A happy ending?

There are limits, at least in Salford. Although the council has welcomed the regeneration of the Quays as a mini-Manhattan, it has called time on the blanket building of high-density, high-rise flats on every patch of urban land. It has come up with a draft planning policy that will limit apartment development and ensure family houses remain part of the housing mix.

Some developers argue that such constraints can impair not only their profit margin, but the viability of regeneration schemes. But the policy hasn’t stopped developer LPC Living taking on sites in Salford and selling homes there for a highly affordable £79,950.

The company is tackling the regeneration of Salford’s massive Ordsall estate under a £150m development framework. Its involvement in Salford both on this and earlier sites pre-dates the council’s draft planning policy, but the plans for the council-owned Ordsall estate clearly reflect its thinking. The regeneration will result in the construction of 300 low-rise apartments, but the number of new houses provided under the project will be double that.

The houses will go a small way to balancing output as about a thousand apartments are under construction in the Quays area. “The council approach is quite understandable,” says Simon Ashdown, development director with LPC. The work on the Ordsall estate will keep the company in the area for the next five to seven years, but Ashdown says other developers may not stick around: “The impact [of the planning policy] is going to be that land outside council ownership is going to be slower to come forward for development.”

LPC makes development stack up by doing innovative deals with the public sector to provide low-cost housing and has become known for its regeneration of unwanted tower blocks. Its chairman Warren Smith says: “We are working in partnership with local authorities that are not desperate to get a large capital receipt up front.” The developer is carrying out the Ordsall estate regeneration in an open-book partnership with the council. For each site on the estate the deal gives the developer a pre-determined profit level, while the local authority receives a guaranteed revenue for the site, the Section 106 agreement and overage. Capital receipts, S106 payments and overage will all help provide environmental improvements on the estate, such as better street lighting and pedestrianisation of streets.

Smith says: “The plus of partnership is that the developer has a consistent funding stream, and we can deliver the local authority’s aspirations. Local authorities have knowledge, skill and aspiration, but the way their budgets and funding work make it difficult to bring projects through.”

LPC began negotiating with the local authority to regenerate the estate three years ago and will this summer be completing Quay 5, a 231-apartment development on the fringe of the estate. Smith says: “If we agree a land deal with the local authority, it is on the basis that we go for planning in six months and we’ll be on site in another six months. Within the agreement, we’re compelled to get on with it.”

What the developer has got from the deal is 26 predominantly clear sites ripe for development with private housing, but located on a low-value council estate in a ward that is Salford’s fourth most disadvantaged and has achieved a certain notoriety.

Still, the estate has potential. There is no crumbling concrete here. Ordsall estate contains traditional brick post-second world war housing, the second oldest park in the borough and even a few fine buildings such as Ordsall Hall. It also had £50m spent on refurbishing and demolishing homes under the Estate Action programme just over a decade ago. Above all, it has location: within sight are the glass-fronted apartments and offices of the Quays including, potentially, the new BBC media hub.

LPC Living’s proposed pedestrianised street are part of plans to make the Ordsall estate more permeable so that people walk through it rather than past it

Under its agreement with the council, LPC has first option on whether it develops each of the 26 sites itself or brings in other developers. Most of the sites are neglected green areas, created when the Estate Action programme demolished terraced homes. Estate Action also created pathways away from the security of overlooking houses that have proved perfect gathering places for local teenagers. It blocked routes through the estate so it is now more cut off from the surrounding area.

Mark Bottomley, partner with masterplan architect bptw Partnership says: “There were a lot of design issues here. The bits of open space make no sense at all; they don’t enhance the estate. The masterplan produces better, more usable space. Roads need overlooking, so building new homes there will provide greater security.” The planned environmental improvements are also key to the estate’s regeneration and will make the estate permeable, so that people walk through it rather than past it. Bottomley points out that the plans won’t leave the estate short of green space: the park remains, there will be a second smaller park and other managed green spaces.

The solutions to the estate’s problems have been heavily influenced by the community, whose views were sought in a tour of the site, which bptw calls the walking audit and which has now been adopted as standard practice by Salford council (see box, left). LPC’s Smith says: “The residents know the problems here. I can’t think of anything that they mentioned [on the walking audit] that we disagreed with.”

The masterplan has been adopted by the council as part of the planning brief for the area. As well as building new homes, LPC is part-funding a new £6.5m school and children’s centre, demolishing a redundant shopping precinct and providing a new supermarket and shopping area. The local primary care trust is also reviewing local facilities, giving the potential for a fully integrated approach to regeneration.

As all the new homes will be for sale, the tenure balance of the estate will shift from predominantly council tenants to 60% private ownership over the five to seven years of the programme. Some 2000 new residents should be moving in, if buyers can be found, and the signs are good. LPC’s apartment development alongside the Ordsall estate had buyers queuing up to make a reservation. The average age of first-time buyers there is 28, below the national average. “We’re producing a place of choice,” says Smith.