CONSERVATIVE PARTY CONFERENCE The government’s centralised approach to funding, austerity and placemaking needs to be abandoned to enable the development of better places, the Conservative Party Annual Conference has been told.
“We have fundamental problems in poorer parts of the country and how we fund them,” said Neil McInroy, chief executive at the Centre for Local Economic Strategies. “The problem is it [funding] is not transformative, it is handouts. We need to rethink about these particular places, and how we make them resilient without a succession of handouts.”
McInroy was speaking at a fringe event at the Conservative Annual Conference looking into how government can develop great places.
He said there were two abiding issues: getting investment to an area that is sensitive to the place, and having a suitable local state that can negotiate.
Funding allocation
Tim Bowles, mayor of the West of England, said devolved authorities could properly allocate funding efficiently and where it was needed.
“For us to develop a great place we have to work closer together as authorities and have a strong message to take back to government. Underpinning everything is how we develop inclusive growth,” he said.
The Conservatives have come under fire from Labour for low affordable housebuilding numbers and conflict around community regeneration.
Labour has claimed it is moving the debate to the left on social housing issues, and the Conservative Conference includes a number of events looking at creating more inclusive growth and addressing the regional economic imbalance.
McInroy said: “We have issues with the centralised nature of the United Kingdom. National policy direction tends to look where the growth is and does not look to create frameworks for these other places.”
Jessica Levy, head of public affairs at the National Housing Federation, which acts as an umbrella body for the UK’s housing associations, said it has created a “Great Places” commission which focuses on building better communities through connecting different levels of government and the private sector.
She said: “We have found the most positive change and regeneration in areas has been delivered by local people. Getting power closer to local people is what is coming out to make a good place.”
More sympathetic approach
While the David Cameron-led government hit the housing associations hard – through rents cuts and Right to Buy – Theresa May’s tenure has been characterised by a more sympathetic approach to a multi-tenure solution. The associations too are reinventing themselves as a key part of addressing the housing shortage.
Levy said: “We are hoping that in this year’s Budget the government will recognise we do not have one housing crisis, we have a series depending on the place, and investment needs to be sensitive to the right place.”
The West of England is planning to build 120,000 homes across its constituent parts over the next five years, but Bowles said that housing had to be in the right place and of the right type.
“It has to be developed in a long-term rationalised way, it’s not just about building units,” he said. “If we are then building the correct infrastructure and connectivity, if they are well connected and can access the skills and the jobs, we will then have the ability to start addressing the challenge.”
He said the West of England industrial strategy would the take the opinions of various leaders from all sides of the debate and feed these into it.
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