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Home > Scoping Paper > Urban renaissance & dealing with changing
demand
Regional Priority 1: Urban renaissance and dealing with changing
demand
Both Regional Planning Guidance and the Regional Economic Strategy
place great emphasis on the need to achieve an urban renaissance,
as a key contributor to both economic success and to the achievement
of a more sustainable, higher quality physical and social environment
for the North West's communities.
Changing demand for housing has been an increasingly high profile
issue at both regional and national level over recent years, and
is central to the challenges faced by the North West in achieving
our ambitions for an urban renaissance. Confirmation in the Communities
Plan of resources totalling £500 million for the nine Market
Renewal Pathfinders nationally between 2003/04 and 2005/06 is a
clear signal of Government's intention to deal with low demand and
abandonment. Four of the Pathfinders are in the North West - East
Lancashire (Blackburn, Burnley, Hyndburn, Pendle and Rossendale),
Manchester and Salford, Merseyside (Liverpool, Sefton and Wirral),
and Oldham and Rochdale. Our four Pathfinder partnerships are working
on long-term strategic plans to achieve sustained and radical improvement
in the housing markets in their areas and, more importantly, the
quality of life for the people who live there.
As the Communities Plan acknowledges, the Pathfinders nationally
cover only about half of the homes affected by low demand and abandonment.
There are significant areas across the North West in this category.
We also have a great deal of housing which, while not suffering
from the worst extremes of low demand, can objectively be assessed
as being "at risk". CURS estimated that within the M62
Corridor there were "280,000 households contained within
the overall clusters of areas at risk of changing demand…these
contain a population of 690,000 people" . While many of
these are within the Pathfinders, significant numbers are not. Beyond
the M62 corridor, parts of West Cumbria, Furness, Morecambe and
the Fylde coast, Skelmersdale and Preston are among the areas which
seem to exhibit similar characteristics.
So, while the Pathfinders' emerging strategies must be carefully
aligned with the regional housing strategy (and they are already
identified within both Regional Planning Guidance and the Regional
Economic Strategy ), the Pathfinders themselves will not fully address
the issues of actual or potential low demand in the North West.
We therefore propose the following priorities for the regional housing
strategy:
Priority 1.1
Maximising the positive impact of the market renewal Pathfinders
in their local housing markets.
Priority 1.2
Developing a targeted programme of strategic investment in the
prevention of market failure in other areas at risk from low demand,
applying and adapting lessons from the Pathfinders and elsewhere
for use in other areas suffering from low demand. These activities
should form part of comprehensive neighbourhood renewal strategies,
specifically in:
1.2.1 the remainder of the North West Metropolitan Area ;
1.2.2 the North West's coastal towns; and
1.2.3 other Neighbourhood Renewal Fund areas.
Questions
Are these specific and targeted enough ? (i.e. are we still
'spreading the jam too thinly' ?)
Conversely, are there other parts of the region which you think
need to be included ?
Are there the integrated local and sub-regional strategies in place
to deliver the transformational change required in some parts of
the urban North West ?
More work
While having led the debate on housing market renewal over the
last few years, the region is still at a relatively early stage
in developing approaches to dealing with the multiple challenges
of changing demand for housing. A mixture of local, sub-regional
and regional tools are now available or being developed. Greater
freedoms for local authorities on private sector renewal are a step
forward, and may produce local good practice and innovation to be
shared with others. The use of the planning system as part of the
response to changing housing markets is a particular challenge,
and will require careful monitoring.
More substantially, the impact of four Pathfinder projects within
a single region means that detailed monitoring of housing markets
across the North West will be a vital task if we are to try to manage
what we hope to be a transformational change in those four areas
without undermining what are sometimes already fragile markets around
them.
An Urban Regeneration Company for West Cumbria and Furness is at
an early stage of development, and more work with the Development
Agency and others may be required to establish both the priorities
for housing intervention and their relationship to the achievement
of the broader regeneration vision for the area. A similar approach
is required in other coastal towns.
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