Rough ride for Pathfinders
Filed Under Country Curtain | Posted on January 12, 2008
Controversy has snapped at the Pathfinders collective heels ever since they started walking the long road to recovery and they still have a long journey ahead.
Radical but risky has a certain ring to it. As quick-fire verdicts go it suggests an edgy machismo that dares to tread beyond the beaten track and come through against all the odds.
Then comes the chestdeflating caveat was it actually worth all the effort?
Close but no cigars is the tempting response, based on the assessment of the National Audit Office (NAO) in its recent report, but that rather trivialises an important issue, not just for the mandarins in central government, but for everyone whose life is touched by the work of the nine Pathfinder Housing Market Renewal (HMR) programmes that got underway in 2003.
Housing market renewal is a radical programme but it is a high risk approach, commented the NAOs boss Sir John Bourne. While there have been physical improvements in some neighbourhoods, it is unclear whether intervention itself has led to improvement in the problems of low demand. And in some cases intervention has exacerbated problems in the short term.
Commenting on the report, the chair of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, Edward Leigh MP said: Many local inhabitants of these areas feel as though the DCLG has run roughshod through their towns and communities, but the question is to what benefit?
There is no evidence that Pathfinders are bringing about improved social cohesion and although low demand for properties has fallen in the Pathfinder areas, it hasnt fallen as quickly as it has in the rest of the country. You have to wonder if these areas would see the same or greater regeneration if left to their own devices. This is a 15-year initiative and %26pound;2.2 billion has already been committed to it. Given its performance to date, it is hard to think of another programme which was trumpeted with such a fanfare, but which has hit so many wrong notes.
The National Housing Federation (NHF) leapt to Pathfinders defence, returning fire with the accusation that the NAOs report was misleading the organisation urged that ministers hold their nerve and continue supporting the programme.
The Pathfinder programme always was, and still is, a long-term approach to fundamental
housing market problems in nine deprived areas, said chief executive David Orr. It is an attempt to resolve structural low demand caused by a range of fundamental problems over a number of decades. So to try to judge success just four years into what is a 15-year programme is clearly wrong-headed.
Pathfinders are scattered across the North and the Midlands in the traditional industrial heartlands that once put the workshop into the world. They operate in Birmingham and Sandwell; East Lancashire; Hull; Manchester and Salford; Merseyside; Newcastle and Gateshead; North Staffordshire; Oldham and Rochdale; and South Yorkshire.
They are effectively %26lsquo;supra-partnerships of local authorities, quangoes such as the Housing Corporation, English Partnerships and regional development agencies, local strategic partnerships, registered social landlords, developers and various other bodies. Together, they face a complicated array of often contradictory and deep-rooted problems.
Overturning decades of economic decline is no quick project; as Orr pointed out they are still very much in the early days. To date the Government has committed over %26pound;2 billion to the programmes up to 2011. So far, some 40,000 homes have been refurbished and 1,100 new homes built. More controversially, over 10,000 homes have been demolished and this figure is but the tip of the proposed iceberg.
Understandably, this aspect, and the related use of CPOs, has been a touchy issue. Early underestimation of local fears and concerns led to legal disputes and bitter battles, reiterating as if it was needed that community involvement is more than a catchy PR phrase.
This led to a rethink and a slow down of the clearance programme, with the figures revised from 90,000 properties for demolition down to 57,100, to allow greater time to work with local communities and resolve concerns. While CPOs are used as a last resort, with most properties acquired voluntarily, this issue, and the related concerns over local heritage, is bound to be an ongoing source of controversy.
Pathfinders claim to carry a majority of support for their respective renewal and regeneration proposals, but on the ground the picture is often far more complex and contradictory than any report can ever convey. After all, these are local people concerned about the future of their communities; for all the problems there is often fierce loyalty. Naturally, there is a tendency to fear the worst.
Leighs comment %26lsquo;run roughshod, for instance, will certainly resonate with the views of many of central Salfords residents, if the experience of the community magazine the Salford Star is anything to go by. The magazine, recently shortlisted for the Paul Foot Award for Campaigning Journalism, has been closely following the citys Pathfinder regeneration. To say it has found misgivings in the course of its coverage would be putting it mildly.
Pathfinder has a hell of a lot of money and it seems to go into the areas that suit the developers, commented editor Stephen Kingston. Thats the problem. When developers come in theyre interested in the bottom line. Sorry, but people have got to live here and they couldnt give a shit about the bottom line. It seems to be about clearing out the people who are living there and building expensive houses that nobody in Salford can afford. From what people are telling us, the perception in Salford is that they are clearing the community out.
The city, being so intimately connected with Manchester, and the focus of the BBCs relocation to Salford Quays is bound to attract more than its share of attention, but the fears recounted by Kingston are common themes not only within Pathfinder zones but elsewhere in the course of any large scale regeneration. Fears of community dispersal to make way for gentrification are not unnatural for local residents they are also very difficult to dispel.
Its one of the many circles Pathfinder is expected to square: to regenerate without excluding the existing residents, to boost housing markets in line with regional averages without them skyrocketing out of control, to create a balanced mix of types and tenure of homes, and a wide and varied mix of income groups, to create a place where people want to live and work. Pathfinder is about forging that oft-quoted %26lsquo;sustainable community.
For Les Brown, project manager on Countryside Propertys New Broughton scheme in Salford, thats certainly what it is all about and it cant be done without the existing community. Locals provide the bedrock and the framework for the renewal. To achieve a sustainable community requires a complete broad mix of people: from people who have been there all their lives to new people moving in. The range of tenures is important, as is the range of people who come here. Sustainability from my perspective is rebuilding a community that will survive and thrive. In Broughton were doing exactly that, he said. Weve had a lot of local people who had previously moved away saying they want to move back. The local people, the local community in Broughton is a very strong community. Its been there for years and years and they are very proud people and they are very defensive of their area quite rightly. Its a case of bringing the community with us to build on whats there rather than parachute in something new.
Radical and risky the Pathfinder may be. The trouble with risk it can go either way regardless of intent. For the communities in Pathfinder its going to be a long wait to discover if the risk really was worth it.
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