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The Planner
Robin Tetlow – managing director, Tetlow King Planning
At long last there are real signs of joined-up government and proper long-term strategic planning. The proposals will assist regeneration and bring forward brownfield sites for redevelopment, not least the market renewal pathfinders.

The extra resources for planning, coupled with the potential for greater intervention to tackle non-performing authorities, are welcome.

Revisions to Circular 6/98 and practical advice on delivering affordable housing via the planning system are overdue.

There is little that is new in the regional statements and there still appears to be a plethora of organisations jockeying for position. It is far from clear which will be leading and coordinating the regional planning and housing agenda.

The documents concentrate excessively on the areas of extremes. Areas like the South-west which include pockets of very high housing pressure are in danger of being marginalised. Investment increases equivalent to the retail price index can only lead to reduced programmes when land and procurement costs are rising by more than 15% a year.
Verdict B-minus – some good signs but a lot of catching up to do.

The Developer
Ken Dytor - chief executive, Urban Catalyst
A significant attempt to deliver a holistic approach to comprehensive development. This £22bn package appears to be a move in the right direction with its £500m market renewal fund, "step change" in supply, with 155,000 new households a year promised, English Partnerships assembling brown field sites, four new growth areas, regional delivery strategies, CABE Space to champion public spaces and finance for CABE to raise design standards.

But how much of this package will find its way to organisations working to deliver on the ground? If this proves to be yet another example of moving figures around, the backlash will damage regeneration. I'm also concerned that these initiatives will not be private sector-friendly. If government truly wants to see delivery then it needs to ensure the private sector has a lead role and it must support companies that are making real efforts to deliver a sustainability agenda. Let's see pressure on organisations to embrace socially responsible investment policies or face being be marginalised from the process.
Verdict B-plus – for effort

The Renewal expert
Chris Brown – development manager, Igloo Urban Regeneration Fund
We, urban regeneration's private sector, get the policies we deserve. And they are rubbish.

We undervalue policy makers and ignore politicians, unless they shout at us about "new" initiatives. As a result we get an ever-changing ragbag of disconnected policies, complex beyond comprehension. The new map showing all these initiatives can't even contain them all and would be funny if it wasn't so sad. These policies are then wrapped in so much PR spin and recycled announcements that it becomes almost impossible to tell the real from the imaginary.

In "Not The Communities Plan", a late but wise name change, we get policies like more New (or should that be Old?) Labour, unrepresentative and unapproachable quangos with power but no delivery capacity, the regional housing boards. No doubt they will also abdicate responsibility by delegating to still more unrepresentative, unapproachable subregional partnerships, as has happened with regional development agencies, although I bet they set up their own to add to the confusion.

For the private sector, that will have to deliver the vast majority of these communities, it is a nightmare. No wonder hardly any of us turned up at the urban summit. No wonder Lord Rooker felt it necessary to publicly apologise at the end by re-emphasising how important we are. But the invitation of a select few to meet the deputy prime minister in the Cabinet Office just days before this document was released, and long after it was written, just adds insult to injury.

Some of us believe passionately in what the government is trying to achieve but despair at its inability to use our expertise to design effective delivery mechanisms. Sustainable Communities – ÐÇ¿Õ´«Ã½ for the Future just sticks in our throats.
Verdict F – for fail

The Academic
Anne Power – professor of social policy, London School of Economics
The big problem with the Communities Plan is that it is trying to respond to the boom in the South-east. This is likely to reinforce existing patterns: over-congestion; over-concentrated resources; uncomfortable social pressures; outward flow of people; polarisation between very rich and very poor.

We are in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. The government is stuck with the problem of abandonment across the Midlands and North. At the core is too much new building for too few people. Nothing is starker than the massive over-production of new homes in two-thirds of the country.

By subsidising high demand, the government is likely to generate even more intense competition for space, pushing up prices and favouring developers. The Channel Tunnel Rail Link will add huge value, but the developers will argue for "growth subsidies" in order to produce "affordable housing". The benefit will land in the lap of the sellers not the community.

By subsidising demolition and "large-scale clearance", we are reverting to a much earlier policy era, creating slow blight, fuelling even lower demand and driving the race for low-density building outside cities to cope with the demand from the displaced households in "large-scale" demolition areas.

The Communities Plan's many excellent ideas are in danger of disappearing under the drive for growth in growth areas and further decline in declining areas. In truth the ODPM is hampered by lack of investment in transport that would link Birmingham to London in an hour by train, thus cutting out the need to double the size of Milton Keynes. Manchester would be two hours from London or Glasgow, thus becoming a counter-magnet to the South. Hopefully the public transport needs will become so obvious that public thinking will favour the links that would balance the South-east with the rest of the country.
Verdict B: terrific messages buried in worrying signals

The Lender
Andrew Heywood – senior policy adviser, Council of Mortgage Lenders
A number of key positive initiatives are welcome: the commitment to increasing home ownership while ensuring that such expansion is sustainable; the plan to tackle the problems of a fundamental under-supply of new housing in southern England, while recognising the importance of good design and an attractive environment; £5bn to be spent promoting affordable housing with extension of key worker schemes; further planning reform to deal with endemic bottlenecks; and the allocation of £500m to deal with low demand via the pathfinder projects.

Debt provision for partial stock transfers and "gap funding" for negative value stock transfers are welcome, but the large increases in ALMO funding will mean a clear alternative to stock transfer. For lenders this clearly has consequences for funding unless there is a private finance element. The overall private finance requirement, if the decent homes standard is to be met, still needs to be clarified, however, though the statement makes it clear that there is a continuing and significant role for large-scale voluntary transfer. The £685m on PFI credits is also a plus though whether the PFI pathfinders can deliver remains to be seen. Lenders will wonder too at the increased role and resources for regional development agencies, English Partnerships and the new regional housing boards: will the Housing Corporation keep control of its development programme in the medium to long term?

Those involved in private renting will not be surprised by the commitments to license houses in multiple occupation and certain other parts of the rented sector. If these are to produce worthwhile results it will be a matter of successfully reconciling conflicting needs. Raising standards in the sector is likely to lead to some drop-off in supply as smaller landlords give up on increased red tape and costs and drop out.
Verdict B-plus: a good start