It hardly needs restating that the UK is in the midst of its worst-ever housing crisis. Housing is at the very top of the political and news agenda, and almost every week a new solution is proposed. But developers are often left with more questions than answers.
For the past few weeks I have been mulling over the government’s proposals to regenerate 100 of the UK’s poorest-quality housing estates.
The government is proposing to allocate £140m of public money, to be administered by a steering group headed by Lord Heseltine, to help unlock these large-scale regeneration schemes for developers.
Research cited by the government has shown that 360,000 additional homes could be created on the site of London’s existing estates – which certainly made for an eye-catching headline.
The worrying thing for me is that regeneration – in London particularly – is becoming a byword for housebuilding. Success is measured exclusively in the number of units created, regardless of who lives in them. That is if anyone lives in them at all.
The suggestion that estates can be more innovatively designed at a higher density, with greater permeability with their surroundings, is difficult to dispute. The simple logic is that you increase density, you increase design quality, and you increase values.
But, in the majority of cases, the result is effectively moving on people who are socially or financially disadvantaged and bringing in well-paid, well-heeled new residents. This is redevelopment, not regeneration.
Regeneration, in its true form, creates a sustainable place and provides a better socio-economic outlook for people. Estate regeneration should be as much about this as it is about delivering decent homes.
I ask myself why measures of success don’t include things like the number of residents moved from unemployment into work, attendance levels at local schools, or the number of residents moved from social rent to shared ownership.
These are the types of measures that we are going to use to gauge our regeneration projects.
Silvertown in the Royal Docks is one of the largest developments in London today, but in the past three decades the area has suffered due to the closure of the docks. The average age is only 29, yet nearly 20% of local people are claiming out-of-work benefits – nearly 6% more than the London average – and life expectancy is below the London average at 77 years.
Our approach at First Base is to look for real responses to these challenges, not quick fixes, real long-term solutions. In this case, jobs are critical to transform Silvertown back into an economic powerhouse for London, so big and small businesses will base themselves at Silvertown, creating more than 21,000 new jobs as well as much needed housing accessible to local people. We share this vision with the Greater London Authority and the London borough of Newham, our partners at Silvertown.
Successful estate regeneration requires a similarly long-term view.
Too often the objectives of local authorities and developers are not compatible. This has to change: local authorities and their private sector partners need a shared set of parameters to work to.
The creation of a community business plan, or similar, would set out the actions and measures of success that are meaningful. It would ensure estate regeneration works for the existing residents by setting up a framework for making decisions that is directly relevant to them and their future.
We also need to reconfigure the model so developers are not focused on quick bucks from sales. PRS can be part of this, and I suggest that developers could also take a long-term share in the base value of the property, providing a clear incentive to deliver genuine, sustainable regeneration.
A change in approach is essential if estate regeneration is to live up to the name.
Kate Ives is development director at First Base
