星空传媒

Four local authorities sit around a table, discussing a joint housing strategy. One is Sheffield City Council, the largest, the best-resourced, the most experienced at power politics. Its three partners 鈥� Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster 鈥� have far fewer staff and resources to spare, and less experience in large-scale regeneration. When decisions are made and budgets allocated, these three risk becoming satellites in Sheffield's orbit.

To the north, two councils are performing a different ritual. One partner, Hull council, is a national byword for housing problems and is suffering a sharp decline in its population. Meanwhile, prosperous East Riding of Yorkshire schools hundreds of Hull's children, and absorbs 1500 a year of its population. Hull is to receive 拢50m over 15 years to address its housing problems. East Riding will receive no intervention spend.

These are the tensions underlying two of the North's housing market renewal pathfinders, launched on the principle of a "sub-regional" approach to the decline of housing markets and the dispersal of communities that live in them. The holistic approach covers economic development, education and quality of life issues as well as housing, and forces local authorities to set aside self-interest, swallowing whatever medicine is best for the entire area.

But it hasn't always gone down smoothly. Tony Stacey, chief executive of South Yorkshire Housing Association, is RSL representative on the South Yorkshire pathfinder, known as Transform. Describing early board meetings, he says: "People took the opportunity of making political points and raising pet issues. The relative role of each local authority had to be thrashed out."

Transform's chair, Mike Gahagan, was at the head of the "stormy" meetings described by Stacey. As well as the perception that Sheffield held more than its fair share of the cards, and that its off-the-shelf projects were consequently more likely to get funding, it is understood that Barnsley and Doncaster were less well prepared as to which council officers would take lead responsibility for steering the pathfinder.

But Gahagan stresses that the councils have "put their shoulders to the wheel. There may still be negotiations when we get down to priorities and money, but they will be rational negotiations," he says. Sheffield has provided most of the logistical resources to date, but the location of the eight-strong team at Carbrook 鈥� in the middle of the Barnsley-Rotherham-Sheffield triangle 鈥� stresses Transform's non-aligned status.

Transforming weaknesses
Gahagan, the man originally behind the pathfinders in his former incarnation at the ODPM, now oversees what is geographically the largest of the nine pathfinders. Transform covers 140,000 low-demand homes in the conurbation of north-east Sheffield and western Rotherham, and the mining and market towns of the Dearne Valley. "If you look at average house values for South Yorkshire, there's a clear dip in this area. We're trying to address that fundamental weakness," says David Kennedy, executive director for development at Barnsley council.

In both urban and rural sectors, abandonment tends to be localised rather than widespread, and a surplus of social housing creates a mismatch between the homes available and those to which people aspire. Councillor Chris Mills, Doncaster's cabinet member for homes and housing, describes an area where many people actively want to stay. "But people are wanting to change tenure, and we have to make sure that opportunity is available to them at all levels of affordability," she says.

Transform has until Christmas to prepare its prospectus for the ODPM, including 10 area development frameworks that will propose tailored improvement tactics, such as urban regeneration companies. Gahagan is optimistic that the deadline will be met, but acknowledges that there is a question mark: "It's the sheer labour involved. 'Have you consulted the community? Where's the complementary funding coming from?' The ODPM requires you to be pretty explicit."

In the mean time, Transform is pushing ahead with its "early wins" projects, funded from the 拢53m advanced to the pathfinders so far. "It's to impress on people that we exist; otherwise it just appears to be a talking shop," says Gahagan.

As well as consultancy and research projects, capital works include the demolition of empty properties in Barnsley's Thurnscoe East and low-demand council flats for older people in the Doncaster mining town of Mexborough.

It's not just the four councils that are working together. Registered social landlords with stock in the sub-region have faced a similar challenge. In November, they formed the South Yorkshire RSL Forum to raise the profile of RSLs and influence strategy.

The pathfinder is making housing associations focus more tightly on collective responsibility 

Bob Wilson, Hull and East Riding RSL Forum

Claudia Walsh, southern area manager of Yorkshire Metropolitan Housing Association, describes "a very grown-up way of working". "Normally, we'd work on individual schemes and not really think about the impact they're having. But competing would take up too many resources. "

Last week, the forum appointed an RSL to act as lead association in each of the 10 development framework areas, channelling communications and questions between Transform and all RSLs with involved stock. "It shows that associations are capable of working together," says Stacey. In the coming months, the matching private developers' forum is likely to appoint a lead private sector partner to each of the 10 areas.

Stopping the rot
Transform's housing market has to watch its footing, but Hull is closer to the brink. About 56,000 homes at risk of low demand account for 51% of the city's housing stock. Of those at risk, 70% are social housing, but west Hull in particular has a high number of owner-occupied and privately rented properties in low demand. Figures from the Office of National Statistics show that the population declined by 11,000 between 1997 to 2000 and that, in the latter year, an average terraced house was worth 12% less than it was five years earlier.

About one in three of these migrants have moved to East Riding, where the future of housing and services is now firmly yoked to Hull's. It's a situation with obvious potential for internal tensions and Andy Snowden, corporate director for regeneration and renewal at Hull council, acknowledges that there were initial teething troubles in the joined-up working between the two councils. "The structures weren't in place. Because councils operate separately, it took a while to get the synergies going."

But a new joint structure plan, currently under public scrutiny, has helped a lot. Jim Johnson, head of housing and public protection at East Riding council, says: "If within East Riding we have lots of greenfield sites released, that has an impact on Hull. Within the joint structure plan, we're trying to focus the bulk of new housing within Hull. It's parallel to the pathfinder process, but crucial to its success," says Johnson.

Hull and East Riding represents the tail-end Charlie among the nine pathfinders, receiving ODPM approval to proceed only last month, six months behind its peers. It missed out on early wins money because of a lack of suitably prepared projects. Stuart Whyte, pathfinder chair and business strategy director at B&N Housing Association, points to a "capacity issue": "The pathfinders have had the biggest impact on resources in authorities where the sheer volume of work makes it harder. With the benefit of hindsight, that's one of the problems." To ease the situation, Whyte is recruiting an interim manager to lead a team of four and advertising for a full-time chief executive.

The pathfinder is working to a deadline of September 2004 to prepare its four area development frameworks, for the city's centre, west, north and east sectors. These will identify priority areas for intervention and take existing regeneration initiatives into account. Despite the problems so far, Andy Snowden optimistically argues that the delay "gives us the opportunity to learn things from others' experiments and should now allow us to accelerate the programme."

In Hull and East Riding, the pathfinder has reinvigorated the pre-existing RSL forum. Bob Wilson, regional director of Sanctuary and vice-chair of the forum, says it will discuss which RSLs will play a development role, plus ongoing management issues.

"We talk about joint management on multi-landlord estates, but now we have to think about joint management in pathfinder areas. We need to identify issues that bring an area into decline, whether it's litter or antisocial behaviour. The pathfinder is making RSLs focus more tightly on collective responsibility."

When the pathfinders' area development frameworks are unveiled, no one is expecting a rewrite of the urban regeneration rulebook: instead, variations on the theme of public-private urban regeneration companies are more likely. "We'll be testing out newish ideas, such as Salford's Home Swap, but a lot of it is bread and butter," says Transform's Gahagan. "These are not new communities or new problems, so you would expect some ideas to stand the test of time," agrees Barnsley council's David Kennedy.