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POLLY BILLINGTON: A stone's throw from a thriving
city centre, East Manchester is emptying fast. Those citizens who haven't
fled the social and economic deprivation live in some of the most run-down
housing in the country. The relics of Manchester's industrial past cast
long shadows across the lives of those left behind. And the consequences
of decades of government neglect are everywhere.
East Manchester is home
to some of the oldest industrial buildings in the world and this isn't
the first time there have been attempts to rejuvenate areas like this one.
But the government thinks it has learned the lessons of the failed attempts
of the past. The task of the Urban White paper will be to stop people
building on the countryside and to bring hope to some of the most deprived
communities in the country.
Over decades, cities like
Manchester have developed outwards, gobbling up the green fields that used
to separate it from Bolton, Bury and Oldham. The countryside beyond is
now under threat and the government's advisers want to discourage development
there, and promote it within the city itself.
LORD ROGERS: In East Manchester four out
of five houses are either boarded up or being pulled down. So you have
one house with sort of four, four houses empty around it. Everybody, all
the entrepreneurs, all the people who can get out have got out. They've
gone down from about eighty thousand people to about eighteen thousand
people since the, since the war. Its a ghost town.
BILLINGTON: The plans for turning the area
round are under close scrutiny from residents who have suffered the effects
of years of neglect and failed intervention. Attracting people back to
places with such complex problems will be a mammoth task. Persuading existing
residents that they will also benefit can be hard too.
ACTUALITY.
UNNAMED WOMAN: People have moved out, boards
have gone up, all the shutters. People have been left really in isolation,
because this has happened in every street in our area, and so you know,
through this we've had more crime,
UNNAMED WOMAN: On the plans we've seen today there's
development along the canal for the new yuppie housing. General residents
won't be able to afford this new housing. We want something that we can
afford, that is for our benefit.
BILLINGTON: Big prestige projects like
the Commonwealth Games stadium being built here for 2002, might change
the skyline, but can't solve the complex problems on their own. The government's
many schemes are now working together - a health action zone, an education
action zone and new deal for communities, under a pilot Urban Regeneration
Company. Conservatives want a stronger foundation for regeneration - companies
with more power.
ARCHIE NORMAN MP: We would like to see real regeneration
companies with quite substantial powers involving local authorities and
local people and police and education, and people in education in each
of the major inner city depravation areas of Britain covering quite wide
areas, with substantial powers to make things happen and the vast bulk
of our regeneration money and effort would go through these regeneration
companies, instead of bypassing them and being dissipated.
ACTUALITY.
BILLINGTON: Richard Leese is leader of
Manchester City Council and has overseen several successful projects like
this techno- park in South Manchester. He's worked with the Regional Development
Agency to attract inward investment, and the government's recently given
them more money to encourage jobs. But do RDA's work?
RICHARD LEESE: What we need is for the
regional development agency to be very clear about what its priorities
are. Where its intervention can be successful, and to make sure it does
concentrate in those particular areas. There is always going to be a demand
on it, to spread its very limited resources very, very thinly. We need
to make sure that that does not happen.
NORMAN: We're going to abolish
the RDA's and all the regional bureaucracy that goes with it, and that
will save us 70 million pounds alone, so we put that back into regeneration,
and finally, we are going to address the causes of regeneration, the foundations
of the problem, including the fact that we're fuelling the exodus from
our cities by building all over the countryside.
BILLINGTON: Local authorities believe they
can play a bigger role in regenerating the areas they're responsible for
- if they have more powers. And that could mean changes in the law.
LEESE: Local authorities, government,
other public sector bodies do not have sufficient powers to bring about
the speed of regeneration that is needed in our most deprived communities.
And in order for us to have those powers, we will need to have additional
legislation. I hope very much that the urban white paper will indicate
those areas, where government does intend to legislate to give us the powers
we need.
BILLINGTON: These houses will be razed
to the ground and replaced with higher density homes. The hope is that
Richard Rogers' vision for better city living will be more successful than
previous attempts. He wants to reduce urban sprawl and for communities
to live and work closer together. The government has already changed the
rules in favor of building in town. New planning guidance requires that
brown field sites are considered first, and that green field sites shouldn't
be built on until there's no more room in the cities. Lord Rogers' report
recommended there should be some financial measures to make the inner cities
more attractive. The Government is considering at least one of them - whether
suspending stamp duty will attract people to buy the kind of homes that
will be built here.
ANDREW BENNETT: Stamp duty's important in some
parts, particularly the South East where an awful lot of properties do
now pay stamp duty. Perhaps the solution is to put it up on green field
developments, and down on brown field ones. But, you're into very complicated
definitions of what is a green field site, and what is a brown field site.
BILLINGTON: Halsworth Mill in Andrew Bennett's
constituency in greater Manchester will soon house flats and work units
because government money was spent to regenerate it. But the European Commission
has ruled that giving money to make up the difference between the costs
of building on brown field and green field is anti-competitive. Without
so-called "gap funding" similar schemes in the future might not be viable.
BENNETT: It's a huge brown field
site which can be brought back into use. It's very important that these
sort of developments are encouraged and people don't go off and build out
in the countryside. It's very difficult to recreate the sort of community,
the sort of services that you've got in an area like this.
We've got to have in that
White Paper a replacement for gap funding. We've either got to have sufficient
money put up front so that regional development agencies can do it themselves
or we've got to come up with an alternative to that gap funding. Absolutely
crucial. Almost the way in which you judge the Urban White Paper: is that
financial mechanism in place?
BILLINGTON: Renovating old buildings incurs
VAT of seventeen and a half per cent. New buildings incur nothing. VAT
could be equalized.
BENNETT: It's crazy to have the
high level of VAT on renovation, and no charge on new build. If you want
to encourage renovation - we certainly do in our city areas, lots of mills,
things like that, that can be converted into good housing - then you want
to have an incentive to do that, so why make it dearer to do that, and
cheaper to do it on new build.
BILLINGTON: That may not happen because
the government's reluctant to be seen to raise taxes. Public money is
being poured into the infrastructure to enhance the old industrial district
before the mills are refurbished. There are similar costs to building on
green field sites. When new estates are built out of town, roads are built,
sewers dug, and the taxpayer picks up the bill.
PROFESSOR ANNE POWER: The government needs to be able to
charge the true public costs of building on green field sites. That is
the most important power that it needs and the idea of impact fees is an
attempt to wrap that whole idea up into a single charge. Each drive that
we take, each bit of tarmac that we lay, each brick that we lay, actually
costs us - not just environmentally but socially and economically too and
somebody has to pay that cost. At the moment it is buried in the treasury.
That cost has to be put on the people who are benefiting from moving out
into green field sites - that's the developers and the house buyers.
BENNETT: I think it's a very good
theoretical idea, but I think in practice it's extremely difficult to
measure what the impact is. If you look at perhaps a small patch where
you perhaps put twenty houses onto a green field site they may be able
to be accommodated within the existing services. Put on twice that number
and they can't. So who pays? Is it the first houses or is all the houses?
It's a very difficult mechanism.
BILLINGTON: But buildings alone are not
enough. The social fabric also needs to be improved. In this part of
East Manchester educational achievement is so low, there's an education
action zone to turn round local schools. At the moment the number of school
leavers achieving five GCSE's is half the national average. If our towns
and cities are to be attractive places to live people will need jobs and
good schools for their children.
Five years ago, the Church
of the Resurrection primary school in Beswick had some of the worst results
in the country. Now, it's a beacon school, spreading best practice to
other schools in the neighbourhood. The head teacher Ms Hogarth is enthusiastic
about the school and the role it plays in the local community.
HEAD TEACHER: When I started here we had
ninety pupils on roll. We now have two hundred and fifty. It's, I think
it's a very, very important aspect of regeneration in an area that schools
are successful, that you can attract people through successful schools,
and that's what we're hoping to do within the area.
ACTUALITY
BILLINGTON: Manchester City footballer
Jason Beckford teaches children how to keep fit and stay out of trouble.
In the political game the Tories have identified improving inner city schools
as a first step to bringing people back to an area. Their services-first
policy means tackling crime and raising school standards would precede
any other regeneration initiative.
NORMAN: The regeneration companies
that we will create will have the powers to use some of their funds, to
fund an increase in policing over and above the norm that would otherwise
be available, or alternatively they would have funds to start a new school,
or to help a failing school by bringing in new management and saying we're
going pump prime investment in this school and get the private sector to
invest behind it.
BILLINGTON: There are still obstacles to
the government going as far as some would like. The Treasury, for example,
is said to be reluctant about introducing financial measures that could
result in lower revenues. And there's a political dimension. The reality
is, many people, especially among those aspirational voters that are so
crucial to the government's fortunes, want to like in places like Great
Sankey, on the outskirts of Warrington. It could be the people who put
the brakes on the government's enthusiasm are the voters.
House builders warn without
financial incentives it will be hard to reach the government's target of
sixty per cent of homes being built on brown field land.
PIERRE WILLIAMS: People aspire to a semi
or a detached home in a place where they feel comfortable and secure.
It's what people want. It's a question of whether or not these brown field
sites are viable or not. The house builders are happy to build there but
if the costs are too great, which they often are, then they can't work
for a loss. What we need is funding to fill in that gap between loss and
profit, so those sites can be used.
ANDREW BENNET MP: In the North of England we need
to have really absolute ban on green field development, and in the South
East we need to have a huge amount of pressure put on so that it's very
attractive to go onto the brown field sites and unattractive to go onto
the green field sites.
BARRINGTON: Warrington South's MP Helen
Southworth has temporarily stopped more housing being built here by the
oldest canal in the country, with the help of new government guidelines.
HELEN SOUTHWORTH MP: That's a piece of land, people want
to build houses right the way down to the edge but what local people want
to see is that kept as leisure land and that's what we're working to achieve.
BILLINGTON: The decision on the future
of the land has now gone to a public inquiry.
SOUTHWORTH: It's really important that
there are rules that prevent fields like this from being built on because
the countryside is really crucial to us all and once it's built on, it's
gone for ever, you can't put it back. This is a really significant part
of the leisure, and growing up development, the family place for people
in Warrington. That's part of the reason people come to places like Warrington,
they want to live in this sort of an environment and I want to see it protected.
BILLINGTON: The government's at a crossroads
in its urban planning policy. They must decide what measures they want
to take to fulfil Lord Rogers' vision, while bearing in mind what they
want to do might not be popular with those aspirational voters who want
a house in the country and somewhere to walk the dog - like the locals
on the edge of Warrington.
ANNE POWER: They are trying to broker people's
desire to choose freely where they live, to drive wherever they want and
people being frustrated by seeing buildings going up everywhere and being
stuck in traffic jams and they won't be brave enough to say we all hate
traffic jams and we all hate buildings going up all over the countryside
so let's all move back into cities so they will kind of go a little way
towards encouraging people to move back into cities but not all the way
because they are too scared of the electorate.
LORD ROGERS: Every department in government
has got to act. Education and schools, health and hospitals, employment
and jobs. They all play an important part. Now there's been a tendency
in this country not to accept this. Until we accept this, we will not
have holistic, sustainable cities. We won't have cities that we want to
live in. We can go on pouring money in to any one of those things but
it will never work fully because if you can't actually get to the school,
if you can't get to the hospital if the city is badly managed, if it's
dirty, if the pavements are badly repaired, at all levels, then the city
will not work. Therefore we need leadership which actually has a vision
that where we live, that ninety per cent of us live, has really got to
function better than ever before.
BILLINGTON: There may be some disappointment
if the White Paper is big on vision but small on detail, certainly in east
Manchester where so much has been pinned on finally getting the formula
right. If after eighteen months of reflecting on the contents of Lord Rogers'
report the political will isn't there to make the vision reality, the hopes
of another generation in the inner cities could be dashed once more.
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