Between 2003 and 2011, Housing Market Renewal (HMR) operated as a dedicated national programme, tackling the problem of declining demand for housing in parts of the Midlands and the North of England. The programme aimed to deliver change on a large scale, working across areas with weak housing markets, irrespective of local authority boundaries.
The Commission's role and outputs
The Audit Commission provided critical challenge to partners and independent analysis of programme delivery to enhance the application of Housing Market Renewal locally, and to help inform policy debate and decisions on area-based physical regeneration nationally. The focus of our input included:
- supporting local partnerships in disaggregating complex policy;
- helping focus broad programme aims into local targets and success measures;
- developing appropriate cross-boundary, multi-agency governance arrangements;
- promoting strategic and operational alignment of aims and activities;
- reviewing detailed plans and policies to maximise customer and outcome focus;
- challenging partnerships to deliver effectively and demonstrate value for money;
- analysing business plans and assessing operational performance; and
- commenting on progress, raising issues and making formal recommendations.
A dedicated Housing Markets Team consisting of a national lead, regional specialists and a programme analyst carried out the work with pathfinders. Outputs from our work are of use to not only pathfinders and other low-demand areas but also to organisations undertaking more general regeneration. Outputs include:
- strategic reviews and scrutiny assessments of pathfinders plans, proposals and funding submissions between 2003/04 and 2010/11;
- performance monitoring of pathfinders progress and achievements between 2005/06 and 2009/10;
- a good practice compendium, maintained between 2008 and 2011, with detailed case studies to enable others to learn from the HMR approach;
- major periodic reports which consider wider issues impacting on the programme, including links with other national programmes and priorities; and
- thematic reviews explore pathfinders’ response to significant issues impacting on HMR, including crime and anti-social behaviour, value for money and changing market conditions.
Critical friend activity was an important feature of our work with pathfinders - especially in the early stages. For the first five years of the programme we undertook significant critical friend activity providing confidential challenge and critique of each pathfinder's work. While the nature of this work means no formal outputs are available, our input was highly valued by stakeholders. Critical friend input diminished as pathfinder partnerships matured, and ceased to be funded by CLG in March 2008. However, between April 2008 and May 2010, we delivered Advice and Assistance to five of the pathfinder partnerships under the powers contained in the Local Government and Public Involvement Act 2007.
The pathfinder areas
The pathfinder areas areas were identified through research carried out by Birmingham University and subsequent analysis by the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) of the sub-regions where the problems of low demand and abandonment were most acute.
About 900,000 homes were included in the pathfinder areas which includes about half of the one million properties in low demand based on 2002 estimates. Between 2003 and 2011, some £2.2 billion HMR funding was invested in the programme which also secured more than £1 billion additional investment from public and private partners.
The pathfinder achievements and challenges
Cumulatively, HMR achievements have been significant making a difference to the communities it served. Many homes were built and many more refurbished. HMR at a neighbourhood level helped to stabilise market conditions and provide a strong sign of change, with fewer empty houses, reduced crime, and more jobs and training opportunities, especially in those neighbourhoods more advanced in their programmes.
But by 2011, activities in most HMR areas had not reached a scale likely to tip the balance in favour of a normal market response. Originally envisaged to operate over a ten to 15 year period, the ending of the programme after only eight years left much work unfinished. Changing the nature of demand and closing the socio-economic gap between HMR areas and those around them are still challenging ambitions.