Land of opportunity

If you’re looking for a new career challenge, how about regeneration?

The housing market renewal pathfinders in the North and Midlands will be creating jobs as they set about turning around deprived communities. That means plenty of new opportunities for social housing workers as these new schemes look for staff.

Last month, Mike Gahagan, chair of pathfinder Transform South Yorkshire, announced that the nine established pathfinders were suffering a critical shortage of council planners and regeneration consultants (HT 18 February, page 13).

This will only become more acute with the expansion of the programme to cover 12 areas in decline. But the recruitment problem isn’t restricted to these positions – in fact, empty jobs range from strategic posts, to the extra frontline people that housing associations need to carry out regeneration policies and build new schemes.

Jon Houlihan, a director of the public service consultant Tribal, which worked with pathfinder Hull and East Riding on its staffing requirements, says: “Broadly speaking, each pathfinder will have a programme director, someone in financial affairs and internal operations, a strategy and policy adviser, and often a leader in communications and PR.” If you already have experience of these roles on a regeneration scheme, you could be just what they need. “The pathfinders have found it difficult to recruit for these roles. Not many people have the right level of skills and experience,” says Houlihan.

However, most new jobs will be in implementation, created by employers in each area, rather than by pathfinders themselves. In Birmingham and Sandwell, much of the work planned by pathfinder Urban Living will be done jointly with local councils; regeneration body English Partnerships is a key delivery agent for Renew North Staffordshire, and the Hull pathfinder will be working with urban regeneration company Hull Citybuild, for example.

There will also be new roles within housing associations. Aspire Housing is leading Renew North Staffordshire’s intervention in Knutton Cross Heath, close to the centre of Newcastle-under-Lyme. Sinead Butters, director of business development at Aspire, says it is looking for several new staff for pathfinder-related work.

Mike Gahagan says that people with effective communication skills are in high demand. “You need people who can present and discuss proposals, not only with the community, but with politicians too,” he says. Butters agrees that communication is a key skill. “We need people who can link community aspirations and needs with the strategy and plans,” she says. “They need to be able to work with residents to give them an understanding of the scheme without raising their aspirations too high. It’s about understanding the pressures and working in the middle.”

If you can demonstrate strong project management skills, you will be popular with employers looking for people to work on large new housing developments. If you have also worked with the private sector before, you’ll be even more popular. Houlihan says that people working on pathfinder schemes “need to understand the workings of private sector companies, as well as being familiar with the public sector”.

Experience in urban regeneration will give you an obvious advantage. This could come from working on a single regeneration budget programme for a local authority or working for a housing association in a deprived area.

But even inexperienced staff are in demand, says Butters. “We recently advertised for a trainee development post, someone who we would train over two years, but couldn’t get anyone. Now we are going back to the market to look at graduates.”