Summit told regeneration skills investment is ‘core’ to councils’ functions

Councils must invest in attracting top rate regeneration professionals to secure the future of their areas, delegates to a Room 151 conference have been told.

At the recent Housing and Regeneration Finance Summit, organised jointly with Social Housing magazine, Martin Reeves, chief executive of Coventry City Council said that regeneration is now core to the activities of local councils.

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Reeves said it is vital that local authorities replenish internal skills which have been lost through a decade of austerity.

He said: “ We have seen a hollowing out of brilliant commercial surveyors, brilliant planners, brilliant urban designers and brilliant project managers.

“Some of them are going into the commercial sector and some are just knackered.”

He said that local authorities need to “put their money where their mouth is” in terms of capacity and capability.

He said: “We are going to have to invest well above the market rate on bringing in brilliant people because the truth is unless you’ve got brilliant people every day driving this stuff forward, even with great political support and chief executive will, there will be a disconnect.”

He said that councils must realise that “this is not about something that sits within the economic development, regeneration part of councils any longer. It is core to what we do.

“It is is important to the economic vitality of the areas – it is about the demands on social care, and housing challenges and temporary accommodation and violent crime.

“When you start investing in it, you realise it’s not a cost against regeneration it is a cost against the future in your place.”

Reeves also called for a more holistic approach to regeneration and a move away from a focus on isolated redevelopment projects.

Despite some “amazing physical reimagining” of some areas within the UK’s cities, “we are seeing a widening of inequalities in a number of those cities, including my own”, he said.

He added: “We have got to find a way with developers, investors and other partners to think about true masterplanning across our area and how the ecosystem works in our places.

“Perhaps more important than anything is what happens in our places in between regeneration schemes because that is going to differentiate good places from great places.

Also speaking during the session, Duncan Whitfield, strategic director of finance and governance at London Borough of Southwark, said that regeneration project can get stuck by a “lack of entrepreneurialism, an appetite to take risk and use instinct” within councils.

He said the relationship between officers and politicians is key to successful regeneration projects.

Whitfield also said that an early injection of cash helps to ensure the success of housing regeneration projects.

“Cash makes these things work. And if you haven’t got the cash they become rather troublesome and if you kick the can down the road and defer your cost to a later period well that’s a legacy that certainly I don’t want to take for my borough.”

The Room151 Weekly Newsletter covers local government treasury and pension investment, funding, development, resources and technical finance. Register here. 

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