Regeneration

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I too would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, not least for adding the critical words “north-west” into his Question, which allows some of us to make a bigger debate than it might otherwise have been. I am grateful for that. I will declare a slightly extended interest—and I will explain why, because my interest leads me into what I am going to say. Many people have been bragging about what has been going on in their areas. I can brag for Pendle until the day I die. I am not going to do that; I am going to set out some of our difficulties at the moment. Nevertheless, I declare my interest as an elected member of Pendle council, which is a small district council in east Lancashire, so it is not a metropolitan area. It is an area of 19th century cotton towns; they are no longer cotton towns, there is very little left, but that is what the area is, surrounded by our wonderful Pennine countryside. Towns in the area, such as Accrington, Burnley, Nelson and Colne, have the problems of metropolitan councils and inner cities but the resources of small districts. That is a serious problem that areas like ours around England have.

Regeneration tends to be focused on the big cities and metropolitan areas. The concept of city regions was not invented by the coalition Government; it became the vogue quite a few years ago. But from our perspective, it is a concept which has flaws as a universal model. I am not in any way denigrating the vital role that big cities play throughout England, which is where we are talking about, or in Wales and Scotland. The major regional centres, after London and the south-east, have been the great success story of England in the past couple of decades. For all the problems that they still have, places such as Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds and Norwich have gained status and economic importance. For example, Leeds’ financial importance is far greater than it used to be. I am in no way saying that that is a bad thing. In particular, these cities are a counterbalance to the tendency otherwise of London and the south-east to suck in resources, growth and development. Again, I totally recognise all the problems that there are in the East End and other parts of London.

There are two problems with regarding the city region concept as applicable to everywhere else in the country. There are areas where it does not sensibly work. Areas need to be looked at in a different way. For example, you could say that Cornwall and Devon are perhaps part of the Plymouth city region. However, that is not a sensible way of looking at the economy, the communities and the way that the Cornubian peninsular works.

To regard a huge swathe of places around Greater London, the south-east and further on simply as part of the London city region, which they clearly are, is not enough. It is not enough to say to Hastings or Brighton that their problems can be solved and their needs tackled by considering them as part of the coastal area of the London city region. Their problems are much greater than that and are more complicated. Of course, if we are not careful, there is a problem in city regions that the big city centre can suck in all the growth and resources as well as a large proportion of the people. There is a natural tendency for that to happen.

In my view, one of the jobs of the Government is to act as a countervailing force against that. There are also areas which, with the best will in the world, do not fit into city regions. Which city region do West Cumbria, Whitehaven, Workington and Barrow belong in? City regions do not make sense when you are considering the future of those areas. East Lancashire—or Pennine Lancashire, if that is how you like to call where I live—is on the fringe of perhaps the Manchester city region or the Leeds and Bradford city region. But it does not make a great deal of sense to look at our future simply by considering our relationship to those big cities—welcome as it is to have the news from the Government that the Todmorden Curve will be built and Burnley can have a regular railway service into Manchester.

My noble friend Lord Storey used the words “government fads”. One of the problems is that Governments have fads. When there is a change of the Government, the old fads are thrown out. Housing market renewal brought huge resources. It was flawed but people were getting a grip on it and it was nothing like as bad as the press that it got. In my area, it brought in £10 million a year to each district local authority area, which certainly in Burnley and Pendle we were using in sensible ways. That suddenly stopped and it has caused chaos. There are huge problems of schemes being half finished and a need to look around for resources to finish them. It causes problems for people who were promised things but who now find that they will not happen.

That does not only happen when a new Government are elected; it also happens when the Secretary of State changes and so on. They bring in new fads. One of the latest fads, which my noble friend mentioned, is the Mary Portas scheme. The work that she has been doing is excellent and helpful, and it helps people to think. But the competition for pilots leaves a great deal to be desired. There were 371 bids and 12 pilots have been approved, one of which was in Nelson, Pendle. We are quite good at such things, and we are very pleased to have that money and to have those resources. But 371 places have put in the time, effort and cost of making the bids, but only 12 have been approved, with another 15 to come.

Empty housing is a huge problem in areas like ours. All the ways in which we were trying to deal with this under the previous Government have been largely pushed aside. We now have the empty homes fund—for which Pennine Lancashire and East Lancashire generally bid—and we have won some of that as well. In Pendle, it will result perhaps in £3 million or £4 million-worth of new investment in different ways, working in partnership with landlords and housing associations, to tackle the problems of empty housing in our area. A lot of it will be in the ward that I represent on the council, so I am not totally against this kind of thing.

The things for which you can bid for money and the ways in which you can get resources change with the Government and the Secretary of State. That is not an efficient way to do things. The old way is stopped, with all the inefficiencies that are involved in doing that, and then you have to start again with the new way. Bidding takes an enormous amount of resources. There are some pros, including getting people to think, and good ideas are spread around. Sometimes when schemes are worked out, people find that they can do them anyway. A large amount of waste is involved in these schemes.

We have to get back to an acceptance that regeneration is not just about cities and city regions. It is also about smaller places, such as the Barrows, the Workingtons, the Whitehavens, the Great Yarmouths, the Hastings, the Accringtons, the Burnleys and the Nelsons and Colnes of this world. I am a great believer that the purpose of government resources is to provide a basis for getting funding from the private sector and other areas, and for providing a way in which the local economy can work. In simply doing it all, the multiplier effect is huge. We have to get back to the principle that government resources are handed out and provided objectively on the basis of need and not on the basis of slightly bogus competitions according to the latest fads of Ministers.