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Long-term housing mission for Liverpool

After the controversies of market renewal, Liverpool is planning for a brighter future. Martin Hilditch investigates the city’s new long-term housing masterplan

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Liverpool’s approach to housing policy has probably garnered more national attention than any English city outside London over the past 10 years.

A decade ago, the then Labour government’s £2.2 billion housing market renewal pathfinder programme was kicking off and - for right or wrong - Liverpool was to become its poster boy.

Set up to tackle the low demand for housing in parts of the north and midlands, the scheme - originally envisaged as a 15 to 20-year programme - caused controversy in some quarters. It involved the demolition of thousands of homes nationally (it’s probably fair to say that the construction and refurbishment side tended to be somewhat glossed over by its enemies).

Ten years on, however, Liverpool is once again embarking on another long-term programme to improve the city’s housing offer. Today it is launching those plans - with refurbishment and new build determinedly the main focus.

A new approach
So what are the city’s new plans, who will benefit from them and to what extent is this a completely new approach for Liverpool?

Empty homes waiting to be transformed

 

Today Liverpool Council is going public with full details about a five-year partnership to run from 2014 to 2019 - with the option to extend for a further five years on top of that - to deliver 1,500 new homes and bring a further 1,000 back into use.

Transformed empty homes in Liverpool

Derelict properties earmarked for demolition a decade ago have been transformed into energy-efficient homes

It is charging three firms with delivering its goals. These ‘housing delivery partners’ arrive as a consortium made up of stock transfer housing association Liverpool Mutual Homes, its contractor partner Willmott Dixon and house builder Redrow. The council will sell surplus land to the partnership for development and provide it with information on housing need and its strategic planning priorities.

This year the partnership will also carry out a review of the housing market across the city to identify sites that can be developed and homes that can be refurbished. So is this all where the pathfinder programme might have been heading if then housing minister Grant Shapps hadn’t axed it in 2010?

Steve Coffey, chief executive of Liverpool Mutual Homes, thinks not. We meet in LMH’s city centre office and Mr Coffey is full of enthusiasm about the road ahead. Nonetheless, he is at pains to emphasise that he sees the housing strategy as tying very closely to wider regeneration plans for the city. Unlike the pathfinder scheme, which was very specifically a housing-led renewal programme, Mr Coffey says this time round housing is one part of a bigger whole.

He starts by reeling off a range of wider regeneration projects currently taking place in the city, such as the £350 million scheme which will double the container handling capacity of Liverpool docks, and the expansion of Liverpool Football Club’s Anfield stadium and wider regeneration of the Anfield area.

‘Economically there is a bright future for the city and the city region,’ he states. ‘It’s important to produce a housing offer that supports the economic situation.’

Ann O’Byrne, the city’s cabinet member for housing and assistant mayor, says this is why a partnership that can produce a range of housing is vital.

‘There is a desperate need for [more] good-quality social housing,’ she states. ‘But we are missing out big time on those executive family homes that bring in revenue, based on the council tax, that we so desperately need. Pre-1919 terraces are all band A [the lowest council tax band]. The type of properties that they want are not there [at the moment] to meet their needs.’

Waiting game
At the outset the expectation is that LMH will build around 750 affordable homes as part of the partnership’s planned 1,500 homes - although the precise tenure breakdown hasn’t been decided.

Show homes at Redrow’s Summerhill Park development in Liverpool

Show homes at Redrow’s Summerhill Park development in Liverpool demonstrate the type of houses it will build under the partnership

Liverpool Council identified a number of its sites as part of the plans - which the consortium thinks are big enough to support 750 new homes. The council will not be funding any homes from its own resources but says any capital receipts from the sale of council sites and assets will be reinvested into the partnership.

LMH is also waiting to discover how successful it has been with its bid for funding for the next round of the affordable homes programme. It has bid for £10 million for more than 550 homes, some of which it anticipates will form part of the partnership’s delivery figures - at an average rate of £20,000 per unit. The consortium also aims to attract more than £200 million of private investment into the city - largely from Redrow and individual home buyers.

Of course, new build is just one aspect of the plans. Bringing 1,000 empty homes back into use is a major challenge in its own right. Two full programmes for both new build and refurbishment will be agreed by the partnership board in the coming months before being put forward for cabinet approval in September. Might any of the properties being looked at for refurbishment previously have fallen under the market renewal scheme though? Is any of this building upon the previous work?

Win-win situation
It turns out that there are three main areas that LMH will be targeting - the Cobra neighbourhoods in the Anfield area of the city, north Liverpool close to the boundary with Sefton, and Picton, near the city centre - an area that was previously part of the pathfinder scheme.

Empty homes in Liverpool

The five-year project aims to bring 1,000 empty homes back into use

Given the scale of its 1,000-home challenge, will the partnership be cherry picking the easiest homes to deal with? Maggi Howard, director of assets and enterprise at LMH, says not.

‘There are some big challenges,’ she says. ‘There are 20,000 empty homes in Liverpool at the moment. The city is looking to put £6 million in to support empty homes, although that is not exclusively for this project.’

Certainly the partnership is charged with targeting areas where groups of empty properties are having the biggest impact on the area. LMH is already drawing up lists of potential targets - Ms Howard scrolls through a number of likely ‘empties’ on her tablet as she talks about the approach.

There’s also a win to be had for Inside Housing’s Homes Work campaign to increase apprentices and training places offered by developers and social landlords, too. The partnership has pledged to prioritise providing apprenticeships and training - and Liverpool Council this week pledges its support for Homes Work.

‘We want to make sure that we are getting local people into jobs,’ Ms O’Byrne says. ‘It will give our local young people the opportunity to take on apprenticeships.’

She adds: ‘Our best days are ahead of us.’

If the partnership delivers as promised, then for 2,500 individuals and families at least there will be brighter prospects in the city by 2019 than there are today.


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