The art of persuasion

Middlesbrough’s gleaming Institute of Modern Art might be a stone’s throw from some of England’s most challenging housing estates but it seems to come from a different world.

The imposing building, with its huge glass frontage, pictured, is certainly one of the most striking features of the north east town’s centre. Impressive though it may be, Jim Johnsone hasn’t brought me here to confess his love of Cubism or Salvador Dali. As he sees it, the choice of venue is not as surreal as it might first seem.

‘We have to make a physical difference [to the housing stock],’ states the director of Tees Valley Living, the organisation set up to tackle the region’s failing housing market. ‘The institute [which opened in 2007] has changed the image of Middlesbrough and changed perceptions of the place. I think we have to look at building a housing stock that does the same.’

Mr Johnsone certainly has the gift of the gab and an air of boundless optimism. One market renewal professional tells me - fondly - that the 54-year-old has a talent for self-publicity. But is this backed up by action and can his organisation deliver on its ambitions?

He’s certainly doing something right. Last month, TVL was awarded a £1.2 million funding boost, which represented a just over 10 per cent increase in its £9.6 million funding for the year and was part of Whitehall’s £34.6 million package for England’s renewal areas.

Rewind a few years and Mr Johnsone’s talent for promotion has proved invaluable to housing market renewal in Tees Valley. When the former town planner joined TVL in 2003 as inaugural director, the region had just missed out on a slice of the government’s flagship pathfinder funding to tackle low housing demand in the north of England and the midlands. His fledgling organisation, kept going only by local councils and housing associations, had the textbook definition of a shoestring budget - £187,000 to fund strategy preparation and lobbying in 2004. The oversight - several market renewal pathfinders confirm they were surprised Tees Valley wasn’t on the list - effectively cost the region tens of millions of pounds. The original nine pathfinders received an initial £500 million between them. The decision clearly still rankles.

‘No one has given a satisfactory reason as to why we were not included on the list in the first place,’ says Mr Johnsone. ‘We probably were on the radar. I think there was a feeling that there would be other designations [in the future].’

Not so. Shortly after Mr Johnsone joined TVL it emerged there would be no second funding round. Despite the setback the small TVL team - ‘it was conceived as having four full-time staff, but we never did get up to four’ - began working up plans to convince ministers that it deserved funding. Mr Johnsone’s weapon of choice was information. Civil servants, ministers and - speaking from personal experience - journalists who visited Tees Valley would be powerpointed into submission. Visitors would be taken on tours of virtually empty streets, deserted by residents, including several which had been refurbished just a few years earlier in separate short-term renewal initiatives.

The PR job started to pay off when Tees Valley was awarded a chunk of a £65 million pot originally set aside for three other market renewal areas in January 2005. It went on to be awarded £35 million between 2008 and 2011, putting it on a comparable footing with other pathfinders such as Birmingham and Sandwell’s Urban Living, which received £53 million for the same period.

Mr Johnsone has little doubt that the evidence TVL built up to inform its investment plans and win over ministers and civil servants was behind the success. ‘It’s the strength of our case that we have put it relentlessly and got in the right ears,’ he states.

By March 2008 1,230 homes had been acquired in TVL’s market renewal areas. More than 500 had been demolished, and 693 built. In total, it aims to demolish almost 5,500 homes - the majority by 2011 - replacing them with more than 5,000 new properties.

A whistle-stop tour of a variety of new-build sites in Middlesbrough reveals plenty of evidence of the work so far. Despite the progress, Mr Johnsone says TVL and the other pathfinders must be on their guard. The recession is one danger. TVL is part of a Tees Valley housing recovery task force set up to mitigate the downturn’s impact on delivery and to help families access affordable housing. Another difficulty, he says, is that ministers and civil servants keep changing as regularly as children in a fancy dress shop, so pathfinders must once again prove their worth.

Under threat
‘We need to restate our case,’ he says. ‘I think we have had five or six ministers during the lifetime of the pathfinders. We have certainly had a similar number of civil servants. We have to go through the process of bringing each one up to speed.’

With pathfinders branching out into different areas and funding streams merging into local area agreements, Mr Johnsone says there is speculation that ‘pathfinder as a term… will not survive beyond 2011’. He concedes this is a possibility, though remains pragmatic. ‘That is not a great concern providing the work carries on.’

This is a theme Mr Johnsone returns to time and time again. ‘We have had all the regeneration initiatives,’ he states. ‘They have all been too narrow and too short. The consequence is that every new initiative takes us back to the same places.’

This cannot be allowed to happen again, he states. For a second his normally jovial countenance darkens. ‘We have raised expectations and there is a massive commitment out there. We are in areas which have suffered regeneration fatigue. We don’t want to let them down again.’

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