Fierce determination

Margaret Ritchie is not afraid to stand up for herself. Last year, during what she reportedly described as ‘probably the hardest week of my entire life’, she refused to cave in to pressure from ministerial colleagues who disagreed with her decision to starve a loyalist group of funds in a row over guns.

Then, mere months into the job as Northern Ireland’s minister for social development, which includes housing, she refused to accept a disappointing budget for housing, going on to negotiate an extra £205 million. More recently, a senior official from her department threatened to ‘name and shame’ the mortgage lenders responsible for a spate of repossessions in the country (Inside Housing, 6 June).

The former council tenant from Downpatrick began talking tough on housing as soon as she was appointed minister when devolution was restored to Stormont 16 months ago. ‘I decided that housing would be my number one priority,’ the Social Democrat and Labour Party member of the legislative assembly for South Down recalls. True to her word, in February 2008 she launched a new housing strategy for Northern Ireland, outlining a slew of initiatives and ambitions, including a goal of 5,250 new social homes over the next three years.

She says the strategy is ‘centre plank of the policies of this department to ensure this was a policy that for the first time in a generation can transform housing’.

‘For something like 35 years, the direct-rule administration didn’t place a great deal of emphasis on social housing or on financial investment in it,’ she says, explaining her Fierce determination Margaret Ritchie tells Caroline Thorpe why sectarianism and the credit crunch won’t stop focus. ‘When I took up office in May 2007 there was only funding to deliver 600 new social housing starts. There were 38,000 people on the waiting list. There were 9,000 officially confirmed as homeless. It was important we set about tackling that, and it’s the first time in a generation that housing has been tackled.’

Talking tough

Ms Ritchie is still talking tough, unwilling to be cowed by the economic downturn, falling house prices or the ‘wider political issues’ that have ground decision-making in Northern Ireland to a halt for now.

Indeed, she appears to be ploughing on with implementing her housing agenda regardless. We meet on the eve of the launch of her shared neighbourhood programme, a £1 million fund to help 30 communities develop ways of encouraging integrated neighbourhoods. Most of Northern Ireland’s 113,000 or so social households live on segregated estates, often displaying identifying flags, emblems, murals and painted kerbstones to prove it. A greater mix is her top priority. ‘Generally around 40-40-20… 40 per cent Catholic, 40 per cent Protestant and 20 per cent other,’ she says.

‘Segregation just doesn’t work. The political carve-up we currently have will not bring an end to segregation. Peaceful co-existence won’t bring about an end to segregation. You have to build that shared future.’ Without that, she predicts, ‘future generations will find us remiss’.

This is tenant empowerment, community cohesion and legacy politics all rolled into one. ‘There has to be a willingness and a commitment from the people who live in them [communities] and that is the way forward,’ she adds, with characteristic refusal to mince her words. ‘And that means in the very boldest way, trying to get rid of flags and emblems that characterise Northern Ireland.’

It’s a gutsy proposal. Belfast alone offers multitudinous displays of marked territory, including the snaking ‘peace walls’ that divide several of the city’s neighbourhoods. The minister has them in her sights too: ‘The whole initiative of shared future has to embrace peace walls.’

Moving beyond housing to her hopes for the future, she adds: ‘Some people see peace walls as providing protection and affording security. But as we build our political process, as we build confidence in our political process and bed down our political institutions, it’s essential that we rebuild that shared future. Part of our shared future is having confidence in ourselves and bringing those peace walls down.’

But Ms Ritchie refuses to entertain scrapping a policy that many of the country’s housing professionals argue fuels segregated housing: needs-based allocation.

While acknowledging that local waiting lists tend to reflect existing, homogenous communities, the minister will not entertain weighting allocations to favour households from other backgrounds. ‘Housing is allocated according to need and I think that is a very good template,’ she says, both her tone and track record suggesting little hope of persuading her otherwise.

And fierce determination colours Ms Ritchie’s insistence that she will pursue all elements of her housing agenda. ‘It all still stands,’ she says.

In fact, stoked by her success in upping the housing budget, she hopes to better her 5,000-odd social housing target. ‘Along with all members of the housing constituency, and along with support from the Chartered Institute of Housing – because they’re the professionals in the field – we want to be able to deliver that and more if possible.’

Even with house builders struggling and some going bust? ‘There’s nothing to stop the developers,’ comes the dogmatic reply. ‘I don’t fail to recognise the problems that are out there with respect to the housing market. But there is opportunity there because they are catering for people on the waiting list.’ Social housing grant, she adds, ‘offers a lifeline to many in the development industry’.

There’s more: an empty-homes policy due next April that provides ‘an incentive for people to ensure that those houses are brought back into use’; an imminent mortgage rescue package, to provide ‘a degree of security and a degree of privacy that people yearn for and they will continue to be able to have’.

It was at the consultation launch for the package that certain lenders got it in the neck for lack of compassion. Ms Ritchie claims they responded ‘receptively’: ‘I know that their first priorities [are] monetary. But they wouldn’t be in the industry unless there were people suitable to borrow.’

Within weeks she expects to announce Northern Ireland’s first ever private shared equity scheme, and in due course planning reforms that could boost the numbers of social and affordable housing in rural areas.

Her mettle appears impervious to housing market turmoil, despite Northern Ireland seeing some of the frothiest, and subsequently most deflated, house prices in the UK. As elsewhere, she claims to see opportunity, mooting buying up empty new builds for conversion to social homes. Whether or not, as has proved the case elsewhere, this theory proves better than its practice, remains to be seen.

Her single concession to ‘reflect current difficulties’ appears to be the possibility of phasing in a new developer contribution – the equivalent to England’s section 106 rule. ‘But I would have to have further discussions with the minister of the environment, because there’s clearly planning issues and the ministerial responsibility for it lies with [him],’ she adds.

But it’s the wider political context, her belief that society depends on decent housing and her commitment to building her country’s future that explain Ms Ritchie’s tenacity. She has, after all, survived worse.

‘I don’t discount the challenges that are out there, but I view each challenge as an opportunity to deliver that because that is one of the things that will differentiate this executive and this form of devolution from direct rule,’ she says.

‘I’m interested in ensuring people have access to houses, access to roofs over their heads, access to something that’s called home; because I believe the most fundamental building block in society is a house. And people being content that they themselves and their families have somewhere they can call home.’

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