What the party

So we couldn’t produce the first issue of Regenerate, Building’s housing and regeneration supplement, without talking about the performance of the government. The overall results of our survey would probably count as a vote for Labour (pages 12-16), but there is still ample room for improvement.

There are plenty of aspects of regeneration, from planning to modern methods of construction, where practitioners believe policy-makers could be making things work better. To find out how exactly, Regenerate asked industry leaders to come up with their industry-specific version of Blair’s six pledges. They suggested the following paraphrases:

• Your planning easier … by taking decision-making away from the local level, where it is bound by community pressures and petty politics, and placing it at the regional level.
• Your powers greater … many in the regeneration world would like more power, independence and authority to go out and make the big changes that successful regeneration requires.
• Your costs lowered … by making housing refurbishment free of VAT – a key issue as Budget day approaches (see page eight).
• Your infrastructure funded … top of the list for anyone working in the Thames Gateway.
• Your quality rewarded … by lowering the regulatory burden on players with a track record of producing quality work.
• Your agencies streamlined … players from all sides of regeneration want to see the numbers of regeneration quangos rationalised.

We’ll be looking out to see what happens on these and other key issues in the pages of Regenerate in the months ahead. As for the likelihood of action on the industry’s manifesto, well, given that the infrastructure bill for the Thames Gateway alone is more than £15bn, our industry representatives were probably speaking more in hope than expectation. But many general election campaigns and regeneration projects have been won on that.