England's lack of urban policy blights the nation
29 Oct 2013:
Peter Hetherington: Once, urban policy served to
build and regenerate in areas where the market economy had failed to
provide jobs and opportunities, but those days are long gone
Once,
town planning served to build housing and regenerate in areas where the
market economy had failed to provide jobs and opportunities, but those
days are long gone
Michael Heseltine
(right) on a visit to Liverpool with David Cameron in 2006. Heseltine's
admission in the 1980s that deprived communities need support is
unlikely to be repeated today. Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images
I once lived in a country with an urban policy. Ministers tried
to be fair to north and south, city and shire, old industrial heartland
and shiny new town. They launched initiatives – urban taskforces, regeneration programmes, action zones, development corporations, and much else – with one guiding principle: the market economy by itself could never deliver equity.
They recognised that, without intervention, even in periods of economic growth, large tracts of the country would be untouched by any upturn. Take Lord (Michael) Heseltine. In 1983 he was brutally honest when challenged in the aftermath of urban riots. "I do not run away from the point," he said. "The weight of the recession is devastating."
It is hard to imagine communities secretary Eric Pickles, the minister who occupies what remains of Heseltine's once-mighty department, acknowledging that much of the country remained untouched by George Osborne's vaunted upturn.
Urban development corporations were introduced by Heseltine in the early 1980s and, armed with planning and compulsory purchase powers, helped to transform riverbanks, canal-sides and redundant docks in areas around the country before being wound up in 1998.
In 2011, Pickles scrapped special area grants, for the most part a working neighbourhoods fund for specific areas and designed to help people get jobs.
I pondered this when reading a revealing new report, Planning Out Poverty, based partly on four case studies including Anfield, an inner district of Liverpool – a short walk from those riots more than 30 years ago – an outer estate in Leeds and a former mining town, Shirebrook in Derbyshire.
The report, by the Town and Country Planning Association and the Webb Memorial Trust, calls for a network of new institutions – "community development corporations" – which could be designated in collaboration with a local council. With a 25-year lifespan, they would inherit local planning and housing powers, co-ordinate social programmes, and perhaps become local energy providers.
In Anfield – where 43% of children are officially below the poverty line, one in five adults workless, and life expectancy 10 years lower than more affluent areas – the report found few mechanisms in place to address the area's problems.
In Shirebrook, the largest employer is a big retail sports chain that employs over 4,000 people in its headquarters on the site of a former colliery. But the majority are agency staff, with very few employment rights, who live outside the area. And in the Middleton and Belle Isle estates, in Leeds, there is no bus service to take locals to the nearest employer: a large shopping centre.
Overall, the report finds a lack of cohesion between agencies serving the areas and local people fearful that welfare reform, such as the bedroom tax, will break up their communities because residents on benefits are being forced to move to find more affordable homes.
People feel powerless, with no influence over their lives and communities. It is a depressing picture, all too common in today's England – yet out of sight for many. And it blights a nation.
COPY http://www.theguardian.com
They recognised that, without intervention, even in periods of economic growth, large tracts of the country would be untouched by any upturn. Take Lord (Michael) Heseltine. In 1983 he was brutally honest when challenged in the aftermath of urban riots. "I do not run away from the point," he said. "The weight of the recession is devastating."
It is hard to imagine communities secretary Eric Pickles, the minister who occupies what remains of Heseltine's once-mighty department, acknowledging that much of the country remained untouched by George Osborne's vaunted upturn.
Urban development corporations were introduced by Heseltine in the early 1980s and, armed with planning and compulsory purchase powers, helped to transform riverbanks, canal-sides and redundant docks in areas around the country before being wound up in 1998.
In 2011, Pickles scrapped special area grants, for the most part a working neighbourhoods fund for specific areas and designed to help people get jobs.
I pondered this when reading a revealing new report, Planning Out Poverty, based partly on four case studies including Anfield, an inner district of Liverpool – a short walk from those riots more than 30 years ago – an outer estate in Leeds and a former mining town, Shirebrook in Derbyshire.
The report, by the Town and Country Planning Association and the Webb Memorial Trust, calls for a network of new institutions – "community development corporations" – which could be designated in collaboration with a local council. With a 25-year lifespan, they would inherit local planning and housing powers, co-ordinate social programmes, and perhaps become local energy providers.
In Anfield – where 43% of children are officially below the poverty line, one in five adults workless, and life expectancy 10 years lower than more affluent areas – the report found few mechanisms in place to address the area's problems.
In Shirebrook, the largest employer is a big retail sports chain that employs over 4,000 people in its headquarters on the site of a former colliery. But the majority are agency staff, with very few employment rights, who live outside the area. And in the Middleton and Belle Isle estates, in Leeds, there is no bus service to take locals to the nearest employer: a large shopping centre.
Overall, the report finds a lack of cohesion between agencies serving the areas and local people fearful that welfare reform, such as the bedroom tax, will break up their communities because residents on benefits are being forced to move to find more affordable homes.
People feel powerless, with no influence over their lives and communities. It is a depressing picture, all too common in today's England – yet out of sight for many. And it blights a nation.
COPY http://www.theguardian.com
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