Pathfinders To Refurbish Rather Than Demolish Due To Cutbacks

The continuing downward spiral of pathfinder ambition continues. Around £29 million will be available for BridgingNewcastleGateshead in the coming year with much of it being spent in Newcastle.

Reporting the slow decline in pathfinder Building magazine says that pathfinders may have to stop their chaotic demolition program and return to refurbishing homes. A policy advocated by besieged communities across the north. Pathfinder as a strategy has never made much sense except to millionaire developers and the private sector bankers loaning them the money.

According to Inside Housing (link below) the cosy relationship between overpaid bankers, millionaire developers, and their friends in northern councils is now breaking down. The bankers want to keep the public money they have been given to provide "liquidity" and are not lending to anyone - including developers. Developers are stuck because their plan to create inner city brownfield sites by using public money from gullible politicians has been slowed by giving most of the available public finance to bankrupt bankers. Not so much as a gravy train but a gravy merry-go-round for private developers, private sector bankers and cash from the public purse.

To address this situation BridgingNewcastleGateshead is quoted as "developing affordable housing solutions, investing in refurbishment and liaising with developers and lenders". In other words there is little private sector development so the rationale of pathfinder to allow developers to make huge profits out of building homes for investment now means pathfinders have to retreat to their core pubic funding and actually refurbish hard working families' homes.

Of course the statement begs the question in an area like Tyneside, with average salaries around £19,000, why wasn't pathfinder developing affordable solutions long before now. The answer is simple - their brief was to privatise housing in favour of the richer members of the middle class and drive average families into "poorer" more affordable areas.

Hazel Blears, who failed to pay capital gains tax on her second home until "reminded" by the Daily Telegraph, is a good choice for Communities Secretary. Who else could be less embarrassed about demolishing people's first home while "flipping" her own homes to avoid tax.

Links
Building
Inside Housing

New Homes Are Too Badly Built For Housing Associations

With 4.5 million people on housing waiting lists the bizarre house demolition programme called pathfinder rumbles on. This demolishes homes that need some renovation to provide new brownfield sites for millionaire developers to build new properties on.

Few of these new houses will be for social tenants being far too expensive for those on average salaries. In Gateshead new housing is around 10 times more than the average Tyneside salary.

Housing for hard working families depends on social landlords. Unfortunately councils aren't building so the pressure is on Housing Associations.

So as developers build houses they can't sell the Housing Associations are being asked to buy newly finished houses for rent. Unfortunately that's where the brakes come on. Housing Associations are saying that new build are not of high enough quality. New properties lack space and are badly finished. Up to 100,000 new empty unsold homes are lying unwanted by Housing Associations.

Instead of pathfinder money being used for mass demolition to make room for new build that even Housing Associations wont buy, pathfinder money ought to only be used for renovation.

Links
BBC News

Street Captains Announced

Gateshead Council have announced that 90 "Street Captains" met at Saltwell Towers to discuss the revitalisation of Saltwell and Bensham.

The Saltwell and Bensham Residents Association, representing 1,000 residents, were not invited.

None of this was unexpected. Back in 2005 Shiela Johnstone, Head of Development, promised the association that we would be fully involved in the plans for the area. Since then the Council has tried to develop it's own consultation body so it does have to deal with an independent residents association. We have never been invited, as an association, to talk to the council since the autumn of 2005.

This is a tradition in Gateshead Council. Normally they set up consultation groups run by the council or neatly padded with local loyal Councillors to subtly push through the Council agenda and silence alternative views. In fact in the early meetings of our association people were astonished that Gateshead Council hadn't taken us over!

By ignoring us and setting up alternative (taxpayer funded) groups they can say to their political masters in London they are consulting local people. This was forced on the Council by the National Audit Office critical report on housing renewal calling for local involvement. However back to the sorry state of consultation in Saltwell and Bensham.

In 2005 the Council claimed it's survey results were "consultation". Most of the questions were heavily loaded to approved demolition yet only 25% of residents approved the Council plans without reservations. Scandously those people with reservations were added to the "approval" list to give a published 74% approval - this little statistical wheeze being spotted by opposition councillors.

So with no real support on the ground they decided to create some. In came Planning Aid North - a national organisation funded by the same Government department that was funding demolition. Planning Aid did some seminars about good design in order to find a "reference group" to discuss Gateshead Council plans. Unfortunately when our members turned up at meetings asking key questions about demolition the council retreated. Planning Aid North claimed they were impartial facilitators however the last seminar was clear designed to convert people to support Gateshead Council's demolition plans.

So that plan failed to get a compliant set of residents who would go along with demolition.

Now we have plan c. Selectively leaflet the area for "Street Captains". Avoid contacting members of the residents association and then announce happy smiling residents supportive of demolishing homes. I guess they hoped we wouldn't notice!

All Quiet On The Saltwell Front

An uneasy calm has followed a frantic few weeks. Public sector organisations notoriously up their activity in the weeks before the end of March in order to spend money before the end of the financial year.

Gateshead appear to be pretty much the same. However as they are increasingly finding deepening opposition to demolition they have turned to renovation projects over the area to spend the money. We welcome the renovation. We are also waiting for the politicians to start saying that the renovation projects were all their idea and part of the plan. This is going to have to happen as housing renewal funds get squeezed by huge government debt.

The political reality is that we are one year away from elections; the locals and the General Election. The Labour Party does not want to go into an election with their natural supporters facing the demolition of the their homes. Frankly they would be carrying out political suicide to carry out mass demolition in Labour voting northern constituencies. However political suicide seems to be flavour of the moment for the Labour Party. Meanwhile the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats would almost certainly cease all housing funding in an austerity binge.

Labour needs to be careful that it doesn't say to residents of the north "vote Tory to stop demolition" otherwise it may find people do exactly that.