Solihull: difficult corner

Solihull is where Birmingham's more prosperous residents go when they get tired of big-city life. House prices in its leafy suburbs are well above the regional average, roughly three-quarters of residents are owner-occupiers and the rental market is aimed at high-earners.

Yet Solihull is also poised to become the site of one of the country's largest regeneration projects. Four of its northern wards – those bordering Birmingham – are among the 10% most deprived in England and Wales and there are fears that, without urgent action, the gap between prosperous and poorer areas will keep widening.

The council has a wide-ranging regeneration plan, likely to be carried out over the next 15-20 years, and recently created an arm's-length management organisation for its 11,500 homes.

Yet ironically, the areas worrying Solihull council the most were not part of the borough 25 years ago.

The four wards – Chelmsley Wood, Fordbridge, Kingshurst and Smith's Wood – were part of Birmingham until council boundaries were redrawn in 1980.

Most of the housing there was built in the 1950s and 1960s for Birmingham's metal workers after slum clearances in the city and the area's fortunes have since mirrored those of the metal industry, which was in major decline by the 1980s. Today 40,000 people live in these four wards and half of their 16,000 homes are social housing.

The housing market has not yet collapsed, but small pockets of hard-to-let properties are springing up, says Matt Cooney, chief executive of the ALMO, Solihull Community Housing.

"If someone, say in their 30s, has become economically successful they tend to move out of the area altogether," says Cooney. "There isn't much in the way of alternative housing choice in the area. But that's a gap in the market we think can be filled."

The council selected the Inpartnership Consortium – which includes Whitefriars Housing Group and Bellway Homes – to come up with a masterplan for the four wards in March. The plan is due to be completed by October.

The council's plans for improving the local economy, schools, housing and people's health are linked to the renewal plan. "The regeneration effort will not simply be focused on the physical environment," says Julian Wain, Solihull council's strategic director for physical and economic regeneration. "There's a need to link people with jobs through training; a need for better education facilities." The council already has £90m to improve the borough's schools from the government's Building Schools for the Future programme.

Solihull Community Housing, which began operating in April, will spearhead the improvement of the council's housing, almost three-quarters of which is located in the four deprived wards.

An estimated £115m is needed to bring the homes, many of which are high-rise flats, up to the decent homes standard by 2010.

Roughly £60m will come from the council; the remainder is expected to be additional funding for the ALMO, provided it gets two stars in its first inspection early next year.

The ALMO has inherited sound foundations from the council: in 2002, its repairs and maintenance service was awarded one star with promising prospects for improvement. If the ALMO meets its target, there may be about £3m left over to spend on environmental improvements.

Other money will come through the development of homes for private sale. Up to 1000 homes could be demolished and replaced with new schemes with a greater mix of tenures; revenue from private sales would then be channelled into the improvement programme.

"We've not quite got monolithic council estates in the north of the borough," says Cooney. "But at 50% of the total number of homes, the amount [of council housing] is probably too high. We hope to alter the community's mix."