Government announced a programme of housing market renewal in April 2002. Within less than a year of the announcement of the pathfinders, the market renewal initiative was identified as a strand of a wider approach. This set out some of the important requirements that provided the context for a range of policy initiatives including market renewal.
The explicit policy vision is that places suffering low-demand housing will be transformed into places of real distinction, where diverse communities choose to live, work, visit and invest. The practical process to achieve that is envisaged as being one that integrates housing, planning and regeneration strategies to produce a process of renewal that reverses the negative socio-economic trends that cause the decline of housing markets within a sub-region.
The objectives and approach have recently been reiterated and further clarified. Sustainable Communities: Homes for All (ODPM, 2005) locates market renewal as a component of reviving communities and housing markets and identifies an approach based on the two themes of prevention and action on known problems:
- More effective management of the replacement of housing stock - recognition of the impact of development planning policies on older housing areas and the need to take account of likely negative impacts
- Action to eradicate the problems caused by low-demand housing by 2020 with an intermediate target - to close the gap between those areas worst hit by low demand and the rest by one-third by 2010
In addition, the policy defines a vision of what the areas will be like in 2010 and, in doing so, partly defines the processes that will need to have been followed:
- That the replacement of housing has been managed properly
- That local people have been consulted about the future of their areas