In recent decades, a historical deficit has grown in the UK between London and the South East, and communities in the rest of the UK. A report by the UK2070 Commission last year into regional inequalities claimed that “the UK is one of the most regionally unbalanced countries in the industrialised world”.
In spite of numerous national and regional efforts to regenerate these communities, ambition is often prioritised over detail, and these inequalities have only widened. One alternative is a proactive move towards smaller-scale initiatives instead of a top-down ‘vision’, empowering town and borough councils to work with developers in regenerating their own communities.
By starting small and expanding from a stable foundation of community-based improvement, larger regeneration efforts will be more likely to take hold and last.
Scale over detail
Too often, past administrations have seen large-scale, ambitious infrastructure or development projects as the sticking plaster required to tackle the challenge of regenerating communities.
Costing immense sums of tax-payer money before construction starts and taking years to complete, these projects offer the promise of significant action, but too often fall short of their planned goals or deliver only short-term relief from a very long-term problem.
Furthermore, such ventures risk delays and budget overruns, as smaller changes or unforeseen issues in the development process ripple up management hierarchies, making it difficult to properly address the more minute details or needs of communities.
This leads not only to inefficient management but also potentially ineffective regeneration efforts for smaller municipalities, whose voices don’t always get heard during the planning phase. Such risks have also dampened the appetite of foreign investors to help fund these projects.
Let the community lead
While this is not to say that ambitious undertakings are not important, the UK2070 report made a valuable point when it concluded that systematic and organisational political devolution and organisational decentralisation are essential in rebalancing inequality in the UK. Put simply, in an effort to regenerate our communities, not only must efforts and funding go towards grand scale projects, but also to local undertakings.
In order to decentralise the population and economy of the UK, the government structure overseeing it must also decentralise, bestowing more power and agency upon local governance to motivate regeneration on a smaller, more realisable scale.
This approach would naturally lead to smaller, but more organically developed solutions, directly addressing the needs of individual communities and making those communities the engines of their own change.
Our team at Kajima Properties, along with our partners Genr8, witnessed the benefits of decentralisation first hand with the development of Rochdale Riverside. By focusing on investment at a municipal scale and working closely with the Rochdale Borough Council throughout the process, we have been able to deliver a product which has evolved naturally and adapted over the course of the undertaking. This allowed us to meet new challenges or demands of the community as they arose, minimising delays and cost challenges.
When it comes to the regeneration of our communities, it’s clear we need a new approach. Beginning with a greater volume of lower-budget, municipal-centric projects means we can build a stable foundation of growth and opportunity on which to widen the scope of regeneration efforts across the country. This will lead to change which is not only effective, but also long-term.
As the UK2070 report said, “a new national narrative is required” – that narrative is one in which the UK’s communities are strong, prosperous, and in control of their own fates again.
John Harcourt is managing director at Kajima Properties
