The Debate: Is the Pathfinder project delivering regeneration?

Nov 13 2007 by David Bartlett, Liverpool Daily Post

2,000 homes on Merseyside have been bulldozed. David Bartlett looks at the rights and wrongs

KNOCKING down homes to help regenerate parts of Merseyside is possibly the most controversial element of the Government’s Pathfinder scheme.

Since starting in 2003, more than 2,000 homes have been demolished under Housing Market Renewal Initiative HMRI in Merseyside.

But 6,800 have been refurbished and 2,100 houses have been built.

If the 15-year programme is seen through to 2018, more than 10,000 properties will be demolished, 63,000 will be refurbished and 23,000 homes will be built in Liverpool, Sefton and Wirral.

Last week, the National Audit Office (NAO) criticised the (HMRI) highlighted a series of weaknesses in the controversial New Heartlands scheme, covering 130,000 homes across Liverpool, Sefton and Wirral.

The watchdog picked out the Merseyside scheme – one of nine across the North and Midlands – for creating “heightened stress” in neighbourhoods earmarked for demolition.

It criticised a failure, in the first years of the scheme, to assess whether homes should be saved because of their importance to national heritage.

And, specifically, it questioned the consultation that led to the hotly-fought decision to bulldoze 444 red-brick terraced houses in the Welsh Streets, in Dingle. New Heartlands is now considering saving 57 of those homes – including Ringo Starr’s childhood home on Madryn Street – after a heritage assessment.

Supporters of the Pathfinder project point to the fact that a lot of the homes demolished were in poor or derelict condition. Opponents argue that with a severe lack of housing, the government should not be spending billions knocking down homes.

So today the Daily Post asks is the Pathfinder scheme successfully delivering regeneration?

NO: The Case Aginst - Policy is destructive and divides communities

by Cllr Steve Radford, leader of the Liberal Party

HOUSING Market Renewal is a deliberately misleading title.

It does the very opposite of the basics of a free market, the state through councils and housing associations uses vast public funds to purchase up properties and lands to take them off the market.

These public sector agencies then deliberately move people out and board up the area, creating a blight of dere-liction.

The remaining owner occupiers are bought out at depressed prices and the few are forced out up by the abuse of compulsory purchase powers.

In areas designated for degradation and demolition, the land is then handed over to a combination of housing associations and one of four national housing builders who have been give a monopoly over the purchase of all significant land sites in their quarter of the inner city.

This deliberate restriction works against local builders and consumer choice.

Outside the inner city, planners obstruct the redevelopment of areas for housing.

Thus we have vast areas of blight outside the city being deliberately withheld from private housing development.

In the current three years, the council intends to demolish 4,000 homes forcing 3,000 families on to the ever-growing housing waiting lists.

This policy we are told has community support but when discussed at the Housing committee, press and public were excluded as it was “confidential”.

The demolition coalition of Lib- Dem and Labour councillors were afraid to debate this municipal vandalism in public.

They claim this policy leads to rises in home ownership.

Buying houses at £70,000 to £120,000 to then demolish then seems a pretty expensive way of doing it.

Who in these working class communities can afford smaller homes starting at £120,000?

In the words of Jane Kennedy MP, it is “social cleansing”.

I challenged for evidence that home ownership rises were not more likely due to private landlords selling their houses to capitalise on rising house prices, but council officers could not bring forward any statistical evidence.

Their policies might as well be driven by reading tea leaves.

In Pathfinder areas, people are paid compensation but the Joseph Rowntree Trust has shown that the average owner occupier will be worse off by £30,000 after the enforced move.

This policy is destructive, divides communities and creates a sinister cartel of council, housing associations and national house builders profiteering by forcing thousands out of their homes abusing hundreds of millions of pounds of our taxes.

YES: The Case For - Dealing with poverty takes decades of investment

by Councillor Steve Munby, Liverpool council Labour hosing spokesman

THE National Audit Office report on Housing Market Renewal is an opportunity to consider its future.

This is a government programme involving spending billions of pounds in areas of the North and the Midlands where housing markets were visibly failing.

What does “housing market failure” mean? Thousands of houses lay empty surrounded by blight and dereliction in an arc of inner city Liverpool stretching from Anfield down to Dingle.

Three factors triggered the collapse: mass unemployment under the Tory government in the 1980s; the collapse of the housing market under Norman Lamont as Chancellor in the early 1990s; much of the housing stock in these areas does not suit people.

Under Labour, unemployment has fallen. The economy and interest rates have enjoyed a long period of stability.

House price rises are flattening out, but the mismatch between the housing stock in parts of Liverpool and what people want to live in remains a problem.

In Liverpool, 45% of housing stock is terraced and 15% is privately rented. This is double and 50% above the national average respectively.

In the inner core – the housing market renewal area – many of these are two-bedroom houses.

If you have more than one child, you would only live in this kind of accommodation if you have no choice.

Consequently, these areas tend to be composed of older and younger childless households or families in desperate housing need.

Falling numbers of children lead to falling school rolls, which in turn discourages people with young families from staying or settling in the area.

Housing Market Renewal Initiative aims revive these communities by providing housing families want to live in and increasing the rate of home ownership.

This involves a variety of measures – depending on the problems of the area and the views of local residents.

In some cases, it involves demolishing council blocks or terraces where the majority of residents support this option and building new homes on adjacent sites. Should the government persist with housing market renewal? Yes. As the National Audit Office report suggests, the government needs to clarify the future of the programme. Dealing with the impact of decades of poverty takes decades of investment.

The Council should be taking a firmer grip of the housing market than it does.

If HMRI is tackling market failure in the inner core, the Liberal Democrat Council has allowed a feeding frenzy to let rip in the city centre, which could undermine HMRI.

The concentration of resources in the city centre by the council threatens the key goal of housing market renewal – to revive deprived areas in the inner core.