The government has opened the door for a possible return of one of the most popular urban regeneration programmes ever.
The ODPM has commissioned eminent housing researcher Hal Pawson of Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University to revisit the Estates Renewal Challenge Fund that ran from 1996 to 1998.

The programme helped to bring about the first inner city stock transfers.

Pawson said: "They want to learn from its strengths and weaknesses, perhaps so that some of those could feed into a new programme looking to promote partial transfers."

The news that the Estates Renewal Challenge Fund is still of interest to the ODPM will come as boost to councils struggling to plug funding gaps in their business plans for stock transfer, such as Tower Hamlets in London.

The Estate Renewal Challenge Fund led to £487m being invested in 39 transfer programmes involving 43,000 homes. It provided dowry funding to offset the negative value and made small-scale transfer possible in areas such as Birmingham and London's Hackney and Lambeth.

First thought up by the Conservative government in 1995, the scheme was dropped by Labour soon after coming to power.

It is widely thought the Labour government considered the programme to be too expensive, after funding estimates for some transfers in Hackney ballooned in value.

Source

Housing Today