Hyndburn and Haslingden MP Jones and David Ireland cross swords over demolitions

Submitted by David Gibbens on 16 December, 2012 - 19:10

Graham Jones, Labour MP for Haslingden and Hyndburn and David Ireland of the Empty Homes Agency have engaged in an interesting debate about demolitions in Jones's blog. Jones makes a robust defence of the need for demolitions in his constituency while Ireland quotes statistics about the size of local housing waiting lists in defence of the need to retain empty homes and bring them back into occupation.

One of the virtues of Jones' reply is that he starts to deconstruct what housing waiting list figures actually mean in practice, in particular that they reflect people's needs for better housing at affordable rents rather than the need for any old housing at any price. But David Ireland's reply to these points has yet to appear (if it ever will) so this is not necessarily the end of the argument on that aspect of the debate. [Update: David Ireland was not able to reply on Graham Jones's blog but did reply on his own blog as reported in a comment attached to this story]

David Ireland's reply doesn't appear to concede any ground on the need to demolish homes at all in the current housing market, even in the extreme circumstances of Hyndburn. This is a fairly significant hardening of the EHA's position over the years since Jonathan Ellis's tenure as Chief Executive. [Update: see David's comment below on this issue]

Graham Jones hasn't so far addressed one of Ireland's main complaints ie that the Market Renewal exercise itself contributed significantly to the issues of abandonment and market decline by blighting the areas targeted for renewal. However, the continuing problems of area decline are certainly strongly related to the abrupt termination of the Pathfinder funding. The merit of the arguments for and against will eventually become clearer when the dust settles and we discover whether sustained attempts to reinvigorate the housing markets in the areas affected are successful or not.

The debate can be found here. For fuller details about the HMR Pathfinder programme refer to the link to the Commons Note in our library here or refer to all the related materials by searching using the relevant tag.

Also featured on Jone's blog is a long and interesting letter from the Chair of a Liverpool Welsh Streets Residents' Association which airs the seldom-reported perspective of residents who have welcomed the Market Renewal outcomes (where they have been achieved!).

NB this article should not be taken as promoting one view over another - if you are interested visit the blog and draw your own conclusions.

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Class war on EHN?

Submitted by Nick P-G on 18 December, 2012 - 12:05.

Good to see the "Housing Waiting List Vs nos Empty Homes" mantra being delved into a bit. The principle is fine as a headline, but is not the be-all-and-end-all. The sector must not loose sight of the diversity of empty homes types, places, costs, etc nor forget that the "Housing Waiting List" is comprised of individuals and families who have diverse needs and aspirations.

But what really caught my jaundiced eye was a small exchange by the authors, thus...

Mr. Jones said, "It's time the debate moved from the fine dining tables of Central London". Mr. Ireland replied, "southerners like me are dictating national policy".

One of those statements made me wince, though there's truth in both statements in one way or another. I must confess that I too am a Southerner (Wessex boy, not London).

Nick P-G

Reading BC

01189373091

De-misting

Submitted by admin on 20 December, 2012 - 12:41.

Nick, it's "class war" on Graham Jones's blog not on the EHN website.

It may be your humour is too subtle for me on this occasion but that statement "southerners like me are dicatating national policy" attributable to David Ireland is what David said Graham Jones was saying, not what David Ireland himseld claimed.

David Gibbens (EHN Policy and Supoprt)

David Ireland's reply to Graham Jones

Submitted by admin on 20 December, 2012 - 12:34.

In the original news story it was stated that David Ireland had not responded to Graham Jones's reply to his first letter. This proves not to have been the case - the reply is on David Ireland's own blog because he was not able to post a comment on Graham Jones's blog.

David's reply is given in full below, as it also addresses some of the points made in our first story for example the EHA's stance on demolitions generally.

Dear Graham,

I’m very grateful for your reply. Funnily enough I agree with some of what you say, but perhaps that’s because you are rebutting arguments that I haven’t made.

I’d like to challenge a few points though. Firstly your declining population point: Lancashire county council’s population projections don’t agree with you. They show a slow but steady increase in population for Hyndburn over the next twenty years. But perhaps they haven’t factored in the council’s demolition policy, which, as I’ll come onto, may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I’d also like to correct you on our policy on demolition. It isn’t actually true that we're against it on principle; I think it’s a sensible approach sometimes where obsolete housing needs to be replaced. What I’m against is speculative clearance. Knocking people's houses down in the hope that the cheap land it frees up will lure in a private developer to build something.

I’m not in favour of public subsidy footing the bill for renovating all empty homes. I do think its pragmatic for government to invest in refurbishing empty homes to create affordable housing. As you know there was a grant program this year that did just that, but I see Hyndburn didn’t apply. However, another bidding round has just opened, and I’d be more than happy to help the council make an application.

I see that you didn’t comment on my questions about how the houses you want knocked down became empty in the first place. It’s important to point out that a lot of empty houses in ex housing market renewal areas were decanted and the program caused blight leading to many others becoming empty. Of course the housing market was weak in the first place, but the HMR program poured £2.5bn of taxpayers money in with little obvious benefit, and left a lot of problems like the scale of housing vacancy we are discussing here. .

You are right on this point, I accept that refurbished empty houses might not be the aspirational choice for all the 4001 families on the councils waiting list, but at least the houses exist and can be readily made into decent homes. Your proposal of knocking them down combined with the area’s nonexistent house building programme would mean that most of the 4001 families won’t get a house at all. Faced with this, what do you think they’ll do? I think they'll move somewhere else, which is why your policy probably is a self-fulfilling prophecy.