Housing Market Renewal

Linda Riordan Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Stunell]

No, I will not give way. I have made the point absolutely clear and I am moving on.

On the former renewal programme, the reality of the fiscal deficit means that we have had to take tough decisions about where savings can be made and to ensure that we focus on growth. The previous Government’s programme was far too centrally driven from Whitehall and, by proxy, sometimes too centrally driven from town halls. It included targets for demolition and, in that sense, it was all too literally top-down, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North acknowledged. It resulted in imposed schemes that were often resented by local communities and created as many problems as they solved. That approach has not worked, and has often resulted in blighted areas in which large-scale demolition and clearance projects have come to a standstill.

In my last minute, I shall speak about the sum of £30 million, which is to be matched by other funding. Bids have so far been received from all five eligible areas and the indications are that the match funding will be available, thus allowing £60 million to be spent. That £60 million is the assessment of what is needed to get the existing schemes into a shipshape position—viable environmentally and locally—so that the next stage of development in those areas can happen. There is a process, and I can tell the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree that Liverpool city council has submitted a substantial bid. Officials will consider it and, no doubt, will make recommendations to Ministers in due course. We are ensuring that, at the national level, £261 million is available for market renewal in 2010-11, which is a substantial amount. Also, the reason why the five were chosen was not arbitrary, but because of the improvement in those areas—

[Mrs Linda Riordan (in the Chair)]

Order.