Why Heseltine is wrong man to lead on regeneration
Why, given the failure of all Michael Heseltine’s prior efforts at regeneration, are we bringing him back to advise the Conservative Party on a ‘green paper’?
‘Failure’, I hear you exclaim, ‘but surely Hezza’s a regeneration superstar?’ Followed I guess by talking about intervening every verse end, clearing vast swathes of industrial land in northern cities and cutting through the ‘red tape’ by handing planning powers to development corporations. Plus Docklands of course.
Well I don’t know where to start with the reasons why Michael Heseltine is the wrong man to lead on regeneration, but here are a few good reasons:
Regeneration isn’t about buildings, land, property development or big business. It’s about people and the barriers to people succeeding in life – remove those barriers and there’s a chance of regeneration. Keep them there and all the land deals in the world won’t make things any better.
Regeneration isn’t about being ‘business-led’. Especially when the businessmen doing the leading are those with the vested interests in using the public money poured into regeneration to generate profits.
Regeneration isn’t about big, grand, landmark schemes. You can spit from the wonders of the Victoria Dock development in Newham onto the depressing sadness that is Silvertown and North Woolwich. Those grand schemes haven’t transformed those communities – worse than that, they have made them more isolated
Regeneration isn’t about knocking down the stuff you don’t like and handing over the cleared remnants to developers. Sometimes that’s right but mostly it destroys neighbourhoods and merely relocates the community’s problems
Above all regeneration is about people. Not people with nice cars, good suits and expensive haircuts. Not men who think the way to regenerate is to push out all the poor people. Regeneration is about transforming the lives of people who live in poor places – places where the schools are crap, where the only available careers appear to be drug dealer, prostitute or benefits cheat and where having a job is the exception not the rule. All the planning rules, red lines, area-based initiatives, urban development corporations, property forums and assorted paraphernalia of regeneration amount to nothing if we ignore the basics – education, skills, housing and, first and foremost, the aspiration and confidence of people in poor communities.
I don’t doubt Michael Heseltine’s business acumen. I’m sure there are good tactical reasons for the party involving him in developing policy. But regeneration needs new thinking. Thinking that focuses on the people who live in the places being regenerated. People whose aspirations are low, who see little prospect of opportunity and who get the raw deal when it comes to many services.
Rounding up a few businessmen to sit on some grand board so as to hand out some cash didn’t solve the problem in the 1970s. Or the 1980s. Or the 1990s. Or from 2000 to today. Perhaps we’ll learn now and put money and effort into regenerating the people rather than in trying to hide them under shiny new buildings.
Posted on Monday, 18th January 2010 | This entry has 6 comments
Graham Starmer | Wednesday, 20th January 2010 | 09:57 AM
Regeneration is indeed about people, but most of all it’s about power and respect. It’s about letting go and giving real power to people. It’s about recognising that deprived areas are full of experts who don’t need flash architects from a hundred miles away to re-hash the mess the last lot made.
New Deal for Communities had the potential (sometimes realised) to be just that. Whatever colour government we have next I suggest NDC 2 might be worth a shot - there are enough peoople who can still remember the good bits. Inevitably there will be fewer who remember Michael Heseltine’s ways, but if the Tories get in lets hope they are smart enough to spend more time in social clubs than boardrooms.
Sean Gibbons | Thursday, 21st January 2010 | 05:18 PM
I completely agree with the article and also with Graham’s comments above. We’ve done some great regeneration work at a grassroots level with the help of a bit of Doncaster NDC funding and our journey has only just begun!
I really wish I had the time to educate some of the politicians on what is ‘really going on’ in our many deprived communities and what their needs and priorities are.
Sean
MD of Food AWARE
http://www.foodawarecic.org.uk
Mohammed Yousef Qureshi | Tuesday, 26th January 2010 | 11:04 PM
I find the comments quite soul searching.
I hope & pray that irrespective of who is at the helm of affairs they do keep in mind while firming up their recommendations the needs and aspiration of the poor.
Nigel Smith | Thursday, 28th January 2010 | 08:18 PM
I think Simon is being a little unfair. You are judging him by the regeneration agenda of today. In 1980 regeneration was all about hard edged property initiatives - bringing derelict industrial land back into use and creating jobs (EZs, UDCs, UDGs, DLG etc.) In the nineties it went holistic - social, environmental and economic (City Challenge and SRB). It is now about people, equality and social inclusion - and transforming people,s life chances.
Hezza may not be the right person for softer, people-focussed initiatives. But he has got one big thing going for him - he got things done - and on a massive scale. He was a man of action rather than words - not for him the endless papers, consultations and micro-managed micro-initiatives we increasingly see today.
Edward Harkins | Friday, 29th January 2010 | 12:10 PM
I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, part of the experience of those of us who have been around that long, was learning the lesson that the original ‘heroic’ approach to regeneration taken by the likes of Michael Heseltine in the Thatcher Government did not work. Part of his ‘shock and awe’ was to bring Barret first-time home buyers developments into the deprived areas of Liverpool (and many of us, however reluctantly, should still be prepared to admit it did seem rather awesome - if you remember the early 80s era we were in).
Sadly, at the other end, we had the outcome of owner-occupiers doing the proverbial and throwing the keys of their abandoned and unsaleable homes across the desks of their building societies (only to find of course that they were inescapably burdened with the outstanding mortgage debt arising from the negative equity syndrome). Meantime, the likes of Liverpool’s decline continued apace.
On the other hand, there is an apparent dearth of expertise, or even experience, in urban regeneration matters amongst those who will form part of any incoming Conservative Government. Just maybe, Michael Heseltine, has, like many of us, learned the lessons of those years; after all if we are claiming to have learned the lessons, we ought to be willing to extend that possibility to Michael Heseltine.
If those lessons have been learned, and they are combined with some of the stuff that Iain Duncan Smith has been producing from the front line of deprivation, could there be some significant policy outcomes from any incoming Conservative Government?
Nick Bailey | Thursday, 4th February 2010 | 10:45 PM
At least Heseltine showed some ability to learn from experience while involved in regeneration. He moved deftly from the heavy-handed UDCs to some of the early partnership approaches such as City Challenge. During New Labour we seem to have lost the ability to identify best practice, to apply it consistently and - more important - to stick to it long enough to have a reasonable chance of working. I fear that, given the worsening economic circumstances, we’re due for another round of ‘enterprise’.