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My home town and levelling up
Boris Worrall lives in Walsall, the subject of a recent report on levelling up. He shares some thoughts on how this policy is yet to materialise for his town, why it is needed, and why housing associations must be key players if levelling up is to turn from a mirage into a reality
Is levelling up anything more than a mirage? Although huge questions remain about the reality of delivery, at its core it is exactly what the left-behind communities of this country need.
Housing associations are rooted in those very same neighbourhoods, so we could and should play an absolutely central role in making it happen.
The complexity and challenge of turning the levelling up aspiration into a reality have been expertly dissected by thinktank Onward. Its report lifts the lid on the unfashionable Black Country town of Walsall – a place I happen to be proud to call my home.
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Walsall is a classic ‘left-behind’ community, a once-proud Victorian town known for its most famous son Jerome K Jerome, and its international expertise in the leather industry. Walsall now has a town centre in the doldrums, high crime rates, a skills shortage and a lack of high-quality employment opportunities.
The town does have some strengths. A fine Victorian park is loved by locals and probably ranks as one of the best open spaces in the Midlands. Proximity to the second city of Birmingham with good train and bus links are important. While we might consider the M6 a blessing or a curse, the town accesses this vital transport artery to the north and the south. And the New Art Gallery – a product of the Blair years regeneration efforts – is a fine building including works by Damien Hirst and Jacob Epstein.
“Walsall feels a poor relation within the wider West Midlands Combined Authority – out-gunned by its far bigger and more powerful peers such as Birmingham and Wolverhampton”
Crucially, like many of the ‘red wall’ towns in the Midlands and the North, it is in reality not a homogenous whole, but rather a collection of very different, smaller settlements historically bundled together in a convenient administrative municipality that struggles to properly understand, embrace and respond to huge differences on the ground.
Walsall includes some of the most deprived and the most affluent neighbourhoods in the country. Walk just a mile or two and leafy suburban streets give way to derelict industrial buildings amid needle-strewn alleyways.
Shockingly, Onward reports that life expectancy for male residents in some parts of the borough is decades shorter than for those in the healthiest areas. In fact, when we consider a range of indicators, from household income to employment skills, the charts literally illustrate a patchwork quilt of inequality.
Previous attempts to rejuvenate the town have had limited impact. Walsall feels a poor relation within the wider West Midlands Combined Authority – out-gunned by its far bigger and more powerful peers such as Birmingham and Wolverhampton. Even considering it as part of the much smaller and similar group of Black Country towns utterly fails to get underneath what the town really needs.
“As a sector, we should embrace this agenda – and encourage government to give us a formal and leading role in delivering it”
As the Onward report highlights, levelling up will only work where we have cross-sector leadership and a hyper-local approach that embraces the very different and diverse characteristics of the dozen or so neighbourhoods in Walsall where I, and some 250,000 people, live – and involves them in shaping the solutions at granular level.
It is this critical hyper-local presence, insight and ability to engage with people on the ground which means housing associations need to be at the top table of the levelling-up agenda locally.
As a sector, we should embrace this agenda – and encourage government to give us a formal and leading role in delivering it. Because as Onward argues, and Walsall illustrates, it is ultimately about understanding what local people and local communities are really like and finding out what is going to work for them. And as housing associations, we are in the ideal position to do just that.
Boris Worrall, chief executive, Rooftop
