Urban Regeneration

Summary report
Urban regeneration
The new agenda for British housing
Creating new communities?
April 8 2003, London
Sponsored by Building for Life and English Partnerships
Summary report
The Guardian, The Observer and Guardian Unlimited
Urban Regeneration
Contents
Welcome..................................................................................................................................................3
The view from government ...........................................................................................................................3
The state were in.......................................................................................................................................7
Preparing the ground getting ready for the challenge.....................................................................................10
Delivering housing...................................................................................................................................17
The four growth areas great opportunities or here we go again?.......................................................................23
Keynote speech......................................................................................................................................28
April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London
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Conference chairs for the urban regeneration conference were Jonathan Glancey and David Walker of the Guardian.
Welcome
Jonathan Glancey
the Guardian
What sort of housing and towns we are going to get in the next few years? What will be the impact of the initiative
announced by the Deputy Prime Minister? We hear about the north-south divide, but what are we doing about it?
When I travel around Britain I see a country full of nowhere places. We have to look at the way in which we connect our
cities and towns. We are useless at public transport but we need transport more than ever.
We are to build new houses. People ask me why I care about aesthetics when people need such practical things but we
must offer something better than what is currently on offer. I do not believe that people in Britain have much choice in
their housing.
The view from government

John Prescott
Deputy Prime Minister
I.
Preamble
One thing that strikes me about sustainable communities is that everyone blames everyone else. There is a very
conservative culture in this country and we want to change that, but what do we want to change it for?
II.
The challenge
While sustainability can be difficult to define, we know what we mean by it; the local environment on your doorstep rather
than just decent quality housing. We are building fewer homes today than at any time since the 1920s so the problem is
not only that we are not building good quality housing but that there is not enough of it, despite the number of empty
homes across the country.
In 1997, the repair bill for Local Authority housing was 19 billion, the supply of private homes was in decline, people
were leaving the inner cities and we were wasting land by building at low densities. The right to buy was a good idea but
insufficient houses were built to replace those sold. Social housing is now scarce in London and the system has become
open to exploitation. The long-term answer must be to allow people to buy their homes without diminishing the housing
stock. We can do more with mortgage share and home buy schemes to move people from public housing to buying their
own homes.
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III.
Improvements in the last six years
500,000 local authority homes have been repaired.
We are on track for making all public housing decent by 2010.
Stock transfers have brought an extra 8 billion.
The 60% brown field target achieved.
30,000ha added to the green belt.
We have built the foundations but now we need step change. We now have a radical agenda before parliament. The
Community Plan seeks to create sustainable communities that put people first. The challenge we face is realising this
vision. The Plan will invest 22 billion over the next three years through:
Doubling affordable housing investment;
tripling key worker housing expenditure;
610 million for the Thames Gateway;
500 million for low demand areas;
2 billion for deprived and New Deal areas and
extra funds to improve the environment.
IV.
Mechanisms for delivery
We really have to define what we want and make the changes necessary to deliver that. I want to get all the
organisations involved in housing singing from the same hymn sheet. That will be made possible by the new housing
boards.
English Partnerships is working to release more brown field land for housing. We are trying to bring empty properties into
use. We will allow local authorities to take over ownership of empty properties, adding compulsory leasing to compulsory
purchase.
I want to increase flexibility about the way land is allocated to housing. By releasing the canals from the control of the
Treasury for example, we have turned a liability of 100 million a year into a profit. This can be seen in Birmingham,
Leeds and many other areas.
There is enough unused land in London alone for 80,000 homes. It is absurd that the government is selling off its land
while I have to go around buying affordable housing. We should be looking to build on our own land. The market alone will
not solve the housing problem.
Some housing will be built on green field sites but I do not want more urban sprawl, which is why I have reinforced the
green belt and increased the density for new urban development.
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V.
Four key areas
Milton Keynes.
Thames Gateway.
Ashford.
Stansted.
It will be a challenge to get sufficient infrastructure in place, but the rewards for success are great. Thames Gateway
alone could deliver 200,000 new homes and 300,000 jobs almost all of it on brown field sites.
VI.
New bodies
RDAs are having an impact. We want them to work with local authorities in order to identify the most deprived areas in
those wards.
We now have 11 new Urban Regeneration Companies (UDCs) across the country and I am adding three more. I also want
to ensure that New Deal for Communities and Neighbourhood Renewal link more closely with the renewal plan. I am
announcing a further 800 million for each of the Neighbourhood Renewal areas. I am also moving ahead with the
Pathfinder programme among low demand areas in the north. We expect three of these Pathfinders to present their
plans this year.
We have set out proposals for licensing landlords in low demand areas. In June we will set up support teams to clamp
down on bad landlords.
PPG6 is our policy to promote town centres. We are encouraging retailers to focus on in town rather than out of town.
Some retailers are trying to challenge this policy but it remains.
VII.
Construction and planning
The construction skills shortage is a major constraint on the supply of new homes. We must make the switch to more
off-site manufacture. I have set a new target for the Housing Corporation that 25% of the new homes they fund be
provided by off-site manufacture by 2004/5.
Planning is vital to the delivery of these plans. I have already set aside an extra 350 million to speed up the planning
process. I want improvements in getting plans in place and in implementing them. We have a Planning Bill before
parliament to streamline the process and promote sustainability.
I want planning to be more proactive. Where they are not delivering on targets I shall take action. I am also asking Sir
John Egan to develop a skills and training strategy for planning and construction.
VIII.
Conclusions
There was a time when we lead the world in planning communities, from the garden cities onwards. Those sustainable
communities are still with us. We have forgotten what makes people want to live in our towns and cities.
This is only the start. We must have a debate about the changes we want to make.
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We have the legislation, the funding, the determination and the political will to drive the step change.
Questions and answers
Barry Spivak, Maharishi Foundation

We believe that the principles of Sthaptaya Veda should be more widely disseminated. We are trying to establish a test
estate in Lancashire.
Dave Clarson, Manor & Castle Development Trust
We had a Pathfinder meeting at which all the questions we asked were met with the answer, This is not the place to
come. Where then is the creative vision?
Can we recycle the added value we are going to create?
Matthew Richards, Building Magazine
Could you clarify Sir John Egans role?
Are there any new tax incentives in the pipeline?
John Prescott
You could build lots of housing in Barking but it will not be viable without a commitment to the DLR. We have never before
looked at the true value that is derived from public investment.
The radical vision of Pathfinders is yours to create. If you know what you think is right then you have to win that debate.
I have asked John Egan to look at how the professional bodies could work together. We have provided some money to
try to produce a school of thought so that we could get better design and more efficient manufacture etc.
The use of natural materials is very important, but be restrictive.
June Barnes, East Thames Housing Group
Can you make sure that the long-term managers of the new environment are involved?
I help to provide trade training for women. It is almost impossible to get funding for this, why?
Richard Temple Cox, Castle Vale Housing Action Trust
Sustainability should also include investment in education, health, youth and the police.
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John Prescott
Without infrastructural investment you cannot get sustainability. We want to put infrastructure at the heart of our
approach to housing. This may mean using PFI.
Training is terribly important. The profession is very short of skills and women should be a part of the solution.
Housing professionals should of course be working with all the other professionals involved in the process.
David Walker
The minister has thrown down the gauntlet for our debate. I hope that we can pick it up.
The state were in

Professor Sir Peter Hall
director, Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning, UCL
I.
What state are we in?
The north-south divide is spelled out in the new communities report. The north has booming city centres, but decaying
middle rings and problematic outer estates that we have to watch.
The south has London bursting at the seams, rising house prises and problems meeting the housing gap.
II.
Characteristics of the north
The central areas have been doing furiously well but perhaps at the expense of the middle ring.
The 80,000 students in Manchester and Salford are driving inner city regeneration.
The regeneration of Hulme.
The canals are a remarkable example of what is being done all over the country.
Culture lead-regeneration such as the new Baltic Centre.
Sports-lead regeneration such as the new Commonwealth Games complex at the core of east Manchester.
III.
Characteristics of the south
The problems of the south are about creating extra capacity. London is full and getting fuller. Although London is driving
to the east it is hard to imagine that we can get all this housing on brown field sites given its growth over the last 20
years.
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The remarkable turnaround in Londons population since 1983 is projected to continue. Whilst Londoners are leaving,
they are being replaced by international migrants. Londons growth is therefore dominated by minorities who will soon be
a majority. This is good news for the London economy if the education system can cope.
IV.
The housing gap
This is the overwhelming problem in London and the south and particularly in London.
We have been delivering only 20-25% of the target and there is a growing backlog which is having an impact on housing
availability and prices. The Mayors strategy is to rectify the imbalance between east and west London; this needs
money.
V.
The push east
500,000 new jobs are projected for Londons central and eastern sub regions. 262,000 of 459,000 new homes will be in
these areas. The major areas are the Lower Lea Valley, the Royal Docks and the Greenwich Peninsular.
There are many opportunities here but the major challenge is Barking Reach, a huge area of industrial land to which very
little has happened. The failure of this area is symptomatic of London as a whole. The new Channel Tunnel link will go
through this area but it will not stop and the area will have to be served by Cross Rail and the DLR. There is a major
disharmony between the new development opportunities and transport development.
VI.
The south east
We are not cementing over the south east. 90% of development will be on brown field sites and the rest on surplus
agricultural land. Nevertheless, there is an argument to be made about densities. Last time we had accurate figures,
11% of the country was built on; in the south it is 15%. These figures could increase by 2% by 2020.
VII.
Future developments in planning
There are big land savings to be had by increasing housing densities to 35 dwellings/ha. If you go above this level the
gains are lost in the other facilities you need to provide. These densities will provide better, sustainable transport
although it is still insufficient density for light rail. Extending small towns so as to retain a 10-minute walking radius
around a train station is also sustainable.
In 2001 John Prescotts department produced Regional Planning Guidance 9 (RPG9). This dodged the issue of how
many homes were needed; it came up with a compromise figure of 39,000 houses a year, which is inadequate. We now
have the strategy of the four growth areas, concentrating the growth around transport corridors but with a huge growth in
the housing targets over RPG9.
The approach for the M1/A6 looks very much like the beads on a string model for which planners have been arguing
since Ebeneezer Howard.
Given the transport links, we may have missed an opportunity to use Ashford as the key to regenerating the east Kent
coastal towns.
VIII.
Conclusions
The London plan and the growth areas are badly needed even if London does reach its targets, which sees unlikely.
There is a need for new planning vehicles. We will need new UDCs to do this job and I think that the establishment of two
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new ones should be seen as the beginning of a more general process if we are to avoid a housing crisis in south east
England.
Questions and answers
David Nummey, Environment Agency

Could you identify some of the key environmental concerns when creating new communities?
Frank Vickery, East Thames Housing Group
I think the UDCs are too large to deliver at local level. Is there a case for New Towns within the east Thames corridor?
We need to preserve the green belt but we can and should develop beyond it. We should retain high quality areas of
landscape and areas of scientific importance. We need to define what we mean by sustainable development. I f
sustainability is everything, maybe it is nothing.
I do not think that UDCs are too large. You could even say they are too small. I do not make much distinction between
UDCs and New Town Corporations. The important thing is to give these vehicles the support to deliver this essential
development quickly.
Christine Tudor, Countryside Agency
The problematic outer estates of which you spoke were created by planners. Could this new programme create similar
problems?
Martin Nurse, Sentinel Housing Group
We have talked about growth but we do need to look at the quality of the stock. Many of the older estates are now being
marginalised.
Danny Friedman, National Housing Federation
The north-south divide is too simplistic because you have high demand areas in the north and low demand areas in the
south.
We could repeat our mistakes but we are smarter now. The key will be repopulating the northern cities with families by
providing the environments they want.
The reason that we have these decaying middle rings is that those houses have passed their sell-by dates. You are
right, we do need to look at the housing stock. Many of the most deprived wards in Manchester are out in Wythenshawe,
which was a model suburb in the 1930s.
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The north-south divide is simplistic; they do have different problems, even though there are pockets of both kinds of
problems within them.
Preparing the ground getting ready for the challenge
David Walker
The point of this session is to tease out some of the questions that are, so far, unanswered.
Oona King MP, Tower Hamlets
MPs interested in housing have been battling to bring housing up the agenda. I have taken ministers to see 16 people
living in two bedrooms in Tower Hamlets. Housing is on everyones list of priorities.
We are to consider whether the governments targets can be met. I am not about to deny that, but there are gaps. I think
we need 90,000 new homes a year and that means an increase in funding of 1-1.5 billion.
Housing is the most basic of needs but it still slips down the agenda. My problem with the policy we have used so far is
that too much of the funding is aimed at key workers. We are focusing on demand rather than supply. We can look at the
planning regulations but I doubt that alone will sort things out.
The east is the way forward for London.
Max Steinberg, director, Investment and Regeneration North, The Housing Corporation
We are not one community and one size does not fit all. I worry about the simplification of the north-south divide.
After 70 years of de-industrialisation we are now starting to recover. The Pathfinder policy is about reversing the trend
away from our cities. This means concentrating on our cities while remembering that some cannot grow.
Why is it that 20 years after an act described the 20 most deprived communities in the country, 18 of them are still in the
lowest 10%? It is because we have been fighting the market.
Demolition is back on the agenda; this will require great sensitivity.
Adam Sampson, director, Shelter
We have about 85,000 households in temporary accommodation. That is what happens if we do not have supply to meet
demand. This also causes overcrowding and inadequate housing and the knock-on impacts that these problems foster.
I do not know whether this plan will deliver for the homeless. There is a great deal of money here but money alone does
not always sort problems out. I am concerned that John Prescott did not mention homelessness. This plan may not
address the very poorest.
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John Calcutt, chief executive, Crest Nicholson plc

A countrys ability to address its housing is a function of its wealth. The Thames Gateway does not stand a chance if it
cannot attract jobs as well as providing homes. This initiative will fail if the amount of money needed to prime the pump
cannot be supplied; if the countrys economy cannot pay for this scheme then it will not happen.
The second potential impediment is the lack of skills and competencies. Urban regeneration is vastly more complex than
building on green field sites. The private sector must work in partnership between public and private sectors.
We need to get down to the business of putting bricks on top of one another and delivering to those who have hitherto
had such a raw deal. This means that we must define what we want down to a level of detail that has never before been
seen in planning and then driving it through by meaningful partnerships with the private sector.
David Walker
Conversations are now taking place between the ODPM and the Treasury about what is, in effect, a betterment levy. The
Labour Party is using taxation as a precondition to development.
Oona King
I think that this is more radical than we dared hope. We have to show that we can spend money effectively.
The government is trying to get rid of child poverty. That cannot happen if we do not have adequate housing.
David Chisholm, John Thomson & Partners
Is investment being made in the social infrastructure? We want to make places where people share values not incomes.
Do people have the generosity of spirit to move into these communities? Can people deal with the higher levels of noise
that will come with greater densities?
David Walker
That would require social engineering, but can renewed social infrastructure be a part of this salvation?
Max Steinberg
A focus on liveability is the key to regeneration but not all neighbourhoods can transmute. If we are going for dense
living northern cities, that will create tensions elsewhere. Part of the community planning agenda is about managing
change.
John Calcutt
Although the fabric of many communities was tatty it was a combination of disillusionment, despair and inequality that
destroyed them. We need to regenerate communities, some of which are in their third generation of despair.
What is the interaction between the fabric, the way that local authorities work and the other services that a community
needs in order to survive? Some of these issues are too complex for a builder.
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David Walker
And you think that some of these special vehicles could be the answer?
John Calcutt
I have greater resources than a local authority; what chance does a local authority have to address these issues? We
need centres of excellence to build up a body of transferable expertise.
David Walker
What would you say about the governance of the new communities in east London?
Oona King
It depends whether people feel that something is being done for them or to them. Even today there is a sense in Wapping
that the community was not consulted about the Docklands.
There is a question about the shift in mentality that comes into the Housing Plus Agenda. There is also the question of
what the government is doing in things like NDCs. The turnout for the Board of the NDC was higher than the turnout for
the election.
David Walker
Is the Treasury involved?
Oona King
It is the Treasurys job to distrust spending but unless there is investment in health and education the whole poverty
agenda will fail.
Max Steinberg
It is vital that the agencies deliver spatially, economically aligned housing policies at a regional level but I see housing
markets operating with no respect for local authority boundaries. That is why you need a sub-regional agenda.
Adam Sampson
Are these new bodies going to be comprised of the usual suspects making the same decisions? There is no mechanism
for stakeholders to influence these regional boards.
Oona King
I agree with proposals to introduce national spatial strategy.
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David Cowans, Places for People Group

I am worried about the capacity for huge numbers to drive low quality.
You have been talking about new organisational forms; how would the new public-private relationships work?
John Calcutt
We must resist the temptation to make up the numbers and abandon quality of life principles. We cannot cut corners; we
have to put in the resources to get quality and quantity.
We need a whole new structure to involve contractors, experts, local authorities and the community in thrashing out a
consensus. Once people have to justify their decisions, the rhetoric disappears.
David Walker
You cannot create communities without jobs. Where are these new jobs going to come from?
Max Steinberg
We have to align economic and housing policy in a way we have been unwilling or unable to do in the past.
David Walker
And this must be done by the state?
Max Steinberg
Local authorities have a major role but there are also roles for people like English Partnerships and providers
themselves.
We also need to be more confident about asking people what they want.
David Cowans
Geography is important. In Milton Keynes they anticipated no commuting but now they are having problems with large
amounts of inward commuting because employment has outstripped housing.
As providers we can try to create the conditions for employment.
Adam Sampson
The problem with the tendency towards vibrant urban centres is that poor people have to live further away, affecting
their ability to get to work. Ken Livingstones 50% affordability criterion is therefore vital. We need these types of
guarantee to get the outcomes we want.
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Pam Alexander, Peabody Trust

John Prescott said he wanted 50% of next years building to be done by off-site manufacture. This is currently very
expensive. How is this going to work?
How are we going to ensure that we go beyond the numbers and get truly mixed communities?
Max Steinberg
I am more comfortable talking about housing than social or owner occupied housing. I should like to see those funding
streams sit side by side rather than balkanising the problem.
John Calcutt
If you regenerate a sink estate by putting all the tenants at one end and the owners at the other then you get another
ghetto. When we first put housing association tenants on an owner occupied development the owners came out and
picketed. We have made a great deal of progress.
David Walker
It is not mono-tenure estates that are the problem, but income level.
Adam Sampson
The private rental market can contribute significantly. The government has done little to revitalise this sector despite
some fine words in the plan.
John Calcutt
We have not got an affordable rented sector.
Adam Sampson
The gulf between social renting and any other kind of tenure is widening. In some areas we see an increasing level of
affluence in the social sector, which therefore gets backed up with the relatively affluent. This forces the worse off into
the worst of the private sector.
Max Steinberg
My worry is about some of the smaller councils. What will happen to those outlying places when we bring people back
into the cities?
David Walker
Nobody has mentioned off-site manufacture. Peabody has innovated in that area. Pam, perhaps you would like to come
back on that?
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Pam Alexander
The worry is that we lack the capacity. Targets are sensible but they do have to be realistic to be effective. Otherwise
we will have all the worst elements of industrialised building.
Anne Cooper, East of England Development Agency
I am worried that insufficient money will be made available. If there is not enough money, will it not be the least well off
who find themselves marginalised?
Christine Tudor
Everyone is going for wholesale demolition, but restoration is sustainable. If owner occupied homes are demolished,
would that not force people into the rental sector?
Terry, editor, The Green Paper
If there were enough houses the affordability issue would be irrelevant. In Tower Hamlets public housing is being
replaced with private housing. There has to be some government input into the housing crisis in London.
Council Tenant, London Tenant Federation
We are interested in mixed communities. As far as we are concerned, that means knocking down council houses and
building luxury flats. This has not improved our lot at all. We are under immense market pressure in Clerkenwell and we
are anxious to be involved in the debate. We want to know where our voice will be heard.
David Walker
It is interesting that John Prescott said NDCs must be involved in debate.
Adam Sampson
There is an issue about things being done to communities. The Home Ownership Taskforce was set up to increase home
ownership and there is nobody on it who represents those who are not currently likely to own property.
David Walker
But communities will not address the question of expansion. That at least will have to be done by university-educated
men in suits.
[To Council Tenant] Do you feel that too much emphasis has been placed on eastward expansion at the expense of
existing communities?
Sharon Hayward, London Tenants Federation
Yes, we are very worried about being decanted out east. Those of us whose homes are not decent are being forced into
the private sector.
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Adam Sampson
It is more expensive to develop inner city sites than those further out.
Any right to buy mechanisms will take housing out of the housing stock.
John Calcutt
For all the money that John Prescott mentioned, this is a drop in the ocean compared to the cost. That said, there are
few areas in the south where development is not self-sustaining. We only look to the public sector in areas like schools
and infrastructure and in those areas where development is not economic.
There is a strong case for increasing the housing supply and solving the problem that way. It would be a tragedy if
people were simply hived off into east London.
Max Steinberg
Demolition is about making housing markets work; it must therefore be done selectively and with the consent of the
community. Handled correctly a demolition programme can restore equilibrium.
To the lady in the east of England, I am glad you have got your strategies integrated but it seems to me that we have to
show the government that we are spending money effectively before we can go back and ask for more.
Graham Facks-Martin, William Sutton Trust
Under the first five years of New Labour, housing association completions fell by 30%. Therefore, welcome as the new
resources are, more is still needed.
Alan Paterson, Stannifer Development
In the seventies and eighties New Towns in Scotland attracted 80% of all the investment into Scotland. This was
because they were successfully funnelling that money into jobs. Every community in history has started for economic
reasons. We divorce housing and economics at our peril.
Adam Sampson
The higher up the agenda housing goes, the greater the danger of low cost, low quality housing.
John Calcutt
There is no quick fix; we simply have to raise our game.
That said, simply regenerating the centre of the right town can sometimes draw businesses and jobs into it if the basics
are right. This happened in Gloucester.
Max Steinberg
Housing funding has been a bit of a roller coaster of late. 500 million for Pathfinder is not a lot as the bill runs to billions,
but you have to start somewhere.
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David Walker
Thank you.
Delivering housing
Jonathan Glancey
The word delivering is very fashionable now but what will the houses that are to be delivered be like?
Anthony, the mayor plans to build all these new houses but can we trust private companies to deliver them?
Anthony Mayer, chief executive, Greater London Authority
First of all, house builders are entrepreneurs, seeking to make a profit by delivering a desirable product. Currently, most
people want Noddy houses on estates. Two things will change this picture: the shortage of houses and the shortage of
land.
This will create three premiums: higher density, top quality special master plans and a link between new housing and
infrastructure.
On the one hand, house building is just recovering from its loss of nerve over industrialised building; on the other, these
industrialised processes have moved on since the seventies. They key is incentivisation. If we get this right we will
deliver choice to the customer.
We can trust the private sector as long as we recognise that they must make a profit.
Jonathan Glancey
Is the governments grand vision deliverable?
David Higgins, chief executive, English Partnerships
The problem is that you cannot fight the cycles; you have to use them. You have to think in terms of 20 years and be
flexible. We have many forums for discussion but each brown field site has its own issues and we need buy-in to solve
them.
How can we achieve an influx of capital to deliver this agenda?
Jonathan Glancey
How can we guarantee high design standards, and should we care?
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Jon Rouse, chief executive, CABE

The public care. At the moment they are not being offered a choice. When you look at the statistics you see a
preference for older houses rather than new ones. People want real communities and proper public space. This is not a
preference for a style but for getting the basics right.
The house builders care; not because of altruism but because they have discovered they make a better profit on good
design.
Government also cares. The local environment is consistently second or third on peoples list of electoral priorities.
Jonathan Glancey
House builders in Britain seem to do very well. But is there more that they can do beyond providing lots of Tudorbethan
houses?
Robin Davies, group business development director, Westbury plc
It is dangerous to say house builders are all doing well. We are not talking about huge organisations and if we start
linking affordable housing to builders profits we are on a slippery slope. We are in business to make money. If we chose
to be altruistic we would soon find ourselves in difficulty.
We need a policy that is sustainable and not subject to the market, but there is one market that we cannot avoid: the
market for land. A more plentiful supply of land would give us more scope to build a wider spectrum.
There is scope for greater improvements and processes; this is why we have invested in Space 4, a factory capable of
producing one house per hour. Higher quality homes in half the time have to be a good thing but then we have to get the
land through fast enough. This is a question for the planning profession.
Jonathan Glancey
House builders go in and out of business. Are they professional enough to implement this plan?
David Higgins
There has been tremendous consolidation and professionalisation in the industry. But we need more certainty about
land supply.
Jonathan Glancey
110 years ago Britain was famous for local authority housing. Have local authorities been emasculated?
Anthony Mayer
Yes; grant structures have made it hard for them to maintain their stock.
Thanks to Thatchers policies you have great concentrations of very poor people. Had we taken housing more seriously
the problem would not be so serious.
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Jonathan Glancey
If people lack choice how can we find out what they want?
Jon Rouse
The issue is one of supply and demand. If two people compete for every new house you will not get choice.
Jonathan Glancey
The supply of land is very uneven in Britain; can we have confidence in our ability to deliver a coherent strategy?
David Higgins
Much land is currently unutilised. That is why there is to be a new land registry to try to optimise our use of land.
Jonathan Glancey
Prefabrication terrifies people. Is there a way of reassuring people of it?
Robin Davies
Modern prefabricated houses are indistinguishable from others except that they are more precisely built and better
insulated. The chief surveyors from the banks asked what all the fuss was about. They classify our Space 4 buildings as
conventional construction.
Christine Tudor
We have been trying to get developers to reflect local distinctiveness; prefabrication seems to be going in the opposite
direction.
Robin Davies
We have taken traditional designs rather than developing new ones for the factories. We have not yet found anything
that we cannot make at the factory. Modern manufacturing allows us to customise products.
Jonathan Glancey
There is a sense that housing in this country all looks the same. Who cares about regionalism any more?
Jon Rouse
We do, but the demise of regionalism should not be laid at the door of manufacturing techniques. We are doing no more
than standardise the core of the product.
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Anthony Mayer
I referred to the Noddy aesthetic. Look at London: any new tall building in London has a curved roof and a series of
window cranes. Where is the risk-taking?
Jon Rouse
Local government needs to be specific about what they want and have the courage to reject the mediocre.
Participant
Is the Essex Design Guide a triumph of regionalism or a disaster of pastiche?
Jon Rouse
Both; it was great in the seventies but it should not still be in use. Engage in debate rather than relying on a 30-year-old
document.
Ken Shuttleworth, Foster & Partners
We should not just be thinking about housing. Mixed-use building is much more common elsewhere.
Terry, Green Paper
Are the GLAs proposals a one-trick pony in the sense that they rely on property developers for affordable housing?
Anthony Mayer
The day I see developers walking away because local authorities are being horrible to them I shall eat my hat. The public
sector has failed to get payback from the developers for the money they make when times are good.
Roger
Deregulation brought unimaginable benefits to Canary Wharf. Can we please look at deregulation?
Jon Rouse
Canary Wharf was a commercial failure, at least to start with. The Isle of Dogs is still a planning mess. Deregulation was
not 100% successful in Canary Wharf and nor were other free enterprise zones. We should try to concentrate on the
front end of the planning process and then allow companies to respond.
Denis McDaid, Taylor Woodrow
There has been no mention of the customers who fund the whole process. Are they being considered?
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Jonathan Glancey
Londoners are still moving out of London. Who are these immigrants coming in? I wonder if they have a view about the
way housing might be. People have tried to bring them in. Society is more complex now; should that affect our
decisions?
Anthony Mayer
Immigrants are either very rich bankers or poor people who will take whatever they can get.
How conservative is Westbury Homes customer base?
Robin Davies
I often feel that we are not seeing what customers want because supply is so short. That prevents builders from
responding effectively.
Jon Rouse
Of 27,000 architects in this country, 70-80 are from minority groups. That is a problem. That is why the Stephen
Lawrence Foundation is so important.
Ann Cooper
Peoples personal priorities may not match the priorities of sustainability. They may not want greater densities.
Jonathan Glancey
That has not been touched on today.
David Higgins
We have been focusing too much on housing rather than community. There has to be economic activity, support
structures, schools and so on.
Barbara Thompson, Fortac
When designing affordable housing, who decides on design?
Jon Rouse
Tenants should design social housing.
I would ban the word estate. Let us build communities and neighbourhoods rather than estates.
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Jonathan Glancey
How do we build communities? Can it be done?
David Hackforth, Milton Keynes Council
The Milton Keynes Development Corporation did not just provide infrastructure, it also had a social development team.
Communities naturally take time to develop but when you create a new one you want it to develop faster. You cannot
force it but you can encourage it. Milton Keynes has a surprisingly high level of engagement.
Anthony Mayer
Ray Pahl defined a community as a place where people want to live with both a geographical and a people dimension. In
static communities most of the people residents know are local. In more dynamic communities, community is more about
place.
Jonathan Glancey
We have seen pictures of the new town around Bluewater. The traditional focus of a community was the church and the
pub, now we seem to be focusing on the shopping mall. We have a very limited number of focuses for community.
David Higgins
The model we saw will not be the way that it turns out. The centre of Milton Keynes has been totally redesigned.
Jonathan Glancey
Are these plans some new orthodoxy with towns designed around stations and shopping malls?
Jon Rouse
That is only a massing diagram. We are confusing overall frameworks with the fine detail of planning.
David Chisholm
We sometimes overestimate the importance that people attach to community. In the suburbs, exchanging Christmas
cards passes for community. We need to strike a balance between public and private spaces.
Wayne Hemingway has done great work with house forms that encourage children to play together.
If new build customers have such a preference for detached housing, why is it that when people buy old houses they
buy terraces?
Robin Davies
Our new range of housing now has much more variety, it has a human scale and is not dominated by cars and so on.
Customers have responded very well.
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Jonathan Glancey
Wayne, you have been working with traditional house building firms to build communities.
Wayne Hemingway
Our research shows that there are people who do not want community; some people are afraid of it. We cannot go
headlong into that.
When we sold the first phase of our development we got a mixture of investors and those who want community. These
people are therefore much the same and that is not a community.
Jonathan Glancey
I will stop it there and just say thank you to all the speakers.
The four growth areas great opportunities or here we go again?
Jonathan Glancey
The Thames Gateway always seems to me to be an inhospitable place for humans to live. How are you going to persuade
anyone to live on the Thames marshlands?
June Barnes, chief executive, East Thames Housing Group
I wondered what would make people move there and I came up with an advert. You have to imagine two couples: a nurse
and a teacher and a high-powered female executive and her husband. They are thinking about what they might do at the
weekend, they are thinking about cycling down the Thames banks and walking through the landscape, the woman is
walking out of the tube, her husband is making dinner, the woman is walking home across a square, she opens the door
to a fantastic block of flats, she arrives at her front door and through onto the balcony. The camera pans up from the
square to the Thames and then out over London. The slogan comes up on the screen. Thames Gateway City. Live in the
best of the new alongside the best of the old.
Jonathan Glancey
Is there anything these four areas can learn from Milton Keynes?
Richard MacCormac, MacCormac Jamieson Pritchard
In a way, Milton Keynes represents the end of the garden city movement and the idea of suburbia as a refuge. We have
built a lot there. I think that it is rather successful.
I think that the model of the corporation worked very well, but these sorts of settlement are incredibly profligate in terms
of land. This is for two reasons: a planning mindset and a motorway mindset. The planners see a settlement as a series
of estates with access roads. The consequence of that is a lack of continuity to the urban fabric meaning that rich and
poor settlements do not benefit from integration. There are great distances to schools, shops and culture. It is hard to
service these communities with transport and services. These are the consequences of low density. We need to think
about the advantages of high density which are augmented by people living in families.
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Why can we not be visionary about housing, why do we think about housing as a problem?
Jonathan Glancey
Neil Sinden, is there a point where we use up all the brown field sites and have to let the green belt go?
Neil Sinden, director of policy, Campaign for the Protection of Rural England
We accept that meeting our needs will require green field land but we need to ensure two things. First, that green field is
used only as a last resort. Second, to ensure that we use all our land optimally. We are not even close to this. There are
still 60,000ha of brown field in the country including 22,000ha in the south of England and 28,000ha of land considered
available for housing.
We are also failing to improve density and design. The average density is still about 20 dwellings/ha and even lower on
green field sites.
We need to conserve other resources like water and materials. High density can help here as well as reducing car
dependency.
Good strategic planning of land use can help determine what is needed and that the needs identified are met. Sadly the
governments planning reforms may make it harder rather than easier to make the right decisions. We are unsure that
sufficient scrutiny will be applied in the south east.
Jonathan Glancey
Are these four developments an economical nonsense?
Professor Christine Whitehead, department of economics, London School of Economics
No. We will get a lot of houses built but not as many as we want and not as soon as we want, and they will not look like
June Barnes vision of the world.
Why not? Because of money and because what people do and what planners think are different. The planning system
always looks for the easiest option that provides a reasonable level of satisfaction for everybody; we do not go for real
value.
This has real implications because we do not really do the cost benefit analysis. We just go for what will just about work.
These are perfectly sensible places to build houses but I am concerned that what we are planning and what people want
are different. Planners claim they know what densities are but a year later you will find the social part a bit fuller than
anticipated and the private bit is a bit emptier. So our density of economic activity is wrong.
Even if the regions are successful it will become very expensive and move up the value chain. This will mean that one
part of the system will be very tight and the other will be too free. We need to be a bit flexible.
Jonathan Glancey
How on earth do you plan for change?
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Richard MacCormac
I live in a house that should have been cleared away years ago with a very noisy pub next door. You could not plan that
today. Look at Manchester and Salford, look at Spitalfields; they all contain sets of co-existing communities. I wonder
what these new places will express about our lives. There is such a distinction between living in an urban centre and a
place like Milton Keynes. Perhaps Milton Keynes will be the same in 50 years.
Jonathan Glancey
June, is there room for change in your vision?
June Barnes
The classic example of the flexible building is the Georgian terrace. We are good at mimicking adaptable building types.
One of the things that worries me about prefabrication is that it may not be flexible.
Perhaps we should say that the Thames Gateway will be 40% residential, 40% commercial and work the rest out later. I f
we do not have flexibility we have a problem. The government is setting out a mission statement that should allow those
of us with imagination to seize on it but we will still have to fight the civil servants who just want numbers and who get
worried when we get brave.
Neil Sinden
CPRE primarily fights for the protection of the countryside but we recognise that you cannot divorce the country from
the town.
The government has made a huge effort to understand what makes good planning but I wonder whether any of the
barriers in the profession have gone away.
Jonathan Glancey
We talk about high quality housing but this is still a market and markets do not always deliver what we want. How can we
plan in a brutal market?
Professor Christine Whitehead
Planning has to interact with the market and I still think that the planners are too indifferent to what people want. Even if
Junes vision came true, who would you sell to? If you can get people to buy in and the price of the properties rise, then
fine. If they have to sublease to a housing association because they cannot sell the properties then we are in trouble.
Participant
A different definition of affordable housing is housing that people can afford to live in. If we could increase supply, prices
will fall naturally.
Neil Sinden
The studies that have been done do not back that up. Simply making more land available does not reduce house prices.
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In the sixties and seventies, social housing ran at 80% of the level provided by the private sector. Recently, social
housing has declined to 20% of private provision. Planning mechanisms have to make up the deficit to ensure that more
housing comes to market.
June Barnes
Even if you removed all restrictions you would not get the provision we are after because of the lack of infrastructure. I f
supply will not meet demand then we have to ensure an equitable distribution of what there is. The market will not resolve
this issue and it never has. A proportion of new housing must therefore be designated affordable.
We are not currently building 0.5% of our current housing stock per annum. Even if we were to double our building rate it
would not be enough to affect house prices. If expectations change, prices will fall but that will make it impossible to
build anything.
Over the last 20 years we have had less housing with each boom. We are not going to get enough from the planning
system. Why have we not got more than 20% in social housing? Because the money is not there.
Participant
Nobody has mentioned how the cost of debt affects affordability.
People are prepared to take on huge debts while they think that the cost of housing will keep rising. People are taking on
debt for longer and longer and we have no mechanism for changing that.
Jonathan Glancey
How can we build sustainable communities if the values keep rising? Surely people will just upgrade and move out?
June Barnes
It is possible to deliver a mix of social and private housing alongside one another. We just have not done it well in the
past. We are trying to find sites that have worked and identify the key ingredients.
I would prefer to talk about neighbourhoods rather than communities. The Dutch have a range of income levels living
side by side in very similar housing. There is choice there and people wait to get what they want. This is possible but it
takes a great deal of resolve.
Jonathan Glancey
Architects were excluded from this process in the seventies but they are fighting back now.
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Richard MacCormac
The role of architects in this country is curiously detached. We have done some buildings which were mixed tenure. I
think separating different tenures is hugely divisive. I have Booths poverty maps in my living room and the mosaic is
very fine. What we are seeing in the way housing is provided is as divisive as private and state education.
It is possible to get good quality housing at twice the density of the tower blocks. Towers were never necessary. You
can do it all with two or three stories, front doors and gardens.
Housing in England is something we put up with because we have never been offered an alternative. We must now be on
the cusp of a change in our housing habits.
Jonathan Glancey
We have heard that 50% of people are living in families. There seem to be two ways to go for these people; either
Richards streets or something more rambling like suburbia. Even the Millennium Village feels a million miles from a city.
We are finally producing something that people want to live in. It says something about planners that two of us live in
buildings that were condemned and these are now expensive areas in mixed communities.
I do not think that getting six city centres working well is the difficult bit. The inner suburbs and the new growth areas are
much more difficult.
Jonathan Glancey
Small towns in rural England used to have streets. People are afraid that we could end up concreting over the country,
but the countryside can be quite urban.
Neil Sinden
St Ives has nearly 100 dwellings/ha. That just goes to show that high density does not mean awful environments.
Part of the Thames Gateway is inside the green belt as well as being green field some of which is scrubby,
badly-managed land. I would quite like to see the end of the green belt in order to concentrate on what is worth saving
and use what is not appropriately.
Most of our perception of a neighbourhood is related to how we use retailing and that has changed dramatically. The
younger generations do not want to go shopping once a day, they want to go somewhere once a week by car. Until we
accept that or provide something better it will be difficult to get the neighbourhoods we want.
Jonathan Glancey
I disagree; the problem is lack of choice. Research has shown that people do not want to live in dismal dormitories and I
do not think that they want dismal malls either. I do not believe in traffic jams and a sanitised environment.
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Two Christmases ago I was in Marks & Spencer and it was practically empty. People were queuing for two hours to get
into Bluewater fully informed that they could get exactly the same things in the centre of town.
Alan Paterson, Stannifer Developments Ltd
Although I recognise the difficulties, I agree with June Barnes vision. We have to reflect on how we got where we are
today by twenty years of conservative prevarication by government and local authorities.
John Prescott is now very keen on town shopping, but the out of town centres are the products of government
intervention. We swing from one extreme to the other.
If we are to have a sensible policy that moves consistently we have to identify sensible land allocations and release
them.
Jonathan Glancey
I think we have to stop there because of time. Thank you to the panellists.
Keynote speech
Will Hutton
contributing editor, The Observer
I.
Introduction
I want to set out how profound the forces facing Britain are and how these generate the issues you have been
discussing, such as house price inequalities and the north-south divide. Just as a single example: in 1956, seven out of
10 British workers returned home for lunch and, of course, there would have been someone there cooking it. Today the
figure is less than one in 10. The conception of a community that we carry around in our heads was therefore flourishing
just 50 years ago. The pace of economic change has, over the last 50 years, gone well ahead of our traditional mental
templates about community.
II.
Globalisation
In the last 10 years our economy has ridden globalisation to generate extraordinary numbers of jobs. There are growth
industries like airports and financial services. The health service in London is now founded on foreigners. There is a
cluster of new media companies between Heathrow and Chiswick.
In the wake of globalisation have come the micro-service industries, because we now work long, irregular hours and
most households are dual income. With the deregulation of financial markets you can now borrow four times your joint
income and up to 110% of the value of your house. That is what drives this pressure cooker of a housing market. It is
very hard to provide policy responses to these rapid changes.
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III.
Networks and hotspots
London is also spurred by another development: the network as organisational paradigm. Many industries are now
networks; people are not working in a single career path but moving around more flexibly. These networks are generating
a new dimension to the way space matters.
What you have in London is a solidification of the networks in the hotspots side by side with coldspots. Where I live, in
Muswell Hill, house prices of 750,000 are the norm whereas, in Tottenham, you would be lucky to sell a council flat for
5,000. People in those areas are unable to get into the network. All the inequalities with which we are familiar have now
been augmented by another set.
This is not confined only to London; Birmingham, Leeds, Edinburgh and so on also have hotspots. All of these places
are showing massive inequalities. These are profound changes and none of their causes or consequences are likely to
disappear. That being the case, how much of what you have heard addresses these issues? What does a housing policy
mean in this environment? Can we even think of spatial communities in this world? We have seen John Prescott accept
that there is a problem and you would have to go back to the fifties to see this kind of governmental willingness to take
action, even to build new cities. The government has also recognised that land values are moving apart so fast that
there must be something of a land value tax in order to redistribute some of the value.
IV.
Four points
There remains an enormous difficulty about discussing housing and the community in this country. Surely we need a
celebration of urban life at a time like this. We are always tempted to think that a cottage in a village represents good
living and that urban living is a second best. To me though, the city is worth celebrating and the cradle of our
civilisation rather than being the occasion for hand-wringing.
Housing professionals must escape the silo. Planning and housing must celebrate urban living. They must reflect the
way that we live and address such questions as what the children do between school and their parents coming home
from work.
The issue of public and private has dogged this debate. I think that the privatisation of public space, civic problems
and the weakness of the structures that demonstrate civic purpose remain the Achilles heel of the Prescott plan.
Those in housing associations will know that they lack communications channels with other agencies in urban areas.
They will also know that there has been a flight of talent from housing. Who will take their agenda forward?
The vehicles for the expression of public purpose have been eroded and his process needs to stop this if we are to
make the Prescott plan work on the ground.
Those then are the challenges that I wanted to throw out. Have we been serious enough about the monies that are
required in order to fulfil the ambitions we need to have?
V.
Conclusions
People now get married at an average age of 29 because they cannot afford a place of their own. People are commuting
further because if you want to buy you have to live a huge distance from your place of work. That means hours that you
are not spending parenting. This is about shaping structures that allow us to live the way that we want to live. Parents
should not have to sell their houses to release equity to allow their children to buy. There is the rental market, but that
plunges up and down appallingly.
The good thing about today is that John Prescott has come along and acknowledged the need for a response. What I
wanted to ask was whether there has been a sufficient sense of mobilisation and to stress the profundity of the
problems we face and the reasons we face them.
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Finally, I want to ask whether we have been subtle enough in breaking out of our silos and creative enough about
thinking what structures might be that would carry forward public purpose rather than allowing so much to be carried
forward by the public sector?
Thank you for listening.
David Walker
It falls to me to thank you for coming. Congratulations on your stamina in lasting the course. I think we have engaged in
profound issues that have to do with core philosophies: the relationship between planning and markets and between
collectivism and liberalism within housing and planning.
Thank you.
This Brief Summary was produced by Ubiqus Reporting
( +44 (0) 20 7749 9100)
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Summary report

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

The view from government

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

Improvements in the last six years

500,000 local authority homes have been repaired.

We are on track for making all public housing decent by 2010.

Stock transfers have brought an extra 8 billion.

The 60% brown field target achieved.

30,000ha added to the green belt.

Doubling affordable housing investment;

tripling key worker housing expenditure;

610 million for the Thames Gateway;

500 million for low demand areas;

2 billion for deprived and New Deal areas and

extra funds to improve the environment.

Mechanisms for delivery

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

Four key areas

Construction and planning

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

Questions and answers

Barry Spivak, Maharishi Foundation

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

The state were in

What state are we in?

Characteristics of the north

Characteristics of the south

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

The housing gap

The push east

The south east

Future developments in planning

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

Questions and answers

David Nummey, Environment Agency

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

Preparing the ground getting ready for the challenge

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

John Calcutt, chief executive, Crest Nicholson plc

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

David Cowans, Places for People Group

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

Pam Alexander, Peabody Trust

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

Jon Rouse, chief executive, CABE

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

The four growth areas great opportunities or here we go again?

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

Professor Christine Whitehead

April 8 2003 Church House Conference Centre, London

Networks and hotspots