Losing our path

The proposed £50 million housing market renewal cuts announced last week as part of the government’s public sector savings would, without doubt, impact on some of the most fragile communities in the UK.

Just halfway through their HMR programmes, these long-suffering neighbourhoods are starting to see the fruits of significant private and public sector investment. Major building programmes are underway in many of them and, all the signs suggest, people are actually choosing to live, work and invest in these areas for the first time in a generation.

Today though, many of these communities will be bracing themselves for bad news as those charged with delivering transformation consider how and where to apply the potential cuts, how to minimise the damage to communities and achieve maximum value for money at the same time.

There is an irony here. In delivering these transformations, HMR pathfinders have developed expertise that the rest of the public sector would do well to share - now more than ever. Indeed, these same estates and towns provide invaluable lessons for delivering the changes the new coalition government seeks.

The HMR pathfinders, like the one in Oldham and Rochdale, have shown how it is possible to use public subsidy to attract substantial private investment into areas for the first time in decades by working with local communities and private developers.

In Oldham and Rochdale, for our £210 million direct investment from government, we estimate we will attract a further £378 million of public sector investment and roughly £600 million of private sector investment.

HMR pathfinders demonstrate too the value of ‘localism’ and show how major, locally-made investment decisions based on the wishes and needs of local communities are having a real impact.

They also reveal inspiring examples of how the community is working to wring every possible benefit from publicly funded construction programmes through initiatives like the J21 construction employment and training programme which has provided training and jobs for more than 500 unemployed local people. Based on Treasury estimates that the average public sector cost of supporting an unemployed person is £8,000, J21 represents a saving to the public purse of approximately £2.2 million.

Above all, pathfinder communities like those in Oldham and Rochdale, show how we achieve ultimate value for money by considering social as well as fiscal impact. Initiatives such as cohesion counts, pioneering research to identify precisely which projects are best at bringing different communities closer together, show how we can combine social and fiscal benefit by making sure we spend money only on the projects which will truly work.

If the proposed cuts to the pathfinder programme go ahead, we must heed the valuable experiences of those continuing to deliver real change for our communities.

John McGuire is chair of the Oldham Rochdale housing market renewal pathfinder

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