Article
Tory regeneration plans look to the past
At the heart of the Conservative's policy for regenerating our cities is a return to the 1980s, writes Brian Robson
There is no great mystery about what needs to be done to help revive our cities or to build on their patchy rehabilitation. Urban policies, from both parties, have produced three decades of regeneration experiments in Britain and endless evaluation studies of their impact, so the models that have some chance of success are now well known.
Unfortunately for politicians, success costs money and demands consistent priorities. The solution rests on the long-term targeting of resources, involving co-ordinated partnerships of departments and agencies, with strong ownership by local authorities and local residents and a mix of social and economic initiatives.
Ideally, given the critical importance of our towns and cities, these should not be the subject of adversarial party politics. Indeed, there now appears more agreement between the political parties on the need for a more social dimension to urban policy, but inevitably the means for achieving this remain a great barrier.
This is starkly apparent in the Conservative's most recent foray into the urban arena. Launched at the party's annual conference earlier this year, the policy document Believing in our Cities sets out many impeccable (but uncosted) ends, which are undercut by means that are dubious or lack sufficient detail to establish their credibility.
For example, the Conservative proposal for a minister for regeneration with a single cross-departmental budget could address the need for co-ordination, but how this would improve on existing efforts at joined-up government needs to be spelled out.
The document's emphasis on environmental improvement - with its attention to local nuisances, to graffiti and the like - is welcome, but another statutory obligation on local authorities is unlikely to help unless properly financed. The suggestion to allow councils to retain money from fines seems a rather feeble joke given the huge arrears in collecting fines experienced by most courts.
Other ideas - "progress centres" for children having difficulty with mainstream education, or the return of visible police properly trained to help local communities - are all refreshing proposals from a party whose leader once claimed that "there was no such thing as society".
But the overall framework looks like a return to the unsuccessful experiments of the 1980s: faith in the private sector, in bricks and mortar and in a strong hand from the centre. Even though there is concern about education, health and housing, the sharpest focus remains on physical regeneration and on control from the centre. Local authorities would, in essence, be by-passed and the principal drivers would be central government and the private sector.
One of the merits of the government's urban regeneration companies - currently being piloted in Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield - is that they have at their heart a strong role for local authorities. In contrast, the regeneration companies proposed by the Conservatives have more than an echo of the failed urban development companies of the 1980s.
They would be private-sector led, with little local accountability and with an almost inevitable focus on physical regeneration. Moreover, they would operate in the context of the abolition of regional development agencies, which - even though unproven - have the potential to move control away from Whitehall and could co-ordinate their resources on the big cities where most problems exist. The regeneration companies would also have a role in schooling and policing; yet in both areas the greatest need is for local accountability - not for autonomous chief constables and private-sector run schools.
The stress the Conservatives place on physical solutions - knocking down high-rise housing, re-introducing simplified planning zones, setting yet higher targets for brownfield development (although without any clear sense of the necessary fiscal incentives) will signify little unless priority is given to strengthening community-led civic responsibility.
The key to regeneration is the combination of enterprise with responsibility. The latter is a long haul. It means putting greater trust in the hands of local authorities, voluntary sector bodies and local communities. These Tory proposals, though espousing the right outcomes, seem still to lack the will or, more importantly, the heart needed to achieve them.
• Professor Brian Robson is director of the Centre for Urban Policy Studies at the University of Manchester.