Housing and Regeneration Bill

I shall speak to Amendment No. 23A, which is in my name and is part of the group. It is a probing amendment, which recognises that the creation of the Homes and Communities Agency presents us with a real opportunity to move away from public housing monocultures of the past and to invest in the creation of new towns and areas that have both a physical and a social identity. Having spent many years working at the centre of a large housing estate, I know how damaging these monocultures can be to local communities and how important it is that the new agency is empowered to respond to the social, economic and cultural contexts in which it invests and to encourage real diversity across the country. The public sector and housing associations are not the only ones guilty of creating monocultures. Private developers also have quite a track record in this regard, and have on many occasions missed the opportunity to create truly sustainable developments that have a real sense of identity. Place-making is not just about having the right public sector structure or a clear leader, bringing people together or having a clear quality design concept. It is also about having a clear and rooted purpose and vision for the place. The desolate estates on the outskirts of many of our major cities are good examples of rootless places with no clear vision in their conception. Over the past decade or so, we have talked a great deal about joined-up thinking and joined-up action. This is correct, but in many of our poorest communities these fine words are often not being turned into practical reality on the ground. I was in Bradford recently on an outer estate—here I declare an interest—and discovered a range of buildings sitting very close to each other at the centre of the estate. In reality, however, they had little relationship to each other and there was no real sense of place. It just felt empty and desolate. There was a community facility, which was run by a charitable body, a healthy living centre, a row of shops, a school and a church, and very soon there will be a new small supermarket. Yet the amazing thing was that none of the buildings bore any relationship whatever to another, and there was little of the joined-up activity necessary to create a sense of place and build a sustainable community. However, a number of the buildings had been built and extended in the past decade. All the government structures were there, but the words were not being translated into reality on the ground. There was no heart to the community, and apparently little relationship between the different services in a community which desperately needed a focus. My experience suggests that place-making will not happen by chance, and it will not automatically occur through the various public sector structures and bodies created by the Government. Something else has to happen, and it has everything to do with people and relationships on the ground. Two years ago I was asked by the then chief executive of Tower Hamlets council to take a look at St Paul’s Way, a group of rundown estates some 500 yards from Canary Wharf. Again, I must declare an interest. Violent clashes had been taking place outside the school and the lead officer wanted a clearer picture of what was happening on the ground. I discovered that there were two large housing estates divided by a main road. On one side of the road were the homes of members of the Bengali community, and on the other housing for traditional white East End families. I was assured that a helpful social reality had developed over many years as loyal local authority officers followed public sector rules and processes which sought to create more equitable and integrated communities, yet the unintended consequences of their actions had not been foreseen. One local resident described the road as the Berlin Wall. Although the public sector structures had been set up to encourage neighbourhood renewal, in reality it was not happening on the ground. I also discovered that plans were being developed to build a new school, health centre and 500 homes, but little real and meaningful communication was actually taking place between the local education authority, the primary care trust and the housing company. All the structures were in place and the boxes were being ticked, but the opportunity to create a new sense of place was being completely missed. I reported my findings to the chief executive and was then asked whether I would play a lead role in directing what has now become known as the St Paul’s Way Transformation Project. My first task was to take 16 of the key players from each of the public bodies away for two days and build relationships. We began our meeting not with a conference or committee session, but with a meal. Initially there were many suspicions to be overcome, but by the end of our two days together, relationships were starting to be built and a unanimous consensus reached among those present. We all agreed that St Paul’s Way presented us with a great opportunity to build not only a new place with a real identity, but also to develop a new culture, and more entrepreneurial ways of working by which together we could explore new joined-up activity. The aim was not only to transform the physical environment along St Paul’s Way and to co-ordinate the various planned developments, but also in the process to transform relationships between the various service providers along the street for the fragmented local communities. Partners agreed to encourage a change in mindset and to promote a creative and entrepreneurial culture in which local communities, the public and private sectors would find new ways of working together, following the experience of similar social enterprise projects in Tower Hamlets. From a standing start 18 months ago, we have now brought to the table £27 million for a new school through the Building Schools for the Future programme, we have brought forward plans for the new health centre, and we are about to sign contracts for 500 homes. We are also working on plans to redevelop two churches that sit at either end of the street and on plans for a new primary school, and are now running a ““culture change”” programme with residents, local head teachers and staff. We have further to go in the transformation process, which will take at least 10 years, but relationships have moved on. We are grappling with public sector commissioning processes that still militate against all we are seeking to achieve. It is very difficult to make this happen in practice on the ground and to make it real. If the new agency is to break through some of the blockages that we have been experiencing and to be able truly to create real places with real identity and meaning, then it will need to be given the powers to break through the political and structural inertia that still exists in many places, particularly in some of our most challenging estates and in some of the cultures of parts of the public sector. Using the right words and ticking the right boxes is one thing. Turning the words into reality in real places on the ground is quite another. This amendment seeks to draw the Minister’s attention to these concerns. The point of sharing this experience with the Committee is that this change did not happen by chance. Public sector structures on their own were not turning the aspirations of politicians into the new realities on the ground that they rightly desired. Indeed, many of the processes of government were themselves, often unwittingly, undermining the opportunities for real change. For the new agency to have real teeth and to cut through this kind of inertia, I would suggest that when it begins its work it needs to look very carefully at examples on the ground where people are attempting to bring real change and create a new sense of ““place””, to understand what works in detail and to be given the powers to build on this knowledge. Secondly, the Minister might like also to consider in her deliberations that in order to create a real ““place”” serious investment in terms of time and resources have to be invested by the new agency, not just in new structures but in providing appropriate training for agency staff which enables them to build the kinds of open and honest human relationships with partners and local people on the ground that can truly bring change. Only then will the agency be truly equipped with the tools necessary to navigate the complex partnerships that are part of the modern world in which we all live. The success of the new agency in this area will be directly related to the human energy, time and resources that it puts into building deep and workable relationships. Navigating the modern world is all about investing in people and relationships; structures and processes will never be enough. Thirdly, all agencies tend to work to a regulatory structure. Rather than a tick-box, best-practice model, the agency might consider ways of evaluating whether real innovation is taking place, whether a real sense of place is being created and whether real partnership working is happening on the ground. This can be contrasted with a committee approach with all the appropriate structures represented, but little real change. A minimum baseline is clearly needed to ensure that public funds are being used appropriately. However, you can sense whether partnership is real and whether innovation is happening, not through lengthy reports, but by spending time on the ground. You can sense it and actually smell it. Has the Minister considered requiring the agency to seek out places which are delivering on innovation and genuine partnership and funding them to play a role in regulation? Rather than an academic-led approach to evaluation with lengthy reports after the facts, why not get highly successful practitioners involved early to examine new schemes? They will soon be able to tell where the successful schemes are and where intervention might make a real difference. You might call it peer review by the best. Perhaps the Minister might require the agency to list each year in its annual report the innovative programmes that it has supported—what worked and what did not. If the agency is genuinely innovating, there will be failures as well as successes, and that should be expected. You could look at the excellent Phoenix Development Fund run by the then DTI until recently as a good example of government-funded innovation. Perhaps there should be a presumption not to regulate. Finally, has the Minister considered the value of involving faith communities—here, I must declare an interest—in creating a new sense of place. As well as important in and of themselves, they can often act as neutral parties that bring people and agencies together, and are often overlooked when developing a new sense of place. Indeed, sometimes they can be considered a catalyst that can bring a new heart to the community. I hope that those thoughts are helpful to this debate.