Don’t abandon them

Launched in 2002 by then deputy prime minister John Prescott, Labour’s ambitious 15-year scheme to reverse housing market failure in deprived parts of the midlands and northern England enraged critics who decried its dependence on the wrecking ball.

But as the first in our two-part series exploring the project’s legacy following the premature withdrawal of state funding shows, the 10 ‘pathfinder’ organisations delivering the programme proved more likely to refurbish, acquire or build new homes than knock them down.

As it began, so it ends: in a war of words, Labour MPs accusing the housing minister of ‘moral dereliction’ in cutting the funding, Grant Shapps responding that the £2.25 billion programme was a ‘shambles’.

Residents of Stoke-on-Trent’s failing neighbourhoods would likely agree on both counts. Last October’s 11th hour decision by ministers to pull funding halfway through the programme has destroyed pathfinder communities’ hopes for a better future. Boarded-up, set ablaze, strewn with unwanted goods - our shocking photos of their streets tell the story.

The councils and housing providers delivering market renewal now face tough challenges and choices to ensure their work has not been in vain. The £30 million ‘lifeline’ Mr Shapps is offering the five pathfinder areas where progress has been slowest, Stoke included, will not go far.

Talk of ‘alternative sources of funding’ is optimistic: demand for limited state finance, such as the regional growth fund, will likely wildly outstrip supply. Some organisations may tap private finance, particularly in the HMR areas where house prices had begun to recover (and which the second part of our series will cover next week). Others will be loathe to if they can avoid it.

Avoiding the plight of those living in the former pathfinder areas is not an option. The housing and regeneration professionals who have spent the better part of a decade getting communities to believe in the promise of a brighter future will do everything they can to avoid destroying that trust.
Mr Shapps may argue he is preventing good money being thrown after bad. When it comes to long-term regeneration, it is not that simple.