Nice day for a demolition

Thirteen hundred homes demolished and two new showhomes completed. With this record, you might think the anti-demolition lobby would make the Bridging NewcastleGateshead housing market renewal pathfinder a prime illustration of government policy failure. Not so. In fact, while other pathfinders have brought protesters on to the streets, Bridging NewcastleGateshead has scythed its swath of destruction with relatively little opposition.

Demolition has gone according to plan and about 200 more homes are to be bulldozed in the second two-year phase of the programme, which received £64m of funding from the government last month. In all, the pathfinder is aiming to demolish 3000 homes by 2018.

The principle of demolishing empty and unwanted housing is becoming well established in the North-east. The approach is being enshrined in its regional spatial strategy, with the draft document setting out plans to demolish 3320 homes from 2004 to 2011, and a further 3395 from 2011 to 2021. Much of that activity is being planned for the Tees Valley.

How is the North-east managing to quietly succeed while demolition has become such a struggle elsewhere? Karen Anderson, head of research and strategy at Bridging NewcastleGateshead, says the pathfinder's slowness in building replacement housing has turned out to be a virtue. "The first stage of our programme has been very focused on planning and consultation, and that may be why we've not hit the press as much as others." Those two showhomes at the Walker Riverside project in the east end of Newcastle will be accompanied by 29 new homes in a few months' time.

Over the next four years, Bridging NewcastleGateshead aims to build 143 homes.

Although 958 homes have been knocked down on the Cleadon Park estate, residents backed the radical masterplan for new flats and bungalows

You need to consult. But people want to know what is going to happen – and that something will happen

Karen Anderson, Newcastle pathfinder

Anderson says the pathfinder has carried out numerous consultations, including a big strategic one last summer, a neighbourhood planning exercise for Gateshead, more consultation for the Walker Riverside and an exercise that has installed architects in the community at Byker in Newcastle. The strategic consultation exercise found more than 80% of the public backed its work.

Anderson says: "I think there's a balance to be struck - you do need to consult and you need to consider the heritage of what is there. But at the same time, people want to know what is going to happen - and that something will happen."

Anderson isn't saying her pathfinder has got everything right - she points out that it has "tweaked" its plans as a result of consultation, notably to allay residents' fears that the new homes might too expensive for them - which would be ironic given that the aim of the pathfinder is to bolster house prices. Nor has the pathfinder been entirely free of criticism, as Anderson admits. "We've had a very good press, but we've had a group against demolition in Gateshead who did go to the press. It was not surprising given that we are demolishing around 400 homes."

Demolition in practice

"Demolition is difficult, especially when it's your house that is being demolished," says Christine Allen, project manager with Cleadon Park Regeneration Area. Allen is managing the knocking down of 958 homes on the Cleadon Park estate in south Tyneside, which is outside the pathfinder area. Although the homes had no defenders among architectural conservationists, local residents initially resisted. Jones says: "They didn't understand the holistic approach of this. There was a problem with communication. Now everyone understands and I hope they support what we're doing."

The homes were candidates for demolition simply because south Tyneside has too many pre-war semis and terraces with large, unkempt gardens. A third of homes in the centre of the estate were void or abandoned and that was blighting the rest of the stock. Some empty homes had already been demolished to limit damage to the otherwise excellent reputation of an adjacent primary school.

South Tyneside council has worked in partnership with housing association Enterprise 5 and Bellway Homes. The job of devising a sufficiently radical masterplan was given to Halsall Lloyd Partnership, which was also project architect. Its solution was to leave intact the homes on the perimeter of the estate and clear a space for 750 new homes for sale and rent, along with a health centre, library and customer services centre.

We’re moving beyond building to thinking about what we can do for unemployed women on the estate

Christine Allen, Cleadon Park

Barry Miller, regional managing director of Bellway, says: "It was a 1920s garden estate with a lot of open space and dead space; now it has a PPG3 plan. We're putting 50% more units on to the site by using open land and a better layout." The homes being provided range from bungalows to three-storey apartment blocks; roads are being designed to Homezone standards and there will be a pocket park and piazzas.

Arriving at the decision to demolish was not easy, says Allen. "We did a Decent Homes stock survey and found it was not financially possible to bring all of the homes here up to standard - about 20% of them had been bought under right to buy. So we carried out a masterplanning exercise with the residents, came up with the options and then had to make the tough decisions on demolition, taking into account, the financial, stock and aspirational realities."

Xsite Architecture has designed 35 homes at Walker riverside – but they’re not built yet

Like the pathfinder, the team behind Cleadon Park hope that sweeping away bricks and mortar will bring about a dramatic change of image. Allen points out: "That's again why we went for the larger scale. We're thinking about the potential of this and moving beyond building to thinking about things like what we can do for the large number of unemployed women living on the estate," says Allen. The project is designed to bring together physical, environmental and community regeneration. South Tyneside council's brief for the project talks of creating "an iconic development that will set the standard for the rest of the borough".

This is a more ambitious approach than that of the pathfinder, which is confining its activities to housing renewal. Yet Yolande Barnes, director of property consultant Savills Research, points out that pathfinders have come in for the most flak where they planned to replace Victorian homes with "not terribly nice new stuff". She says: "You can see why they are criticised. There is a need to put good quality urbanism into place."

With the first residents moving into Cleadon Park this month, and Bridging NewcastleGateshead now building new homes, time will ultimately tell what works, but at least the region seems to have won the demolition argument.