Print page
Open Meeting 2005: Synopsis
5 October 2005
British Library, London
English Partnerships’ sixth annual Open Meeting took place on Wednesday 5 October at The British Library in London, with the theme “Accelerating Delivery”.
Nearly 300 delegates listened to presentations from English Partnerships’ Chairman, Margaret Ford and Chief Executive, David Higgins, who focused on the agency’s achievements over the past year and its role in delivery and innovation. The Chairman spoke particularly about Telford and the work the agency is doing there to assist existing communities such as Woodside and create new communities such as Lawley. Margaret Ford took the opportunity to announce that English Partnerships had reached agreement with three housebuilders – Barratt Homes, George Wimpey UK and Persimmon Homes – to bring forward the £500m development at Lawley.
Minister for Housing and Planning, Yvette Cooper, majored on the revitalisation of our towns and cities and the need to increase the rate of house-building. She emphasised the importance of English Partnerships’ work on brownfield land and how the agency was responsible for creating new ways of bringing forward infrastructure. The Minister confirmed that ODPM and Treasury had given the go ahead for English Partnerships to work with the local authority in Bedford to fund an essential new road to the west of the town. This bypass will unlock new land for growth and help bring forward the development of more than 2,000 homes and at the same time help regenerate the town centre. This was a significant step, as the agency now has government endorsement for a new method of delivering much-needed infrastructure in a growth area.
Sir Graham Hall, Chair of the Northern Way Steering Group, provided an overview of plans for the north of England, focusing particularly on the eight city regions that will form the core of the regeneration plans for the region.
Finally, Alison Nimmo, Director of Transitional Delivery for the Interim Olympic Delivery Authority, gave an overview of the bid process and the massive regeneration and development task that now lay ahead to make London and the rest of England ready for the 2012 Olympics.
The event finished on a question and answer session with questions ranging from EngIish Partnerships’ potential role in providing support for families in regeneration areas; the controversy over Victorian terraces being ”pulled down” in the north and the impact of the Olympics on English Partnerships’ business planning.
Questions-and-Answers Session
Questions were put to the following speakers:
- Yvette Cooper, Minister for Housing and Planning, ODPM
- Sir Graham Hall, Chair, Northern Way Steering Group
- David Higgins, Chief Executive, English Partnerships
- Margaret Ford, Chair, English Partnerships
Please note that some of the questions and answers have been edited and only provide a summary of the issues raised on the day.
Q1. From: Brian Warwick, Bedford and Milton Keynes Woodway Trust
The Minister will be aware that about a third of our CO2 emissions come from building houses, and the government has also just done a consultation on no carbon building. Can the Minister assure that the Sustainable Communities programme will provide a sufficient volume of housing to ensure that prices don’t remain too high?
A1. From: Yvette Cooper, Minister for Housing and Planning, ODPM
CO2 emissions is an important issue. We’ve got to build homes for the next generation at the same time as sustaining the environment. New improvements to building regulations raise the standard in terms of energy efficiency and mean that we will end up with a 40% drop in energy emissions compared to four years ago. Plans we inherited for new housing growth across the wider South East were for 900,000 homes in 1997. We have increased that now to 1.1m new homes, but with those new standards in place we can actually build those 1.1m new homes with around 20% fewer emissions than the previous plans for 900,000 homes. It shows that you can improve standards and it can have a very significant impact even in a relatively short period of time in terms of carbon emissions.
We are looking to go further with the code for sustainable buildings which we’re developing at the moment and hope to launch by the end of the year. We also have a wider, more difficult challenge about improving energy efficiency in existing homes because newbuild is still only a small proportion of the homes that we have. We have set up a review working with DEFRA and the Treasury on what else needs to be done on existing homes. These are improvements that can make a very substantial difference and that’s still an area that we need to look at further.
Q2. From: John Milburn, MDA Consulting
Lots of successes are coming out of government regeneration programmes but could the government please consider getting its agencies to streamline their bidding processes so that less money finds its way to consultants like myself and more money finds its way into sustainable communities?
A2. From: Yvette Cooper, Minister for Housing and Planning, ODPM
This is something we are very conscious of and it’s exactly why we’ve been introducing the idea of local area agreements into local government which are about trying to streamline funding rather than give local government lots of different pots of money. We are merging them into much bigger pots of money to give local government much more flexibility. It’s something that we are keen to do in lots of different areas. Everybody says they want less ring fencing and simpler programmes but then they also want their own particular programme to continue to be ring fenced. We must face this challenge; it is an area we in which we have tried to make progress and again we need to go further.
Q3. From: Neil Webster, Leeds
Without stealing Alison Nimmo’s thunder later could I just ask what ODPM’s role is likely to be within the Olympics?
A3. From: Yvette Cooper, Minister for Housing and Planning, ODPM
Work is going to be led by the DCMS (Department for Culture Media and Sport) – they are the champions of the Olympics and will continue to be so. However, obviously a lot of different Government departments are going to be involved. DFES (Department for Education and Skills) is going to be involved in the whole of the education side of it. We have been very clear from the beginning – we think that this is part of what the success of the Olympic bid was about – not simply the holding of the Games in one year, but also about using it to regenerate an area of East London which has huge potential but has suffered from very serious deprivation over a long period of time. Our role in that is going to be about working through what the long-term proposals are for the area as part of the regeneration programme as well as some of the most immediate regeneration. There is a lot of infrastructure work that needs to be done, so we’ll be working very closely in partnership with DCMS, but from a government point of view it will be the DCMS that will continue to lead the overall programme and continue to champion the overall direction.
From: Margaret Ford, Chairman, English Partnerships (added in response)
From English Partnerships’ point of view, we are accustomed to working with colleagues in Regional Development Agencies, in Urban Regeneration Companies and with significant Local Authorities. We regard the Olympic Delivery Authority as another such partner. We fully expect to be engaged in supporting that project as appropriate, as the years move on.
Q4. From: Stuart Borgano, Stewart Milne Group
Yvette, I noticed you said you wanted high quality design which I totally believe is necessary for long-term sustainability. Will there be any assistance for the design communities in the various sectors-architectural design, manufacturing design, planning design - to be able to ease the bottleneck that currently exists in this arena? I think conceptual design is very good, but we need the detailed production and capability or it’s going to constrain ability to deliver the output.
A4. From: Yvette Cooper, Minister for Housing and Planning, ODPM
I think one of our opportunities is to try to address this through the Academy for Sustainable Communities that’s been established in Leeds. One of the conclusions from John Egan’s report about skills to support sustainable communities was the clear need to increase skills in every area, whether it be planning or development, different kinds of regeneration and so on. But also that perhaps one of the most important points was that people should learn skills from each other as well.
Q5). From: Jan Hellings, Jan Hellings & Associates
English Partnerships is tendering for consultants at the moment, but there are some contractual terms such as the £2m professional indemnity insurance which many smaller consultants – myself included – would not be able to meet. You may be excluding a lot of specialists you would like included without realising.
A5.)From: David Higgins, Chief Executive, English Partnerships
We’re going through a very extensive programme now of re-tendering our consultancy panels to obtain greater capacity. The last thing in the world we want to do is to discourage the diversity of advisors. We’ve completed, for example, the whole process of our legal tender panel and that allowed us to bring in a lot more regional law firms as opposed to just focussing on major ones. Certainly we will take that on board and look at that issue of professional indemnity. I know it’s a lot of work for consultants to go through this process.
Q6. From: Robert Torday, Ing Media
How does Sir Graham envisage redressing a legacy of more than 20 years of under-investment in urban planning skills at local authority level (in the north)? What are the strategies he plans to put in place to turn that situation around?
A6. From: Sir Graham Hall, Chairman, The Northern Way
Yes, Robert, it’s a very valid question and, if you look at our business plan, of the £30bn gap that I described, £10bn of it is relating to skills across the piece. We’ve already identified the point that you made about the local authority skills gap in this area. The Academy of Sustainable Communities based in Leeds will have a critical role in helping to identify the skills needs and developing the leadership and the capability to drive Learning and Skills Councils which have the majority of the central government spend on learning and skills. It’s on the agenda and is a critical issue in closing the £30bn gap.
Q7. From: Glyn Thomas, CDS Cooperatives
What role does English Partnerships see for Community Land Trusts in urban and rural development schemes?
A7. From: David Higgins, Chief Executive, English Partnerships
We are looking at a pilot on a particular project and we’re in discussions with that organisation. We intend to pilot one case and I know the Department are interested in seeing how that goes.
Q8. From: Glyn Thomas, CDS Cooperatives (Supplementary to question 7)
What is the attitude of English Partnerships to promoting Community Land Trusts which have been successfully covered in Scotland and in the United States?
A8. From: David Higgins, Chief Executive, English Partnerships
It’s not part of our programme today, but we have approached the Department and said, “Given that this seems a very innovative method of community ownership, we would like to pilot a scheme and see how that works.” If that works well, then we’ll come back and we’ll talk to the Department and the Housing Corporation.
From: Margaret Ford, Chairman, English Partnerships
Given that we’re aware of how successful it’s been in other places. Then I think in principle we are very enthusiastic, but we want to test it first obviously through the pilot.
Q9. From: Crispin Topping, NAI Fuller Peiser
There have been a number of rather alarmist articles in the media about the destruction of hundreds of thousands of Victorian terraced houses in northern cities. There is a big debate going on as to whether or not it would actually be more efficient, more effective and more sustainable to refurbish these houses rather than to knock them down. Are these articles untrue or very exaggerated?
A9. From: Sir Graham Hall – Chairman, The Northern Way
If you look at our business plan, we have a key milestone of widening the choice of homes, increasing replacement and innovative renewal. The manager responsible is James Cruddas in One NorthEast. When we have our steering group meeting in a couple of week’s time, we’ll be reporting back on that. So we are looking at it, we’re developing a policy on it, but we haven’t got the solution yet.
Q10. From: Martina Juvara, Urban Designer for Colin Buchanan & Partners Ltd
I am currently working on a project in Bristol and trying to work up a range of improvements for an area that has a poor reputation but doesn’t come out as particularly deprived. Do you have any plans to move into this trickier situation where there is not a lot of land to develop but where a few key projects could really make a difference?
A10. From: David Higgins, Chief Executive, English Partnerships
Our challenge as an organisation is to focus on our 50 major projects and then three major national programmes. That being said, I happen to know that David Miliband was in Bristol looking at those particular estates over recent weeks. There is a visit coming to Bristol in December from a cross-party group led by the ODPM that’s going down to look at Bristol and look at how in those areas they can find solutions. We will be a part of that trip. That’s not saying we’re definitely going to get involved, but I know that there’s a workshop going down who are trying to address the issues of investment and regeneration in that particular area of Bristol.
© English Partnerships 2003-2008