The government says it is still early days and that it is closely monitoring the 39 neighbourhoods sharing the £2bn pot. Plus, the New Deal can point to a string of success stories – particularly in the North, where the schemes are acting as trailblazers for the market renewal pathfinders.
The fact is, though, four years after the first grants were handed out, some of the areas have little to show. One of the main culprits has been community politics, which has caused paralysis rather than kick-starting renewal.
However, what has really proved to be the New Deal's undoing is that there is simply not enough money to do up estates – because the tenants reject, say, the council's preferred route
of stock transfer, won't tolerate any cross-subsidy from building private houses or they can't offer a big enough dowry to get a registered social landlord to take on the stock. Tower Hamlets is having the same problem with negative-value transfers.
Community politics has caused paralysis rather than kick-starting renewal
But in terms of what to do next, there are more questions than answers – particularly now that government housing policy has switched from very local strategies to regional ones.
On a practical level, how will these transfers go ahead? Will the government pass the funding shortfall buck to the regional housing boards? Does the New Deal have clear enough objectives? And can these be delivered to a set timetable?
On the policy plane, we need to ask whether the objectives of the New Deal dovetail with those of the pathfinders, where the emphasis is very much top-down rather than bottom-up. The two initiatives overlap in nine cases. The government should also be asking whether the New Deal's inward focus is to the detriment of the wider region. And where the New Deal schemes aren't working, would it be better to reallocate the funds to, say, the regional housing pots?
Source
Housing Today
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