I did promise I'd follow up on the BURA response to the Budget this week and now I'm running out of time (and it's a bit pukka this, as measured-and-considered folk wrote most of it).
To recap: BURA published its Framework for Regeneration on 17 March at MIPIM. It went very well. The Budget on the following Wednesday looked like the ideal opportunity to put into practice our plan to test emerging proposals against our six principles.
The Budget was quickly followed by the Total Place report and the announcement about the Housing Revenue Account. Each of these proposals will need detailed study in their own right by the experts (and I will revisit these once I have consulted). But against the BURA Framework our question is whether the Budget and the other announcements will deliver better regeneration?
The core statement in the budget is: "Over the last decade, the Government has put in place policies designed to ensure that all parts of the UK benefit from economic growth. But it is important that policy takes account of the different characteristics and prospects of different places. The Government's regeneration interventions will be focused on tackling worklessness, investing strategically for the regeneration of places that offer realistic opportunities for transforming their economic performance, and on connecting people to economic opportunities in places with lower prospects."
Of course we knew all that already, so let's look at each of our six principles and some of the specifics:
1. Putting people first. Even allowing for the dry language of budget documents the sense you get is that people are seen as part of the economic machine. Continuing delivery on skills and programmes for young people, along with many other regular services, will all help but there is no clear message about people. Total Place offers a citizen viewpoint and proposes an integrated offer to users, especially those with complex and multiple needs.
2. Sharpening the focus. To be fair the focus of the budget is quite sharp - not least because it is narrow. The Clinton mantra "It's the economy stupid" still shines through. We need debate here. The importance of the economy in improving people's lives is undeniable but the links to other factors are important. And we need to think more carefully about the value of growth.
3. Making hard choices. Nothing here makes the choices easier and there is no real sign of mobilising a consensus around where we should be directing our energy. You would not be too optimistic if you were in one of the "places with lower prospects" in the budget statement quoted above. There is a worrying flavour of a limited ambition being offered.
4. Starting with the local. We said that everyone is in favour of localism and so it proves. But we have not turned the debate upside down yet. The Budget says "Regional Ministers will recommend flexing funding to meet regional priorities as they emerge...." and "Strong city-regions will be given more autonomy...." and "Birmingham city-region has been granted powers ...." and "Combined authorities, as they are agreed, and selected local authorities,...." will get Accelerated Development Zones (ADZ). The smack of firm government is still visible: "Government will withhold the relevant elements of the Housing and Planning Delivery Grant from local authorities that fail to produce satisfactory five-year land supply assessments."
Total Place is seen as the way forward. It will offer "significant freedoms for local public services to deliver better outcomes and greater savings". Note the reference to "savings". The detailed report offers tiers of freedom: "the single offer" for strongly performing places and "the innovative policy offer". So it is still a grace and favour approach. Lots more work will be needed to get Total Place operate in support of comprehensive regeneration.
Only the technically minded and wide awake should venture into the Housing Revenue Account consultation document. The heart is undoubtedly in the right place: a once and for all settlement in which local people decide about local housing. Local, of course, as long as you conform to national rent policy!
Given the events of the last few days you will need to be a perpetual optimistic to think that there will be money to improve homes when the Government says it "recognises that £3.2bn of works are still needed to meet its Decent Homes commitment. Meeting this investment need will be a central element of its deliberations on investment priorities at the next Spending Review"
5. Being smart about money. So ADZs are here at last - but it is confused (see blog entry on March 24) and is it really smart and is it big enough? £120m in total is small beer in terms of infrastructure to unlock schemes. And, in another part of the forest, business rates are being frozen for a year. The detail of departmental expenditure shows that Communities and Local Government is counting the closing of the New Deal for Communities programme as a saving and promising to "rationalise" RDA regeneration funding to the tune of £300m. More digging will be needed to understand what all this means on the ground.
6. Using the knowledge. By the standards of many budgets this is delightfully initiative free and of 29 references to "Innovation", none applies to regeneration. The co-location of the regional bodies (surely a prelude for something more) offers opportunities for the embedded knowledge in those organisations to be shared and better used. It is a step towards our test of simplifying and streamlining. Total Place could be a lever here so long as it is really used with determination.
So... what's the score on the doors then? In urban regeneration circles it is common to use the traffic light code to signal the way in which proposals stack up: green for right in line; amber for beginning to get there; red for positively damaging.
Of course, the Budget was not an announcement directed solely at or even significantly about the business of regeneration. That has not always been the case. Contrast the clearer and more comprehensive statement in Budget 2000: "Communities suffering from multiple deprivation need special help".
By the following year Budget 2001 was even clearer: "targets are designed to close the gap between our most deprived communities and the rest of the country by improving health, education and employment outcomes, reducing crime and improving the condition of social housing."
We find none of that clear sense of direction here. So we reckon the sum of the budget and other announcements is at best a weak amber. Some tools might help a bit but the commitment, the focus and the genuine localism are lacking. Sir Humphrey would have been proud of the obfuscation in technical detail and the neat caveats for later use.
We in BURA have made it clear that our Framework was about how to tackle regeneration when we have to get "more for less". The wider debate about savings and spending plans reinforces the need to have a clear sense of purpose. Austerity should not limit our ambition even if the struggle to achieve is harder.
The debate and the campaign goes on.
Leave a comment
What a user pic? Get a Gravatar!