Election day, and we need radical ideas

 Trying to make some sense of everything, I've been looking at the original 2003 Prescott "Sustainable Communities Plan" (remember that old chestnut?) and came across this in section 3.16: "We will seek to reduce the time taken for negotiations over planning obligations and to optimise outcomes for both local authorities and developers. One possibility is to encourage an "open book" approach which works well where developers and local authorities find this in their mutual interest."

Perhaps in the good times it was naive to expect developers to go for anything properly open book, or real JVs with the public sector.  What would it take now to pry open this issue and get people working together to leverage public and private assets in an innovative way?

Today is election day and, after this, potentially, no regeneration for five years. It is clear that cuts in public sector funding will impact severely on the ability of local or regional government to initiate regeneration or new development projects. There is no more appetite for "top down" central government programmes to initiate and fund major projects.  Sclerotic Urban Development Corporation-type models have not delivered.  Nor has giving over major tracts of land to one landowner, unaccountable to anyone except its shareholders.

For any new model for regeneration to have any chance of success it will require radical new models for unlocking development and regeneration.   New solutions are going to be needed for major projects.  Particularly those that are high profile "blighted" sites in areas of economic need.

The zeitgeist of the advent of "Total Place" needs to be tapped into. Both in its implementation and in its wider philosophy (as a "way of thinking"). The public, private and not-for-profit sectors are going to have to work together more effectively and with the new focus on localism, find ways of engaging with landowners to deliver solutions that they will support.  There will need to be a new realism about what the private sector can and will deliver (and what it won't, no matter what it professes to the contrary) combined with ensuring that public finding is spent creatively and cleverly. 

There needs to be a new paradigm in assisting the private sector to shoulder risk.