Recently in New Deal for Communities Category

Soooo.... PBR (recorded in full here) says "the government will continue to examine the framework that would be needed to implement tax increment financing and consider the primary legislation that would be needed if schemes were to be introduced". 

I was right then: we should be relying on this government promising to think about something for all of the last six months of its life with no prospect of delivery of primary legislation. Oh dream on.

Very august members of the property profession will be cross with me for saying this (and I am genuinely sorry, chaps) but I am forced to conclude that TIFs are simply not a re-election platform and certainly not the rabbit in the hat that Labour needs.

The model is long-term and potentially quite difficult to manage. All of which is fairly unpalatable stuff for populist politics.

I really was rather taken aback by Phillip Blond (pictured) on the Today programme this morning. I am rather an admirer of Mr Blond generally and find his arguments on the need for a "trust culture" very compelling indeed (I'm not at all clear how you achieve this, but I am totally certain of our need for it). 

                                                              Phillip Blond

However, I did find his recipe for estates renewal a little disturbing. His thesis (my apologies for this attempt to clumsily summarise it) is that shed loads of government financing gets poured into sink estates without making much, if any, impact and it would be rather better to give the resource to the residents themselves to have a local commissioning and delivery agency.

Now I do not wish to be defeatist here, and I do agree entirely with the premises for the argument (and heartily applaud it), but my problem is in the implementation. What Mr Blond describes is pretty much what was attempted by the New Deal for Communities Programme in 39 deprived areas up and down the country in the year 2000. 

The - extremely well meaning - civil servants (all of whom I know well) held precisely the same views as Mr Blond in respect of community empowerment and were deeply, deeply disappointed about the programme's dismal failure to deliver for all sorts of reasons. 

I am in spear-carrying mode again (dear old Jim Barham at Rialto Homes used to refer to me as "Boadicea" in Paddington days; I do not think he intended this as a compliment).

In my role as chair at the South Kilburn Partnership (SKP), it was my pleasant duty to draft my introduction to the 2009/10 Business Plan today. Regular readers of this blog will know there has been considerable pain in South Kilburn and, from what I understand, we were not alone among the 39 New Deal for Communities (NDC) programmes (set up by the forebears of Communities and Local Government in 2000) many of whom have suffered similar dissonance.

But - as South Kilburn residents will loudly affirm - the past is another country and we must move onwards and upwards. So I am proud to be able to say that we have been one step ahead of the other NDC programmes in South Kilburn in setting up our legacy vehicles with the establishment of the over-arching South Kilburn Partnership (SKP) and its delivery arm, the South Kilburn Neighbourhood Trust (SKNT) - and I chair both bodies (there is just no limit to how many hats can I wear at once!).