Listado de Alarmas

In September 2003, Bridging Newcastle Gateshead (BNG) submitted its first proposals to the government. Here the partnership outlined the approach to be adopted to tackle what were considered „long-standing problems‟ and create a stable housing market in the North East sub-region. The BNG sub-regional HMR goal was „creating great places to live‟ (BNG, 2011).

Demolition was an important part of this strategy. It was seen as a potential to ensure a clean start in areas that had been in decay for decades. BNG planned for the demolition of around 4,300 residential units between 2003 and 2018. By February 2011, two months before the cancellation of the HMR programme, the Pathfinder had demolished close to 3,000 properties and acquired 1,200 (BNG, 2011). The exact number of the residents relocated within the Pathfinder is unobtainable (see Chapter 5: Methodology and Methods). Considering the average empty property rate at 7.1%

for BNG, and given the prevailing household composition (Leather et al., 2007:26), the author‟s conservative estimate is that at least 6,000 people were relocated during the BNG operation.

7.3.1 Bridging Newcastle Gateshead goal

‗Creating places where people want to live, work, learn and invest is key to the future of Newcastle Gateshead, the North East and the country as a whole. These are the central ideas behind our aim to redress housing market failure.‘ (BNG, 2005)

In order to solve the identified problems the BNG Pathfinder defined a goal to „create great places to live‟. The goal was developed at the sub-regional level as envisaged by HMR designers. As seen above, the BNG goal was quite different from the overall HMR goals at national level. Review of the BNG annual reports and business plans showed that BNG defined its goal as place making in 2004/05 and stayed loyal to it until the programme closure in 2011.

Table 7-3: BNG Outputs achieved up to February 2011

Source: BNG (2011:15):

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BNG‟s objectives primarily addressed the issue of critical population loss from the area, limited choice of dwelling types and poor condition of housing stock. One of the major concerns of the BNG officials was changing the tenure ratio, as the prevalence of social tenure was considered unsustainable.

The BNG goal and objectives were in reality directly linked with providing better quality and improved choice of housing. As can be seen in the Table 7-3: BNG Outputs achieved up to February 2011, the work to be carried out concerned physical improvement of the housing stock:

home refurbishment, land acquisition, land preparation (for development), new building and home clearance (BNG Key Facts, 2008). Land acquisition and clearance caused residential relocation.

7.3.2 Selection of the BNG areas

Having considered some of the key BNG characteristics in the previous section, it is necessary to look into the way the BNG area and projects were selected. BNG developed a Vitality Index. The Vitality Index has been cited in national evaluation commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) as „one of the best examples of a [market intelligence] model … to present various analyses of neighbourhood vitality‟ (Audit Commission, 2005:15). According to the Audit Commission the model played an important role in defining the Pathfinder boundaries and informing the stakeholders of market conditions and change at a range of local levels.

However, interviews with representatives of the two councils and the BNG Pathfinder team showed that BNG‟s list of intervention neighbourhoods comprised areas where regeneration initiatives had been tested and failed in the past or where the funds had simply run out.

In 1999, just before the launch of the national HMR strategy, Newcastle City Council developed the Going for Growth initiative. At its core was the view that previous attempts to regenerate the poorest areas of Newcastle had failed and that a different strategy was required. NCC launched a bold plan to demolish large areas in the West and East Ends of Newcastle (Scotswood and Walker). Similarly, on the other side of the Tyne, Gateshead Council attempted to regenerate the Bensham and Saltwell areas using a Single Regeneration Budget and several other schemes.

However, these ambitious plans did not attract sufficient funding and/or had run out of funds.

HMR funding was essentially used to fund the Going for Growth strategy in Newcastle and plans in Gateshead that were already on the council‟s agenda. In January 2003, the Director of Community and Housing at the NCC, in his report to BNG wrote: „the Pathfinder provides the

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most significant opportunity to deliver long-term Going for Growth objectives‟ (BNG Report, 15 January 2003).

Undoubtedly, these areas could not show great results in housing market measurement as they were already identified as decaying and deprived, but relying on the market intelligence (Vitality Index) as a sole defining reason for inclusion in the HMR programme would be ignoring the history of the BNG intervention areas. By including so called „off the shelf‟ projects into BNG‟s work, the partnership inherited a complex landscape of failed urban regeneration initiatives and challenging stakeholder relations, especially demolition-affected residents who had quite a negative experience of residential relocation long before HMR had been introduced (Wainwright &

Wainwright, 2000).

7.3.3 BNG Intervention Areas

BNG intervention areas consisted of inner areas of older private housing and refurbished local authority dwellings around the city centres of the two conurbations: Newcastle and Gateshead. As mentioned earlier, BNG Pathfinder covered a number of neighbourhoods (see Figure 7-2: Bridging Newcastle Gateshead neighbourhoods of intervention). In each of these neighbourhoods a number of projects were defined.

At the time of inquiry, BNG Pathfinder had 13 separate intervention areas (projects) where identified BNG activities were carried out in different proportions.

Figure 7–8 (Bridging Newcastle Gateshead Pathfinder projects) shows the individual projects included in the BNG boundaries.

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In some of the areas the BNG team and partners focused on housing refurbishment alone.

However, eight of thirteen BNG intervention areas included a percentage of housing demolition along with refurbishment efforts, these were: