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Home > Regional Housing
Strategy > Delivering the Regional
Housing Strategy
Delivering the Regional Housing Strategy
The introduction of Regional Housing Boards, Regional Housing Strategies
and the single housing pot is a major set of changes, and the full
implications are still being worked through. National targets, including
those for Decent Homes and the Housing Corporation's rural and off-site
manufacture targets, remain in place.
Regarding funding, the single housing pot for the North
West will total £243.0 million for 2004/05 and £249.5
million for 2005/06. Ministers have indicated that they expect 70%
of Housing Investment Programme funding to be allocated to local
authorities according to the existing national formulaic measure
of need for the first two years of the new arrangements (2004-05
and 2005-06), and pre-commitments of future Approved Development
Programme resources will be honoured. The North West Board agree
that these constraints are sensible given the scale of the changes
being made this year. The Board want to minimise any disruption
to successful investment programmes already underway in the region,
and are therefore content to accept a relatively high level of forward
commitments.
The Board's recommendations to Ministers seek to reflect its priorities
in the distribution of the remaining 'free' funds available to it,
working on the basis of a two-year programme, to be managed by Government
Office and the Housing Corporation on the Board's behalf. The funds
directed toward the priorities will increase as resources are freed
up and strategies and capacity to deliver are put in place in target
areas.
Clearly, the new arrangements will require some system of monitoring.
The Board's responsibility to Ministers will be to ensure that the
regional priorities are being effectively addressed by those receiving
single housing pot resources. The precise mechanisms for this have
yet to be decided, but the Board's interest is likely to be focused
on the delivery of strategic outcomes and providing Ministers with
evidence of real progress in terms of achieving sustainable communities.
One important part of that will be the monitoring of housing markets
across the North West. The Board will be keen to see that the three
overarching themes are being reflected in the work undertaken using
the single housing pot, and monitoring systems will need to facilitate
this. The Board will also be looking at the extent to which their
investment is contributing to broader local strategies, linked through
Local Strategic Partnerships or similar structures, and also at
the extent to which residents and tenants are able to influence
those local priorities.
The Board will look to assist the North West Development Agency
and its partners in their work to ensure the availability of sufficient
skilled personnel to deliver the physical works relating to the
regional priorities set out in this Strategy. Skills shortages
in construction and related trades, or in regeneration, housing
management or neighbourhood renewal professionals are evident in
this region, as in other parts of the country. Given the scale of
interventions envisaged in the next few years, demand for people
with the right skills are likely to continue to expand, offering
both an opportunity to help spread the direct economic benefits
of this investment into the community, and a threat to the region's
ambitions if the skillbase is unable to rise to the challenge.
To ensure that sustainable development principles are embedded
throughout the Regional Housing Strategy, both the earlier scoping
paper and this Regional Housing Strategy are subject to a sustainability
appraisal, using the social, environmental and economic criteria
contained in the "Integrated Appraisal Toolkit", based
on the regionally agreed objectives in Action for Sustainability.
The toolkit was developed by the North West Regional Assembly, with
a range of regional and local partners. The results of the Sustainability
Appraisal will be published separately on the Board's website (www.nwrhb.org.uk).
We are also looking specifically at how the Strategy measures up
in relation to both rural and black and minority ethnic agendas,
with the help of the Countryside Agency's rural proofing toolkit
and the regional Ethnic Minority Housing Forum respectively.
The sub-regional implications of this new approach to regional
housing strategy development also need to be worked through. Sub-regional
working has been picking up in pace and impact in various parts
of the North West, often driven by the need to tackle common issues,
and by recognition of the benefits of sharing ideas and workload
between agencies in an area. At the same time, recognition that
housing markets are oblivious to local authority boundaries has
produced a need to work on cross-boundary solutions, of which the
Pathfinders are the most obvious (but not the only) example. The
Board are keen to encourage collaborative working of this kind,
and it seems likely that delivery of the regional housing strategy
will have to include significant sub-regional components. There
is also an important role for sub-regions to influence developing
regional strategy through their own analysis of issues and potential
solutions and models. The Board would welcome any such contributions
from sub-regional partnerships.
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