, confidence and ambition are harder to find than in some other places.

All Governments of different political persuasions over the past three decades have recognised the differences in economic and social capital in different parts of the country. Moreover, they have all had some form of geographically based, area-focused regeneration programme or initiative such as city challenge, the single regeneration budget, new deal for communities, the neighbourhood renewal fund and so on. I am not saying that all of them were perfect or that we should not learn the lessons from them. However, I would say that this Government seem pretty unique in not having any form of geographically based area regeneration scheme in place. They might talk about the regional growth fund and say that that is focused on areas that are more highly reliant on public sector employment and that are experiencing problems with the decline in the public sector work force, but we have already covered that territory. As we know, Lord Heseltine, who chairs the board that considers the bids that come in for the RGF, has basically said that they are not about regeneration. I suggest to the Minister— [Interruption.] Does the Minister want to intervene?

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for allowing me to intervene. The point about the regeneration fund has been made several times and often misleadingly. Although it is not primarily about housing regeneration in housing market renewal areas—I have mentioned two HMR areas that have benefited from RGF funding—it is indeed about regeneration, as the name suggests. It would be quite bizarre to somehow exclude this multi-billion-pound fund.

[Heidi Alexander]

I was quoting Lord Heseltine when he gave evidence to the Select Committee. Let me quote him again. He said:

“I have said quite clearly that we are not about regeneration.”

Perhaps there is some miscommunication between the Minister and Lord Heseltine.

[Mr George Howarth in the Chair]

The Government also suggest that the new homes bonus will help to get the homes built that we all need. That is all very well, but people must be able to afford to live in them. It was interesting that the Prime Minister came to Lewisham to launch the “affordable” mortgage scheme last month. He stood in a development that I, as the cabinet member for regeneration, had promoted. It is a large-scale regeneration scheme with 788 homes, 146 affordable rented properties and 40 shared-ownership properties. That scheme received a grant of £20.5 million from the Homes and Communities Agency. I hesitate to say that the scheme would not have gone ahead had we not got that grant, but I can 100% say that the amount of affordable housing in that scheme would have been less had we not received that grant. When we talk about regeneration, we need to think about giving people the opportunity not just to live next to middle-class people but to live in a decent home and to be able to do well at school, feel good about themselves and to be able to go out there and get a job. I find it ironic that when the Government are launching a scheme about housing, they stand in a development that would not have been so good had it not been for a Government grant, and that that Government grant is a legacy of the previous Labour Government. I am lucky because parts of my constituency are being regenerated, but a number of schemes have stalled.

In conclusion, let me talk briefly about the Milford Towers development in Catford. It is a ’60s block, which looks like a concrete fortress from the outside. There are about 250 flats above a Tesco supermarket and ’60s shopping area. The council is working hard to find a commercially viable regeneration project that will enable people who live in appalling situations to get a new home and move on with their lives.

Earlier, the Chairman of the Select Committee spoke about the lady from Rochdale who talked about being ashamed of bringing people to her home and neighbourhood. I met a lady who works in Tesco and lives in Milford Towers. She said that when her daughter got married, she could not get ready at home because of the state of disrepair of the flats, so she went to somebody else’s house. She did not want to leave on her wedding day from where she lived. That said it all really and shows the need for that regeneration scheme.

We talked earlier about the definition of regeneration. People who live in such an environment are not worried about definitions; they just want their lives to improve and something to change in their communities. It is for that woman and her daughter that I urge the Minister today to look again at some of the Select Committee’s recommendations about the scale of the challenge that exists in some of the hardest-hit areas of our country. Please look again at the ways in which the public sector can work with the private sector to kick-start some of those stalled regeneration schemes, so that we do not lose the knowledge, skills and experience that have been built up in the regeneration sector over the past couple of decades. This is too important to get wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Heidi Alexander]

The Minister talks about a national scandal. Does he agree that it is a national scandal at the moment that people are living in homes on streets where houses have been knocked down? They are living in blighted communities. Although the Government have put forward a transition programme, it is a drop in the ocean compared with the resources needed to deal with the problems that exist today in those communities.

[Grant Shapps]

Perhaps the hon. Lady is not aware of just how much time I have spent with and energy I have expended in these communities over the five years for which I have been either the shadow or the actual Housing Minister. I appreciate that she is right to say that people were left abandoned and stranded in empty streets after the disastrous demolition and managed decline programme that was housing market renewal. The Government managed to bring in money to close that programme and ensure that anyone who lives in a street that is largely empty will now be rescued from that situation. It was very much a rescue programme for a disastrous Government scheme.

I disagree with the conclusion that some people have drawn that the toolkit of different methods available—now open—to all local areas to manage the problem left by housing market renewal and failed regeneration in the past can be ignored. I am talking about the heart of where these problems exist—places such as Sefton—where at local level people have decided to use programmes such as the new homes bonus so that they can borrow against that money, flatten an area and bring in developers to create new housing there. That is being done not through some enormous Government scheme, with money that we cannot afford, but by using the initiatives that are in place. The initiatives are in the toolkit—initiatives such as TIF 1 and TIF 2.

Another initiative is the regional growth fund, much discussed this afternoon. I noticed that it was entirely dismissed by Opposition Members. That is quite bizarre. We know that, for example, both Hull and Wakefield—housing market renewal areas—have been specifically helped by that funding. It is not true to say that only 20% of that funding has been pledged or allocated; £1.7 billion has been allocated or is under provisional allocation, so that figure is entirely inaccurate.

Local Government Finance

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Grant Shapps

Wednesday 8th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am disappointed, however, that a small minority of town halls, it appears, plan to reject the money, and some are going to the very limit of what they can raise without triggering a vote.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

The Minister makes great play of the council tax freeze, but does he accept that the Government’s 10% reduction in council tax benefit will actually result in a council tax increase for some of the poorest people in the country?

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Lady seeks to bring us on to a completely different area of local financing, but we can cover some of that. The council tax benefit localisation is not a key part of the settlement today, but I am happy to talk about it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Grant Shapps

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

13. What assessment he has made of the potential effect on regions in England of the new homes bonus.

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

Today, I have announced the final allocations to local authorities under the new homes bonus for 2011-12. All parts of England will receive significant funding from the scheme. Kirklees will receive £1.3 million, Rugby £435,000 and Gloucester £782,000. The funding is completely un-ring-fenced and councils will be able to use it according to the wishes of their local communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grant Shapps]

One of the changes that we have made is to enable local authorities to set their own targets for brownfield sites. I have been to my hon. Friend’s constituency and I know that there are many good sites available. Rather than housing being built on sites where the regional spatial strategy seemed to insist that it went, housing can now go where it is required. Much of that will be on the brownfield land that I went to see. That is one of the features of the Government’s policy, and of the new homes bonus in particular.

[Heidi Alexander]

Last week the Minister for Housing and Local Government wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) and claimed that the new homes bonus will not penalise deprived areas to favour more affluent ones. Can he explain to me why his figures differ so widely from those of the National Housing Federation, which estimates that the four northern regions of England will lose £104 million, whereas the five southern regions will gain £342 million?

[Grant Shapps]

It may have escaped the attention of Opposition Members that the new homes bonus rewards the authorities that build homes. That is why it is called the new homes bonus. Of the five areas that are building the most homes—the five top councils to receive the new homes bonus—three of them are in the midlands and the north.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Grant Shapps

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady may have misunderstood the way this policy operates, despite the fact that I published it the week before last. The amount that each area gets per home is exactly the same—in fact, I have equalised it across the country—so just because council tax is higher in Kensington and Chelsea there is no question of it being any different from Charnwood or anywhere else; the funding is based on the average in each different area. In point of fact, nearly £1 billion of funding has been provided for the new homes bonus which is not top-sliced off the other sums. In later years, when the money is indeed top-sliced from the formula grant, the bonus will be a positive incentive to get on and build homes—the Labour party used to encourage that.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

14. What recent assessment he has made of the likely change in the provision of services by local authorities as a result of reductions in levels of Government funding for local authorities.