East Lancashire's last hope

Walking along a canal path in Pendle, Lancashire, on a brisk winter morning, Max Steinberg smiles and nods at a couple of passers-by. In his sharp suit and dark overcoat, he must be an unusual sight because the pair stop to ask helpfully: "You're not lost, are you, mate? 'Cos there's a lot of people that are lost around here."

That pretty much sums up the challenge Steinberg has taken on. He is the man in charge of the Elevate East Lancashire market renewal pathfinder, widely acknowledged to be the toughest of the nine projects set up in 2001 to turn around failing communities and floundering housing markets.

In this part of the world, one in four children leave school with no qualifications. One in 10 homes lie empty. Far-right politics flourish – there are seven BNP councillors in the town of Burnley alone. Half of all private sector homes are either unfit or in disrepair, nearly 9000 of them vacant.

The fact that the area falls under the jurisdiction of five local authorities makes things even harder. "East Lancashire is the land that time forgot," says Tom Manion, chief executive of Irwell Valley Housing Association. "The area needs a new raison d'être."

For Steinberg, that's part of the appeal. "I applied for this job because it's such a challenging set of circumstances," says the Housing Corporation's former director of regeneration and investment in the North. In his 25 years at the corporation, he forged a reputation for brokering deals and bringing people together. "He has a very engaging character and is great at building teams and getting things done," says Manion.

But Steinberg's biggest achievement to date is, arguably, the pathfinders themselves: he helped shape the entire policy and persuaded deputy prime minister John Prescott to put £500m of the ODPM's money into the schemes.

The canal path he is walking along today typifies east Lancashire's problems. It is just minutes away from an eerily quiet area of Nelson West, where more than half the homes lie empty. The local council, Pendle, was denied permission to knock these down because of opposition from conservation group English Heritage. Rolling hills provide a backdrop for streets strewn with rubbish and iron sheets on doors and windows.

Yet for Steinberg, the canal is a des-res neighbourhood just waiting to happen. "Just imagine how much you'd pay to live here if it was in Manchester," Steinberg says, looking down the canal as it winds away between leafy banks and under a quaint stone bridge. "We can really do something with this waterfront – put in homes and offices and make people want to come here again."

Nelson West is one of the first areas to benefit from Elevate's hands-on approach to partnership working. Steinberg sees it as an example of how the pathfinder can get things moving. Pendle council has agreed to end the planning permission limbo and lead work on a wide-ranging plan for the area's renewal. When the area's development framework – funded by English Heritage, English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation – is complete, it will probably include clearance, new build and perhaps even employment space.

Which arms had to be twisted at how many councils and quangos to get this result is a question Steinberg diplomatically pushes aside. "We are enabling a solution," he says. But the difficulty of getting the five councils that cover the region – Burnley, Blackburn with Darwen, Hyndburn, Rossendale and Pendle – to work together has already been highlighted by a row over Pendle's plan to earmark 10.6 hectares of greenfield land for development: Burnley has lodged a complaint, claiming that no further land needs to be released.

'A success story waiting to happen'
Later, driving around the area, Steinberg cannot hold back his enthusiasm. "What an amazing place to live!" he exclaims, as picture postcard vistas of green hills and grazing sheep spread away from the shabby towns and boarded-up mills. The area, he says, is a "success story waiting to happen".

We can really do something with this waterfront – put in homes and offices and make people want to come here again 

Max Steinberg

The scenery, he believes, could help deal with a sinister problem prevalent throughout east Lancashire. Union Jacks hanging in grimy windows and swastikas spray-painted on crumbling walls are a reminder of the racism and community tensions that led to the 2001 riots, events that made the area infamous and brought its fractured communities into the limelight.

This is not an issue the pathfinder aims to tackle head-on, says Steinberg, but it is an area in which it can help. "We are not here to tackle the right-wing elements. We are here to create a positive image of east Lancashire and to create a broader housing choice.

"I am strongly of the view that bringing that landscape into the towns and focusing on quality will enable us to re-establish a strong and positive image for east Lancashire. If we can do that, it will hopefully help to deal with some of the tensions that are around. There is now a set of circumstances that means tensions can flourish. What hope do these people have at the moment?"

In some places, such as the largely Pakistani and Bangladeshi community of Stoneyholme and Daneshouse, clearance work has already begun on the large expanses of muddy green lying between close-knit rows of pre-1919 terraces. Steinberg wants to turn these into public parks, bringing the beauty that characterises much of east Lancashire into these modern wastelands, giving people a sense of neighbourhood pride.

A pioneering collaboration with the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment should further this aim of beautifying east Lancashire's towns. In the first agreement of its kind, the government design body will create a regional hub for the North-west. It will be based alongside Elevate in its offices in Colne and will stay there for two years. For Steinberg, this is a sign of the pathfinder's commitment to sustainable communities and its determination not to repeat the mistakes of the past. For CABE, it is a chance to "leave a permanent legacy for architecture and the built environment," says a spokesman for the body.

But you can't help feel that Steinberg's mission to rebuild east Lancashire's communities is more than just a job. His Jewish background must mean the BNP's presence has a personal impact, though he won't talk about his religion on the record. However, he does say his family ingrained in him a sense of social responsibility.

Steinberg grew up in Liverpool, where he still lives, the son of a doctor and the deputy headmistress of a school in Toxteth – an area that witnessed its own race riots in the early 1980s. His grandfather was an active trade unionist and his father chaired the board of governors at a local school, a role that Steinberg junior has now adopted.

"My family was always involved in social policy issues," says Steinberg. "I saw my father go out and work very hard, above and beyond the call of duty. I saw the contribution that people can make to society."

Steinberg is justly proud of his time at the Housing Corporation, which included work on community cohesion in the wake of the Toxteth riots and addressing low demand as awareness of the problem grew in the 1990s – experience that will be invaluable in his current role.

His new office is littered with mementos of the years he spent there: "I miss the people and I hope they will remain friends for a long time to come," he says. A cartoon on the wall shows Steinberg dashing from the corporation to Elevate. Photographs show him hobnobbing with luminaries including Diana, Princess of Wales. His favourite memento is a picture of a grinning tenant standing under a sign on a new road in the Eldonians in Liverpool. It's called Steinberg Court. "They named a road after me," he says. "Can you believe it?"

Union Jacks hanging in grimy windows and swastikas spray-painted on crumbling walls are a reminder of the racism that led to the 2001 riots

With his time at the corporation a memory, and now poised at the start of what may prove to be the biggest challenge of his career, Steinberg is hoping to bring the Max factor to bear on east Lancashire.

The pathfinder's senior team is already in place: Steinberg, operations manager David Riley and strategy and policy director Sheila Tolley. Judging by the office banter and jokes about Steinberg's driving skills, they're already getting on well. "It's fantastic that people are willing to commit the next few years of their career to working here," says Steinberg. "We've got a really great team."

The team has just put together a prospectus that will be submitted to ministers at the end of December, with a response expected by 31 March next year. Full details cannot be released until negotiations with the ODPM have been completed – "no doubt we will have some interesting discussions", says Steinberg – but Elevate intends to be both firm and innovative. There will be significant demolition – "parts of the area, such as Burnley, are crying out for clearance" – and councils may be given limits on the number of empty properties they are allowed to leave standing. The "doughnut effect" that has seen people move out of east Lancashire's towns and scatter along the M65 corridor will be stopped by building an attractive mix of homes in town centres, offering jobs and leisure to give the more affluent a reason to move back in.

One of the biggest challenges for the pathfinder is that unlike its neighbours, Manchester/Salford and Merseyside, it does not have a city economy on which to draw. Instead, it will work with other bodies, such as the North-west Development Agency, to bring in investment and jobs.

Steinberg stresses that Elevate is "a market renewal pathfinder, not a housing market renewal pathfinder". Research has already shown that certain fledgling economies, such as IT, are beginning to flourish on a small scale. If this can be encouraged and improved on, it will create jobs and wealth in an area that has seen its traditional industry – textile mills – crumble away.

Economic regeneration could also include building the area's first higher education institute – perhaps an IT department for one of the nearby universities – so that east Lancashire can grow and retain its own professionals.

Elevate will be bidding for a substantial slice of the £500m of government money to be shared between the nine pathfinders and, when it gets its funding, it will be the major spending power in east Lancashire.

Steinberg plans to put this money on the table, alongside funding from other sources – negotiations with the North-west Development Agency and English Partnerships are already under way – to improve the area's economic prospects. It cannot rival Manchester and Salford, he admits, but can act both as a dormitory area for people commuting to those cities and as a diverse economy in its own right.

Steinberg knows he has a tough task ahead, and expects the project to take 10-30 years. "I'm not sure if there are any right answers," he admits.

Mike Cooke, community cohesion manager at Burnley council, says: "We have very high hopes for Elevate and it's been great working with Max and his team. But we have still got God knows how many empty houses, and that's what we're looking to change at the end of the day."