Transcript of Steven Douglas’s keynote speech at the 2007 Thames Gateway Forum 29 November, 2007, 15.50, London, ExCeL
Introduction: Paul Wheeler, editorial director Thames Gateway Forum Keynote speech: Steven Douglas, acting chief executive of the Housing Corporation Paul Wheeler: Thank you those of you have come to this, the final keynote of the 2007 Thames Gateway Forum. A special announcement to make, following the Prime Minister’s presence at lunchtime; we’ve created a new session that will follow this final keynote. It takes place in the theatre URS. This last week we’ve had two pretty incredible things that have big impacts on the Thames Gateway. One, a week ago, was the launch of the John Callcutt Review of house building delivery and, of course, the second is the Thames Gateway plan. For this final session, we’re delighted to have really the architects of both, who will then give you further insight into these plans. We’re going to make this one an open session, so you’re all welcome to attend that, you won’t need tickets, you can just go into it. Okay, we now come to the final keynote, without further ado, may I welcome Steven Douglas who is acting chief executive of the Housing Corporation, thank you very much. Steven Douglas: Well, how does it feel not being the warm up act for Gordon Brown, but being the final, final warm up act for the architects of the Thames Gateway delivery plan? I’m going to speak to you for about 15 minutes, if that’s okay, and what I’m going to try to do is to give you both a sense of where we are in terms of housing delivery within the Gateway, what the challenge is for delivery in the Gateway, and what the ambition is for delivery in the Gateway over the next five to six to seven years. By way of context, just a reminder, we had the housing Green Paper in July, which set out very, very clear ambitions for strategic housing growth, and you heard Yvette Cooper speak yesterday around the plans to deliver welldesigned, green homes. One of the things she talked about was the setting up of a new homes agency, so the housing Green Paper very clearly says, to help deliver those
challenges, what we need is a new homes and communities agency that will help us deliver some three million new homes by 2020. House-building must rise to meet these aims. At the time of the Green Paper we talked about increasing output to 240,000 new homes a year – actually, since estimates have risen we’re now talking about 260,000 to 270,000 homes a year potentially, and growing. Government, as I’m sure you felt today, has been extremely fast moving on this agenda, having recognised both it’s primacy and it’s urgency. Following the announcements of the housing Green Paper in July, we had the Housing and Regeneration Bill, which yesterday went through its second reading within the House of Commons. That is setting out the expectation for primary legislation for the creation of the Homes and Communities Agency. That agency will be designed to support delivery of housing supply, it will move our grant funding system from Social Housing, from a grant system, to an investment system, picking up infrastructure as well as housing and housing delivery. It will look to make better use of surplus public sector land, and maximise potential for brownfield development. It will also look to modernise the powers of the Corporation, English Partnerships, and some of the delivery functions of CLG, and will fundamentally reform social housing, and the regulation of it. What will it be, this Homes and Communities Agency? Well, it’ll be more than just a merger of English Partnerships, the Corporation, and CLG, - it will be a new non-departmental public body, a multi-disciplinary body with teams located across the country, one in each and every English region. It will have a significant investment programme; more than £8.4bn over the next three years. It will bring together the investment functions of the corporation, all of the functions of English Partnerships, and some of the delivery functions of communities and local government. And how will it operate? It will aim to provide a single offer to local authorities, it will have a business plan model which will aim to provide certainty to developers, investors, councillors, councils, landowners and the like. It will attempt to pull together government investment from a number of different sources, and have a synchronised point of investment. It will also build on the successful track record of the Housing Corporation in levering-in private sector investment; and a key part of the work it’ll do, both in the Gateway and throughout the country, will be about unlocking infrastructure. So, what will it be doing in the Gateway? We described it as, I suppose, a knotty issue that needs to be untangled. Setting out what I think are some of
the key challenges, and you will have been discussing those and debating those over the last couple of days, lets start with infrastructure. If the last few years have been talking about the issues and the challenges around infrastructure, what you heard from Gordon Brown today was perhaps the strongest and clearest signal that government has taken the infrastructures issue absolutely seriously. The package of investment proposed for the Gateway over the next few years - which includes not just transport, but health, schools, and community support - is I think unparalleled; it certainly shows that the government recognises the infrastructure issue and is putting its money where its mouth is. Then we have the quality agenda, and I’m delighted to say that not only did Yvette Cooper pick up the quality challenge yesterday in her speech, but it’s something that the Corporation has been absolutely at the forefront in driving and addressing. A year or so ago, we commissioned the Tim Williams Commission to look at quality and to make sure that it was first in terms of its thinking around housing and housing design; I’m delighted to say, that’s come through and will come through in terms of the big messages in the Thames Gateway Delivery Plan. The Corporation, as part of that commitment, has identified CABE as a key enabler and key supporter of the delivery agenda, and we will be and have, asked CABE to go and look at the things that are being developed in the Gateway, to give us feedback on the quality that’s being achieved, and to give feedback to all of those organisations involved in development. Another key challenge was the acceleration of delivery; we’ve talked about the need, the sites are there, they are identified, we know of them, but what we do need to do is to make sure that delivery is cranked up, is accelerated. Then there was the issue of capacity in people, and that of a detailed housing plan. Talking about the aspiration, yes, but actually about how are we going to deliver it. That’s where the likes of the Corporation and our partners, will be absolutely clear, because delivery is our business, that is what we are about. In doing that, it will be crucial that we engage well with local authorities and regional assemblies, with Regional Development Agencies, and all of the “governmental architecture”. So what will the Government be doing? In a sense, Gordon Brown stole this slide; you heard the package of investment that will be going in, you heard about the housing and planning delivery grant. Some £510m over the next
three years potentially - that’s the equivalent of £1,000 for each new unit to be provided, supporting Local Authorities to increase and accelerate delivery. And what will we expect in return? Five-year rolling programmes being identified and pushed through; 15 years’ worth of sites and land capacity being identified, being pushed through; the expectation that Local Authorities will step up to the plate, and will aim to tackle the issue of empty homes. And what will the Homes and Communities Agency be doing? Well, on the basis that quite a lot of work has been happening at RDA level and at housing corporation level, and at English Partnerships level, the first thing is to make sure that those commitments flow through. That is, we’ve started on the delivery challenge, and we’ve started on the delivery road, we actually do take those existing commitments into the new programme; fundamentally supporting the Delivery Plan launched today, making sure that that is turned into something that’s practical and deliverable; delivering on estate renewal, and having that as a core part of the work and the business of the Homes and Communities Agency; developing Local Authority special purpose vehicles; working with Local Authorities to look at joint ventures that bring together the private and public sector to deliver more and faster; using surplus public sector land in a very different way from the way it has been used in the past and, through some of our interventions, actually supporting a different way of investment; going out to the market more regularly; delivering on a five-year and further time horizon; committing to three years’ worth of funding now, so that there is certainty in the marketplace. And it begins now. This is not something that we’ve sat around and thought about; it is something that has been generating, and generating, and generating. And if ever there was an opportune moment, if ever there was an identification of the “this is now for real”, I think Gordon Brown’s statements earlier today were absolutely real. We’ve started to see the step up in delivery; 2,700 homes are expected to be delivered this year, a rise on the 2,300 homes of last year. We’re expecting more to come through. English Partnerships’ 220-odd homes in its affordable homes programme through FDPI, again, is expected to accelerate, and the Corporation in its programme now, expects to deliver some 10,000 homes over the next couple of years. We will be going back out to the market in the next six months, and we expect that number to grow, and we’re all clear; if we’re going to deliver the numbers, and we’re going to deliver the quality, and we’re going to deliver the sustainability that we all need and we know is crucial, we will need to crank up that delivery.
Now, just to give you a sense of where we are now in terms of the delivery challenge, this is the map of the sites that are available. Across the Gateway, exist significant opportunities. This is the map of the sites that are proposed to come through in our investment programme for the next couple of years. You will see a matching within those sites; there is much, much, much, much more potential to do more. So in a sense, what we’re now doing is, we’re taking the low hanging fruit. What we will be doing, as we develop the infrastructure funding, as we make sure that that funding is in place; we will be able to accelerate that delivery. Crucially important, both in terms of the work that the Corporation will be doing over the next 18 months, the work that English Partnerships will be doing over the next 18 months, and the work that we will be doing to support the Homes and Communities Agency, will be supporting the delivery plan. The first priority is economic development; the second is housing. We welcome that there has to be that absolute virtual circle of improvement in economy, support in housing, housing supporting economy and generally creating a better and stronger area and environment. We’ll be working hard to support the top 10 strategic housing programmes, making sure that we both support the delivery, and support the infrastructure that goes into it. As part of that, and one the reasons why collaboration and cooperation are so important, is because government has significantly increased the amount of funding that will go to the Corporation, and in so doing significantly increased the amount of funding that will go into affordable housing. We must use that funding more efficiently. We must lever-in much more private sector investment as part of that process. And what will we be doing? We’ll be supporting the growth agenda. Yvette talked about the support for growth points, and potential for eco-towns. We will be supporting estate renewal, and we won’t be waiting for 18 months to be doing that, we’re already doing it across the Gateway. Kidbrooke, an excellent example of the Local Authority, English Partnerships and the Corporation coming to the table, to achieve major estate regeneration. We will be developing the Local Authority special purpose vehicles. There are some 14 Local Authority, local housing company pilots currently being developed, but there are also eight pre-qualified Local Authority and arms length management join venture vehicles already pre-qualified to potentially bid for grants through the Corporation, as part of this bids round.
We are building on that now. We will be developing those joint ventures over the next 18 months to three years, and we will be aiming to attract private sector partners. We’re already seeing the likes of First Base Stratford, being developed between Lend Lease, First Base and East Thames. Real and genuine partnerships between the private and public sector, and we expect to see more of that. Certainly also, there’s an expectation around the use of public sector land, a significant amount of which, in the Gateway, will definitely contribute to the delivery, both over the medium and longer term. And that’s not just government departments; the health sector, rail bodies and the like, will also contribute, and Local Authorities will contribute as well. Our work with Local Authorities will be key to delivery, and as an expert partner, we will support those Local Authorities where the capacity is not great. We will have a lighter touch where those Local Authorities are strong, and positive and bold in terms of their delivery plans, and there are many of these across the Gateway. The second reading of the new Homes and Communities Agency Bill happened yesterday. If all goes to plan, by April 2009, we will have that new organisation up and running. But as I said, it’s started already, and we’ve already got case studies of good practice. Abbot’s Wharf, East Thames Housing Group, working with a small developer, Telford Homes, won the House Building Design of the year award last year – good quality design, well delivered, delivered quickly, delivered with support from the Local Authority. But it’s not just about housing, it’s actually the right type of housing. This is a supported housing scheme. Look ahead, crucially important as part of the development, and not only supported housing, but larger family homes, and I’m delighted to say that the Corporation, building on its track record of working with the RDAs, working with the Local Authorities, working with the GLA, has delivered some 34% of its programme for three-bed and larger homes. As part of the work of the New Homes Agency, we will certainly be wanting to ensure that we’re getting the right type of homes, not just apartments – larger homes, homes for supported families, homes that meet a diverse need and range. So, in conclusion, the Homes and Communities Agency that will come into being in 18 months, will aim to support the strategic direction mapped out in the delivery plan. The Corporation has the largest affordable housing programme of its history, but there is a challenge to the Gateway; we’ve got
the sites, those sites are identified, we can see the shoots of delivery coming through, but we need to crank up that delivery. Our competitive bid system shows that the schemes and the opportunities are coming through. The opportunities are ahead, Gordon Brown has set out the challenge, Gordon Brown today has set out the funding that will be there, the funding is there now for infrastructure, the funding is there now for housing, the land is there, the opportunity is ahead, let’s go and do it, and make some fantastic places. Thank you very much.