Oldham Rochdale pathfinder to change £53.5m spending plan

The Oldham Rochdale market renewal pathfinder has been forced to take urgent action to avoid a serious underspend.

The pathfinder is in talks with the ODPM after finding it was set to fall £2m to £3m short of its target to spend £53.5m on demolitions and tackling low demand by April 2006.

This is because the project has been unable to acquire properties as quickly as it had planned and some of its revenue programmes have proved slow to get off the ground.

It is to reallocate resources to other projects within its spending plans and it has already taken steps to remedy the situation, according to chief executive Alistair Graham.

These have included moving some projects from year two to the first year and buying properties outside the initial intervention areas, to speed up acquisition.

Graham said: “The main thing is that we are managing the programme and monitoring it closely and making the necessary changes to try to make sure we maximise our spend and the overall objectives of the programme.”

Oldham Rochdale got £53.5m in government grant in March.

Sarah Webb, director of policy at the Chartered Institute of Housing, said the news was not entirely unexpected: “These are areas where there hasn’t been much activity for quite a while, so you can’t suddenly turn things round without a bit of lead-in time.

“I think the only point at which you’d start to worry would be if they couldn’t do what they were going to do at all.”

But senior housing figures in the North-west said they were concerned about what would happen to the pathfinder’s resources. They stressed that funds should be reallocated within the region, not returned to a central pot.

An ODPM spokeswoman said: “We are working closely with the pathfinder to ensure that the programme is progressing well and acceptable levels of spending are achieved.

“There will be no effect on the long-term delivery of the pathfinder. We don’t expect to reallocate funds [to other pathfinders], but will monitor spending closely.”