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Get the local economy working

Your contributors' definitions of regeneration may have missed something (February, page 34). Regeneration is about restoring a properly functioning social and market economy so the area you are regenerating functions like those areas which don't need regenerating; then you can stop and move on to the next problem.

During the 1980s and 1990s this involved dealing with the hangover from the dominance of state-owned industry, with places like the Black Country, Docklands and Merseyside benefiting from huge investment to remove the negatives which had held back private investment, and the breaking up of massive land ownerships so that "creative destruction" could function again and allow new uses to take over from defunct ones.

Now we need to deal with the problems of city centres and state-owned housing, where market failure has occurred in local social and commercial economies, usually due - as it was before - to the dominance of public ownership and control. If we are not to create even greater problems for the future, the vision must be for a predominance of private ownership of housing and private sector economic activity in these areas.

John J C Moss, director, Complex Development Projects Ltd

Look again at planning gain

I read with great interest your profile interview of Margaret Ford "The New Ford Focus" (February). There is no doubt the work English Partnerships has done over recent years has truly put regeneration at the top of the government's list of priorities.

I am therefore disappointed to be at odds with EP's thinking over the planning gain supplement proposals. The proposals issued in the consultation document did not encourage a thoughtful response. Large chunks of detailed information were omitted which meant that the property industry could not respond fully to the financial impacts the proposals will have on many regeneration schemes.

The property industry is willing to play its part in finding a suitable mechanism to deliver, in partnership, the necessary infrastructure. Although the original proposals for an Optional Planning Charge were dismissed by most stakeholders when first mooted, those comments must be viewed in context. Opposition to the charge - or planning tariff - was at a time when the old planning system was creaking. The new style system is arguably more suited to a planning tariff approach and provide for a more stable basis to determine a strategic assessment of infrastructure requirements. While Milton Keynes has been cited as a model proposition, many other types of tariff models are beginning to emerge.

We hope the government will re-consider its proposals and at the very least ditch its suggestion that PGS should be levied on brownfield sites where there is little or no real uplift in land values.

Faraz Baber, director of regeneration and development, British Property Federation