Housing Market Renewal

Joan Walley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gale. I am sure that you will give us all an opportunity to contribute to this important debate, which I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) on securing. The point that I want to get across to the Minister, who has a strong belief in local government, is that the housing market renewal programme, of which north Staffordshire was one recipient, was an important means by which capital funding came to areas where there was economic failure. The whole programme was intended to restore the balance between the south-east and other places where there is no economic failure and areas such as ours, which, for well-documented reasons, need to deal with issues such as absentee landlords. There are whole blocks of homes the purpose for which has now gone.

It has been well documented that in the early stages of the housing market renewal programme many MPs had real concerns; indeed, many MPs in Stoke-on-Trent had concerns. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), Mark Fisher, the former MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, and I challenged the officials who were introducing that programme in the city, because it did not seem to us that they were working with or alongside local communities, or that there was a master plan to consider the kind of bottom-up regeneration that we wanted for our communities. In the early days, the officials’ proposals were all about the large-scale demolition of a large number of houses, which had no place in our local regeneration strategies.

Through careful, long-term lobbying, we did our best to change that approach. Across Stoke-on-Trent, there was a sea change where the housing pathfinder programme took place. In some places, the change was too little, too late, but in other places there was a major change. The programme was late in getting off the ground in north Staffordshire—it was about three years late in getting together all the different proposals—so we were behind where we should have been. Once the programme got off the ground, however, it started to make an impact.

The problem that we now face is the sudden and unprecedented withdrawal of funding by the Government in the comprehensive spending review, with no clear detail being given about what will be put in its place. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree has outlined the concerns about the regional growth fund. There was an assumption that that fund would provide some of the capital investment that we needed, but that did not happen.

We are now left, once again, with the huge disparity between the parts of the UK where there is no economic failure whatsoever and those parts where there is economic failure and where we are trying to remedy that failure. What we desperately need is a cocktail of measures, whereby everything works alongside everything else to get economic investment, restructuring and strategic planning in line with what local communities want, which means the homes where people live. We need homes side by side with jobs.

I know that the Minister cares passionately about the issue, but it is wrong that the funding was removed just like that with no time for people to prepare for its removal, and it is also wrong that the transitional funding of about £30 million, which would allow only for the further demolition of properties, should have been put in place without addressing the real capital needs for investment in our areas. It might seem to the Minister that the demolition of the remaining acquired sites is the best use of that transition fund of £30 million. However, if we consider the ongoing costs of vacant sites, which have no maintenance budgets whatsoever, it is not the right way forward to restrict the criteria on how that transition funding can be spent in the five most distressed areas to paying for demolition. Will he work with those five areas, which are represented here today, and officials in those areas? More importantly, will he look in a cross-cutting way at other Government policies? When he replies to the debate, I hope that he will indicate to hon. Members who are present today how the Government’s post-comprehensive spending review policies on housing market renewal relate to the Government’s economic policies on local enterprise zones and to the work that is coming out of the Treasury.

In Stoke-on-Trent, we hope that the Minister’s Department will support our application to establish a local enterprise zone. If that local enterprise zone goes ahead, it will border one of the areas for which we are seeking these transitional payments for housing market renewal, which is the Middleport area of my constituency. The same point applies to other areas on the periphery of what we hope will be the local enterprise zone. Will he look at how the investment that we need in housing in those areas can be provided—perhaps through a ring-fenced amount of money—to help us to deal with the absolute void that has been left by the Government pulling the plug on finances for housing market renewal?

I want to discuss the regional growth fund. It is extraordinary that the Government have indicated that what has been taken away with one hand will be provided with the other through applications that meet the criteria for the regional growth fund. Those of us who have attended meetings with Lord Heseltine know that the regional growth fund is already stretched and that it will not be ring-fenced in any way for housing investment, but without the homes to go alongside the jobs that we hope will come from the regional growth fund, people in our areas will not be able to get back on their feet in the way that was envisaged when the housing market renewal programme was first introduced.

There is another cross-cutting issue, which is the local government finance relocalisation of business rates. It is a huge issue. If the Minister thinks that what the Treasury does about relocalisation of business rates and the consultation about those plans that will take place throughout the summer recess—perhaps away from media attention—will have no bearing on areas where we are fighting to get back economic prosperity after economic failure caused by structural reasons that we know only too well, I urge him to think again. Can he tell us how the proposal for the equalisation of business rates, and the giving of powers and funding to local authorities to meet the genuine needs of their areas, will have any chance of success when it appears that, as a result of the coalition agreement, areas such as the City of London will carry on receiving huge amounts of money? Such areas do not have economic failure—if their money goes into the pot, they get to keep it for themselves—but what about areas such as Stoke-on-Trent, which stand to lose money? Stoke-on-Trent stands to lose £26 million, which is on top of the £36 million in local government funding that has already been taken away from our area by the CSR.

I have already been in touch with the Department for Communities and Local Government about this issue, but will the Minister ensure that his officials work with those of us who are on the ground and who are in touch with the local enterprise partnership, local authorities and local communities to find, by some means or other, a way in which legitimate funding for legitimate regeneration and investment, which meets the needs of local communities that have been left stranded high and dry by the sudden decision to remove the money for housing market renewal and to allow transition funding only to be used for demolition, can be provided?

In Middleport, the Prince’s Regeneration Trust has now purchased the Middleport pottery; we have a Burslem master plan; and local people have a huge desire for housing renewal. I ask the Minister to work with the hon. Members here today, who care so much about their areas, to find a way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Stunell]

I certainly intend to give answers about that.

Perhaps I should say something about the baggage that I bring to the debate. I first secured elected office in 1979, having run a successful local campaign to prevent the wholesale demolition and redevelopment of homes in Chester. I am happy to say that those homes are still there and are now seen as highly marketable assets. We all bring different stories and different perspectives to the debate. I am well aware that good regeneration work has been undertaken in Merseyside and elsewhere, and I am also well aware of the challenges that have been faced in the area. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree mentioned the Picton and Kensington renewal areas in her constituency.

Several contributors to the debate have acknowledged that not all housing market renewal schemes got off on the right foot. Not all of them were pursued in the right way and, in fact, not all of them were appropriate. A number of them certainly generated significant local controversy and failed to engage properly with local communities. Quite often, the renewal process divided local opinion. Amid the understandable passion that has been brought to the debate, it is important that we keep some perspective on that particular point.

I shall start by responding to some of the specific points that were raised before going on to deal with several of the broader points that I think need to be set out. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) asked for several specific assurances. Officials from my Department are more than ready to work with Stoke-on-Trent council and others on the future direction of the north Staffordshire regeneration area. Indeed, officials are already in discussion on the basis of the bids and applications that have been put in for the £30 million match funding that has been referred to, so I am happy to give her that assurance. I have visited Stoke-on-Trent and looked at some of the situations that she described.

[Joan Walley]

My concern is not just about the transitional fund and securing our share of it, because that is geared towards demolition. I want to see how all the different funding can be aligned so that we can get investment in homes, communities and local regeneration. If the Minister can help with that, I will be very happy to do whatever I can to facilitate it.

[Andrew Stunell]

At the risk of having to issue a correction—I do not have a magic wand—I can say that those discussions will be wide-ranging. Of course, they can be as wide-ranging as Stoke chooses to make them.

I want to move on to something that I am sure the hon. Lady will want the official discussions to cover. She mentioned the link between enterprise zone applications and regeneration. She is absolutely right to say that there should be as much synergy as possible in public investment, or in public stimulation of private investment, in both of those. It is entirely right and proper that discussions range across the boundaries and that we should not put these things in separate silos.

The hon. Lady also asked specifically about the local government resource review and the Government’s announced, albeit not yet detailed, proposals for returning business rates to local authorities. I do know the answer to her question; indeed, it has been given from the Dispatch Box. However, she will have to wait for the detail of that answer for one or two weeks, when we actually publish the proposals—the correct civil service word for that is probably “imminently”. I assure her that neither Stoke-on-Trent nor any other local authority will find themselves at a financial disadvantage in the first year of the operation of the scheme. It is central to the proposals that we are bringing forward that that should be the case.

[Joan Walley]

I realise that time is short, but our concern is not just about being disadvantaged in the first year; it is about the level on which future decisions are made. We could well find ourselves falling severely behind after three years. Will the Minister please feed that back into the final version when he announces it in two week’s time?

[Andrew Stunell]

The hon. Lady’s point is thoroughly understood. I do not think that she will be disappointed, but she is tempting me on to territory on which it really is not right for me to advance.