Housing Market Renewal - More for Less
13 July 2010
Job success provides excellent value for money
J21, Oldham Rochdale HMR’s local construction employment and training initiative has helped more than 550 local residents into construction related jobs by enabling them to take advantage of opportunities on partners’ building projects.
The programme, launched by Housing Market Renewal partners and local colleges five years ago, maximises the social and economic benefits of major publicly funded construction projects taking place across both boroughs.
Residents involved in J21 are all local job seekers and can get help with everything from writing CVs to handling interviews, CSCS accreditation, bespoke health & safety training and even university degree courses.
J21 also provides business support to 300+ local construction SMEs registeres with the scheme, giving them an efficient and reactive recruitment service that covers every discipline from general operatives to the professions.
Looking at landpooling
A novel landpooling agreement in Middleton has saved the public purse hundreds of thousands of pounds by eliminating the need for costly public sector gap funding.
The agreement between landowners Rochdale Council and housing association Riverside Pennine covers eight sites owned by one or other partner on Middleton's Langley estate.
It aims to make development of the areas as attractive as possible to investors by 'pooling' the nearby sites so prospective developers need only deal with one landowner.
Under the deal the two landowners also agree to treat the transaction as an investment by accepting just a nominal price for the land in favour of a more realistic reimbursement once the development is complete and land values have risen.
The agreement cuts out the need for gap funding – public funding traditionally needed in HMR to compensate developers for the gap between the cost of building and the achievable sale price.
The pooling agreement also solves the problems of selling land at a time when market prices are so low.
Showing the UK how to measure impact
The Pathfinder has unveiled nationally significant research exploring how community cohesion projects can have maximum impact. Oldham Rochdale’s Cohesion Counts initiative measured the impact of a total of seven different projects by surveying residents’ feelings on a range of issues – from satisfaction with their neighbourhoods to relationships with other residents – before projects got underway. The surveys were repeated at the end of the projects. Evaluation showed differing impacts, for example some projects were better at improving a sense of belonging than others and others were better at improving people’s satisfaction with the area in which they live. More broadly, the Pathfinder has developed a robust approach to measuring the success of its core business of improving local housing markets. It has identified and applied a series of four key indicators including house prices, the number of long term vacant properties; social lets per 1,000 social properties and percentage of households claiming Council Tax benefit. Analysis of indicator results to date suggests that intervention in the Pathfinder’s first wave intervention areas is having a positive impact on the housing market.
Oldham Rochdale is helping lead the way in developing robust evaluation techniques to chart the impact of publicly funded initiatives and ensure they provide best possible value for money.Going further to cut carbon
Environmental specifications of new homes built in Oldham Rochdale HMR will continue to exceed minimum national standards under the Pathfinder’s commitment to cutting carbon.
New homes across the HMR area will conform to at least Code for Sustainable Homes Level Three - much higher than housing not receiving public funding - by incorporating advanced insulation, solar panels or other energy saving features. At St Mary's in Oldham, HMR is supporting a development of 93 houses, which includes a pilot project to construct four carbon neutral properties. The flagship development is being led by Oldham Rochdale partner Contour Housing.
HMR's £15m NEET saving
The Oldham Rochdale claim is based on research demonstrating clear links between poor housing and the attainment and aspirations of young people. Chartered Institute of Housing estimates show that for every £1.20 spent on providing decent homes saves the taxpayer £1.80 on the cost of supporting a NEET. Assuming only one young person is positively affected per two households (half the CIH estimate), the Oldham Rochdale saving could be as high as £15 million (the Pathfinder has built 370 homes at a cost of £20.1 million since starting operations). The eight-year agreement brings together a total of six sites owned by HMR in the Werneth area of Oldham, which has succeeded in attracting a single developer to take responsibility for building up to 500 homes on the sites. Oldham Rochdale Director, Alastair Graham said, “Werneth becomes a more attractive proposition to a developer where there is a critical mass of land and the opportunity for the selected developer to achieve economies of scale. “Using a framework agreement covering all the sites gives us more bargaining power and means we can actually demand more value from developers and ensure we do not waste money on unnecessary procurement.” The Pathfinder has used its enhanced bargaining power to demand higher building standards and material quality as well as training opportunities from developers, who have also been responsible for refurbishing existing stock in the area. A third of the 500 new homes will be for affordable rent. The rest will be a mix of 2, 3, 4 and 5 bed homes for sale.
Housing Market Renewal work in Oldham and Rochdale is estimated to have saved taxpayers millions of pounds off the cost of supporting young people not in education, employment or training (NEETS).Better bargaining power in Oldham
A framework agreement for reviving the local housing market in Oldham is set to reap extra benefits for the community.
