Where will the paths lead?

It might not seem like much, but it means a lot. The first indication that areas outside the nine original pathfinders were in line for £65m of funding came in January’s five-year plan. In March the ODPM announced how the money would be split between the three new market renewal areas, dubbed by some the “new pathfinders”. Compared with the £1.2bn allocated to the original nine, £65m may seem trifling – but it still represents a huge leap forward in the newcomers’ campaign to get recognition of the housing problems they face.

Of the extra £65m, Yorkshire & Humber housing board will get £24m, the North-east £23m, and the North-west £18m. The money will be allocated to the relevant regional housing boards, but the ODPM indicated that the lion’s share should go to West Yorkshire, Tees Valley and West Cumbria, which are expected to take 90%, 80% and 40% of the regional totals respectively.

Each area regards the money as a start rather than the solution to their problems. The government hasn’t granted them the same guaranteed future as the pathfinders; there is no certainty that more money will be available after 2008. But the newcomers are ambitious and determined to use the funding to prove they can deliver.

The question is, if they prove to be effective, what scope will there be to extend the funding beyond 2008? And if some of the true pathfinders struggle to spend, will there be room for the newcomers to access a greater amount of the market renewal pot?

Tees Valley

Jim Johnsone, director of the market renewal group Tees Valley Living, doesn’t mince his words: “It’s an absolute scandal we weren’t picked as a pathfinder in the first place.”

Despite the fact that Tees Valley will get at least 80% of the £23m reserved for the North-east, he knows the area’s problems will require far more in the long term. “At the end of the two years [the funding runs from 2006 to 2008], our target is to make sure we are performing as well as, if not better than, the pathfinders,” he says. “Ideally we would like a larger allocation within the prospect of a 15-year programme. It is not a competition but at the same time there are only so many resources to go round.”

To increase the odds on getting funding in the future, TVL knows delivery in the short term is key. Of the three new kids on the block, it is perhaps the most advanced in its planning, having been set up in 2003.

Alongside the successful campaign to access market renewal funding, it has also prepared its housing market assessment and expects to have a programme ready for 2006/8 by the autumn. Working with local authority partners, TVL has already identified a list of potential schemes in Middlesbrough, Hartlepool, Stockton and Redcar. The aim is to diversify the appeal of the areas.

With 48,000 dwellings across Tees Valley in low-demand areas – 25,000 of which are terraced – the scale of the problem is clear. This is why the TVL team is adamant that this has to be a 15-year programme at least. “We have to assume that, if there is housing market renewal activity in the future, it will happen here,” says Johnsone.

West Cumbria

When steel giant Corus announced the loss of 256 jobs in Workington in February, West Cumbria was reminded of why parts of the region have fallen victim to low demand.

As factories and mines have shut over the past 20 years, communities across the area have suffered – the Corus closure made 3% of the town’s population redundant.

The region has won a 40% share in £18m handed out to the North-west to tackle low demand. Compared with Tees Valley and West Yorkshire this might look like small change – the organisations that will spend it say it may limit their ability to tackle all areas of low demand in the region. But the money is likely to be channelled through the existing urban regeneration company, West Lakes Renaissance, which already has an active programme in the region. And it is hoped the £7.6m is just the start of things to come.

On its own the money will be enough to kick-start the regeneration of Barrow, perhaps the worst-hit town in the region, with 1500 homes at risk of low demand.

Mike Muir, chair of Cumbria Housing Group, which represents all the local authorities and key housing associations in the county, admits a larger share would have been useful. “We would have expected about £11m to £12m and that would not only have got us going in Barrow but it would have been enough to start thinking about remodelling the rest of the local housing markets.”

With a population of 145,000 and a spread of 60 miles between the north and south of the region, there is unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all solution. But West Lakes thinks that making a start is what counts. West Lakes chief executive Bob Pointing says: “For a two-year initial programme this is OK, but we are going to need more than that. We are not disappointed but we will be asking for more and using some of our own funds to complement the renewal area as well.”

West Yorkshire

With any new scheme it’s important to know where you stand. “We are not a ‘Pathfinder II’ or a ‘non-pathfinder’,” says Lindsay Greenwood, director of the West Yorkshire Housing Partnership. “That is defining it negatively. We are just additional housing market renewal areas really.”

As the biggest winner in the allocation of the additional £65m funding announced for areas outside the existing pathfinders,

West Yorkshire has reason to feel confident. And it’s a good job, too. With 174,000 properties at risk of market decline and 71,000 identified as being at the most urgent risk of decline, the challenges are clear.

Just over six months into her job Greenwood heard that her organisation would receive at least 90% of the £24m earmarked to tackle the region’s low demand. Like Tees Valley, West Yorkshire has long-term ambitions. Both play down competition with existing pathfinders, but it is clear that extending and increasing the funding beyond 2008 is top of the agenda.

“I suppose there is an element of competition [with the pathfinders],” Greenwood says. “People have asked that if within the overall policy there is some under-completion, does that mean there could be some shifting around of resources?

I think it will be more the case that the pathfinders will take precedence and we are expected to follow by copying good practice.”

But Greenwood admits that the next three years are “very, very important” in pushing West Yorkshire’s case for further funding. Current work involves developing a sustainability index – with sections on house prices, numbers of empty properties, crime, employment levels – to provide an up-to-date evidence base for action; and gearing up to submit the 2006/8 programme to the regional housing board in the autumn.

As for the pathfinders, Greenwood says relationships are friendly and there is a willingness to share good practice: “They are reasonably comfortable in the knowledge that they take precedence,” she says.