Local Regeneration: Industrial Areas

Lord Bishop of Norwich Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, the place that shaped me most as a priest in the Church of England was the parish of Holy Trinity North Ormesby in Middlesbrough at the turn of the millennium, so it was a simple delight and joy to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, speak about so many places that I know, from South Bank to Maske.

North Ormesby is set among derelict land, chemical plants and the distant smoke, sound and smell of the coke and steel furnaces. It is a place that taught me so much about resilience and survival, as well as about the strength of community, even when the stuffing had been knocked out of it. The people there taught me about acceptance and that each day was filled with little blessings. But I also learned about poverty and the impact of damp houses, as well as about health inequalities that meant that, if you lived six miles away, on average you lived another decade.

In all the indices, that community still comes out as being among the poorest, most ill, most unemployed and most unskilled, as well as having the lowest educational attainment and the worst air quality of wards in this nation. But the people I lived alongside in that community have warm and large hearts, despite the challenging context. The church was at the centre of its long-term regeneration, successfully building the Trinity Centre—a place for support, learning, faith and fun, it said. It was funded by the single regeneration budget and the neighbourhood renewal fund, but also, crucially, by many small grant-making trusts—and a local couple who one day knocked on the vicarage door with £1,000 of their savings because they believed in what we were doing. We gave confidence to the local authority and a housing association to invest in that community when others simply walked away.

What else did I learn in that former industrial community and its regeneration? I learned the need to be with people rather than doing things to people; the need to listen to stories of place, of loss and of hope; the need to recognise that local people are often the experts, as the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, has reminded us; and the need to raise up community leaders of broad consensus, not extreme voices that propagate hatred, division and scapegoating. I learned that there would be setbacks along the way; that generosity wins hearts and minds, as does adding beauty to the built environment; that patience is often in short supply, but you need to have it for the long haul; and that regeneration takes time, over multiple changes in government policy, not five years. As the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, said in her excellent opening speech, regeneration is complex.

However, none of that is a substitute for investment—for money—which both signals our priorities as a society and makes up for chronic underinvestment over time. We see that money can be found for some parts of the country, but often not for the north, the south-west, the coastal towns that I serve in Norfolk or our poorest communities. Levelling up is about valuing the flourishing of all people, made in the image of God, valued in God’s sight and created for a purpose.

I saw that on a recent visit to Dumfries House, an incredible place that His Majesty the King has championed. It has been the engine for regeneration and new opportunities in that part of Ayrshire, marked by its mining past. Heritage projects can also play a part in the regeneration of former industrial areas, but, again, it has taken patience, local engagement and money. The extension of the long-term plan for towns in yesterday’s Budget is a welcome and important signal of the Government’s intent, as is the funding for community regeneration around heritage. Yet the scale and speed of delivery is just as important as the aspiration behind the policy. The latter has perhaps been more successful than the former thus far.

As the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced yesterday, more investment in historically underinvested areas is important, and I would be intrigued to know from the Minister what His Majesty’s Government learned from listening to those former industrial communities in shaping their policies. How much of yesterday’s announcement is new money?

In Middlesbrough we were, in a sense, living out the recommendations of the 1985 Faith in the City report, commissioned by Archbishop Robert Runcie and famously described by one Cabinet Minister at the time as “pure Marxist theology”—which was some way off the mark but simply made more people take note and read it. That report concluded:

“Chapter after chapter … tells the same story: that a growing number of people are excluded by poverty or powerlessness from sharing in the common life of our nation”.


If that was true in 1985, it is an indictment that it is still true today in so many former industrial areas. Indeed, the Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households published a report last year that could have been written 40 years before. It said:

“Increasing interconnected inequalities and discrimination prevent many people from living flourishing lives”.


I would argue that the decades-long failure to invest in our former industrial communities is a form of discrimination that we must commit to putting right together, across government and this House.

Back in 1985, Faith in the City called for

“a deeper commitment to create a society in which benefits and burdens are shared in a more equitable way”.

One of the final lines in the report will resonate with many of us clergy who have lived and worked in former industrial communities and who minister in those communities today:

“to stand more closely alongside the risen Christ with those who are poor and powerless”.

Alongside churches of different traditions, and different faith communities, the Church seeks to do this in every community in this country. We must be a living and breathing Church of and with the poor, not simply an institution for the poor. I ask the Minister what role the Government see for themselves in this context, standing alongside the poor and powerless in these former industrial areas.

Finally, I stress the importance of the household support fund, which has become a lifeline for local authorities to run essential services since it was introduced in September 2021. In Norfolk, the fund is used wisely to give direct support to low-income families, to give grants to libraries to deliver period poverty and hygiene grab-and-go bags, to provide debt and financial advice, and, through a major grant to the Norfolk Community Foundation, to reach often excluded communities—I declare an interest as a patron. The fund is a lifeline for many residents. While I welcome the temporary extension of the household support fund announced in yesterday’s Budget, I ask the Minister to set out the Government’s plans to put local government funding on a sustainable footing. While welcome, these short-term, short-notice extensions provide little time for local councils to plan effectively, as we would all wish and expect them to do.

We owe it to our former industrial areas to champion them, so that all people might flourish and find life in all its fullness. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Armstrong and Lady Swinburne, for their advocacy and expertise on these issues and for bringing this debate to our consideration today.