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A town transformed

Following the closure of Consett?s steelworks, a housing-led regeneration changed the face of the town. Gavriel Hollander finds out if the model can be replicated

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For single use only on 25 November 2016

Source: Dave Foster

On 12 September 1980, molten iron ore oozed out of the giant blast furnaces of the Consett Iron Company for the very last time. As it cooled, the industry that had helped build the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Blackpool Tower ? and had created this remote Durham town nearly a century-and-a-half previously ? breathed its last.

What followed were two decades of managed decline, depressingly familiar to industrial towns across the North East, as well as those in the coal fields of Derbyshire and Wales. Around 3,500 people were laid off overnight, with at least twice as many total jobs lost in the community.

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That decline has now largely been arrested and, in part, it?s thanks to a far-sighted council and a housing-led regeneration project set in train a generation ago.

But Consett?s story is more than just a history lesson; it has practical implications for another North East community.

End of an era

It is just over a year since the coke ovens at Redcar?s steelworks ? 50 miles to the south-east of Consett ? went out for the last time. So what lessons could that community learn from its near neighbour? And how vital could housing be when it comes to turning its fortunes around?

Inside Housing visits Consett as the world is waking up to the news that Donald Trump is to be the next US president. Mr Trump?s unlikely triumph came on the back of promises he has made to restore jobs and prosperity to the former industrial heartland of the Midwestern states. The snow-flecked Durham hills may seem a million miles away from America?s so-called rust belt, but there are parallels.

?Politicians will be politicians and say they can get businesses in, but it?s only five or 10 years later that they realise the reality that it will never happen.? These are the words of Mike Clark, land director at ? and one of the driving forces behind ? the Genesis Project, a regeneration scheme that has changed the face of Consett.

?It was the death of the town. People really believed that.?

Mike Clark, land director, Genesis Project

Mr Clark, who was chief housing officer (and later chief executive) of the now-defunct Derwentside District Council when the Genesis Project was in its infancy, remembers the impact of the closure.

?It was the death of the town,? he recalls matter-of-factly. ?People really believed that. We lost 10,000 people very quickly. We were left with the older people, or people in ill health. It took us until around 2004/05 to start turning it around.?

He characterises the change of approach as moving ?from regeneration through industry to regeneration through housing?.

For single use only on 25 November 2016

Source: Inprint

The project was the community?s answer to the question of how to attract people back to the area and, through that, to breathe life back into the economy. Mr Clark is scathing of the initial response to the closure from some local politicians.

?They did not have a plan B or a plan C. They said they would replace [the steelworks] with another industry that would employ thousands of people. But to expect to attract an employer that will employ 3,000 people is pretty unrealistic. That realisation came to Consett and the council only years after the steelworks closed. It was patently obvious that we were failing to regenerate on the back of industrial development; something had to change.?

Now, across the 700-acre site that was once home to the hulking machinery of Victorian industrialisation, there are stretches of green fields studded with low-level housing sites at various stages of completion.

Symbolically, the houses that make up the Genesis Project sit directly on top of the steelworks site, with much of the hardware buried underneath what is now lush grassland. Where once the furnaces pumped out so much red dust that locals wouldn?t hang their washing outside on certain days, now the town is attracting 60,000 cyclists a year on the coast-to-coast route.

?It was patently obvious that we were failing to regenerate on the back of industrial development.?

Mike Clark, land director, Genesis Project

The housing itself would also be unrecognisable to generations of steel workers and their families. While the high-density Victorian terraces still prevail on one side of town, the steelworks itself is home to row upon row of detached, well-spaced houses, the majority of which are built or being built for private sale.

Eventually, there will be more than 2,000 homes here delivered by the Project Genesis Trust ? a charitable coalition of the council and local developers Dysart Developments.

Initially, the land was offered to volume house builders, with Persimmon the first to take up the opportunity in 2003. While other house builders ? including Barratt ? have followed suit, much of the current wave of development is being undertaken by Amethyst Homes, a subsidiary of Dysart.

Amethyst has outline permission for 480 homes on the Genesis Project site, with 89 completed or near to completion in the first phase. Of those, 30 are allocated to the Durham Aged Mineworkers Homes Association (DAMHA), but 45 of the remaining 59 have already been sold.

Mr Clark is proud of the achievements of the trust in making Consett a desirable place to live, but it hasn?t been easy. ?I spent months and months of my life convincing house builders that there was a market here. We were never going to maximise the land value, but all of these people will pay council tax and spend money locally.?

The Genesis Project itself is focused entirely on the disused steelworks site, but the trust operates a subsidiary that has redeveloped a further 1,000 homes in the town centre.

Depopulation meant the town did not have a need for more housing, but the existing stock was not right for the community that those behind the Genesis Project hoped would emerge.

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Source: Castleside Local History Society

Consett steel workers march on Westminster, London

It is a ?build it and they will come? mentality. And to some extent, it has worked. Several large employers have set up shop in Consett, including food manufacturer Greencore, which employs several hundred people at its factory. In an out-of-town retail park there is one of the country?s largest Tesco supermarkets, a Costa, a Starbucks and a McDonald?s. In total, the trust has brought in some ?185m of private sector investment, with virtually no public funding.

?You need to be able to give them a home and make sure the infrastructure is right.?

Alex Watson, former council leader

?For me, it?s all about [attracting] people,? says Alex Watson, leader of the council throughout the 1990s and a former steelworker himself. ?You need to be able to give them a home and make sure the infrastructure is right.?

The ?R? word

Both he and Mr Clark admit that there has been intermittent opposition to such a major change in the community. ?There?s always suspicion when you go into partnership with the private sector,? accepts Mr Watson.

But he believes that those battles need to be won, both in Consett and now in Redcar: ?They have to embrace the SMEs; they have to find out what their needs are.?

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Source: Arnold Parkin

The last molten iron from the blast furnaces tapped at Consett on 12 September 1980

However, early signs are that Redcar might not take as long to turn around its fortunes as Consett did. With a devolution deal in place for the Tees Valley and an elected mayor on its way soon, the area has more power to dictate solutions than Consett had 35 years previously.

A land commission has already been established and there are discussions underway about what to do with what is now unused land on the steelworks site.

?It will not necessarily be housing-led but housing will be a part of it,? says Iain Sim, chief executive of Coast & Country Housing, which owns and manages 10,000 homes in Redcar and Cleveland.

?The combined authority is trying to plan the future use of that land. One of the asks in terms of housing is to look at [getting] flexibility within the national programme.?

That flexibility, for Redcar, would allow it to build the type of housing that is needed to regenerate the area. As in Consett, that does not mean building more social or affordable housing as the demand is low. Instead, it?s about increasing the for-sale offer and modernising existing stock to attract investment.

?It?s about diversifying the economy,? explains Mr Sim. ?We have to attract people and so the housing offer and the town centre have to be right, and that brings into play the ?R word?.?

?We have to attract people and so the housing offer and the town centre have to be right.?

Iain Sim, chief executive, Coast & Country Housing

Indeed, in communities that have been devastated by sudden unemployment, regeneration can become a divisive concept.

Back in Consett, while the ?200,000 houses of the Genesis Project look like they have been lifted from the pages of a catalogue and the out-of-town shopping suits a new generation of commuting residents, the town centre has certainly seen better days.

On a Wednesday afternoon, many shops are boarded up and the only familiar high street brand names belong to the bookmaking chains. Some pubs are open, but trade isn?t brisk.

?I think there?s definitely less of a community now,? comments Elaine Dixon, a tenancy income officer at Derwentside Homes, which took over the running of the council?s housing stock in 2006. Tellingly, the housing association is based not in the town centre, but in a modern business park some five miles away.

Ms Dixon has a special place in Consett?s history. As an 18-year-old, she presented a 20,000-name petition to prime minister Margaret Thatcher at the culmination of a march on Downing Street ahead of the steelworks? closure in 1980.

?I think a lot of older people would have liked it more as it was before,? she adds, but admits that the transformation was necessary. ?Everybody thought that was it and the town would be finished, but that wasn?t the case.?

The Grey Horse pub is a 10-minute walk from the town centre and it is here that the new Consett meets the old. The pub was opened at the birth of the steelworks. Now, in a sign of the times, it is run alongside its own microbrewery. The names of the ales ? Red Dust, The Furnace ? reflect the town?s industrial heritage.

?I think there?s definitely less of a community now.?

Elaine Dixon, tenancy income officer, Derwentside Homes

?There was nothing when I came,? says manager Kathleen Croft, who has been running the pub for 11 years. ?Now there?s a few other pubs opening up and some bars. It?s definitely filling up.?

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Source: Gavriel Hollander

New housing on the steelworks site

Consett through the years

1980

Consett Iron Company closes its operations in September. The steelworks was founded in 1864 and employed nearly 4,000 people when it closed. Unemployment in Consett went up to 9,000 in the early 1980s.

1989

Derwentside District Council sets up the Project Genesis Trust to manage the regeneration of the steelworks site, with local developer Dysart Developments brought in as partner.

2003

The first houses are started on the steelworks site, built by Persimmon. Eventually, more than 2,000 homes will be built on the land.

2010

A new masterplan is agreed for the former steelworks site, including new residential developments, retail units and a Tesco superstore, which opened in 2013.

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