An enormous task lies ahead

After over a year of work, the Urban Task Force has delivered its report to the government on urban renewal. Launched at London's South Bank with over 1,000 people in attendance, the report was received warmly even though most of us were thumbing through the recommendations while the great and good were speaking.

John Prescott proved to us what we all knew: his joined-up shouting is more engaging that his script-reading. The deputy Prime Minister welcomed the document although he held back on saying what he was going to do about the 100 plus recommendations, which is about all he could do.

The report has five core sections which deal with: the sustainable city; making towns and cities work; making the most of our urban assets; making the investment; sustaining the renaissance.

The 105 recommendations deal with a range of issues and some of the major ones are analysed below.

* Revise planning and funding guidance to discourage local authorities from using 'density' and 'over-development' as reasons for refusing planning permission. A good idea - why do planners think high density - or more to the point, higher density - is necessarily bad? If land can be used more efficiently, cost savings should be ploughed into design quality and improved space standards.

* Set a maximum standard of one car parking space per dwelling for all new urban residential development. Since urban local planning authorities are beginning to acknowledge the need and even desirability of car-free developments, this recommendation from the task force is disappointing.

* Assign a strategic role to local authorities in ensuring management of the whole urban environment, with powers to ensure that other property owners including public utilities and agencies, maintain their land and premises to an acceptable standard. Interestingly, they do not say that local authorities should necessarily have to have the 'provider of service' role to deliver this.

* Create designated Urban Priority Areas, enabling local authorities and their partners in regeneration, including local people, to apply for special packages of powers and incentives to assist neighbourhood renewal. Local authorities shouldn't feel the need to wait for the Department of then Environment Transport and the Regions to consent to the full model which the task force recommends. There's much that could be done if there were some local agreement where the priority areas should exist, and channel money accordingly. The local government association's New Commitment to Regeneration model has a clear role to play here.

* Establish Urban Regeneration Companies to co-ordinate or deliver area regeneration projects by ensuring that local authorities, registered social landlords and regional development agencies have sufficient powers to participate fully as partners. This recognises that major urban renewal projects need strategic, proactive partnerships of the main regeneration players with powers to match that of private developers. Local planning authorities retain their powers under this model. The acknowledgement of RSLs as potential partners in these new regeneration vehicles is a recognition of the new role that many have carved out for themselves.

* Establish Housing Regeneration Companies to undertake regeneration in areas where there is badly deteriorated and vacant housing stock. The report has identified RSLs as the lead agency for these companies. This is a major opportunity for those organisations that have remained locally focused in areas of falling demand who want to do something - equipped with proper powers and adequate resources - about reversing or managing the decline. The report focuses on mainly private stock in rundown areas: this remit needs to be expanded to areas of mixed tenures. Even in some of the most deprived areas, there is a mix of some sort.

* Formally adopt a sequential approach to the release of land and buildings for housing, supported by a system of regional and sub-regional reconciliation of housing needs and demand. Planning guidance should specify monitoring procedures for every local planning authority to apply. Unless interim arrangements are put in place, there could be a logjam where greenfield development is halted, while brownfield sites are in the process of being identified and acquired. An increase in land prices would quickly follow where there is a shortage.

* Introduce a package of measures, including some debt cancellation, to enable local authorities with large social housing portfolios to transfer some or all of the stock to arms-length management organisations. Optimistic, but potentially the simplest way of creating community-focused housing organisations with the necessary assets and income streams to address local deprivation.

* Harmonise VAT as a zero rate in respect of new building, and conversions and refurbishments. If harmonisation can only be achieved at a 5 per cent rate, then a significant part of the proceeds should be reinvested in urban regeneration. An undercurrent to this recommendation is that the UK is alone in the European Union in imposing such a wide variation in rates for new build (0 per cent) and refurbishment (17.5 per cent). It is highly unlikely that a harmonious zero rating will be achieved. The 5 per cent rate is more likely and could potentially lead to more buildings being refurbished.

Where now? The report has been presented, its members and secretariat are going back to their day jobs. The ball is firmly in the government's court, and more specifically in John Prescott and Richard Caborn's court. The task force has helpfully set out who needs to do what - i.e., the Treasury, Customs & Excise, DETR, local authorities, Housing Corporation, etc. - to achieve each of the recommendations. Between now and autumn, the Urban Policy White Paper is being put together. What goes into that paper will be closely monitored by all those who have something to gain and lose from the task force recommendations.

Despite the sheer number of recommendations are there some missing elements? There is very little mention of the needs of black and minority ethnic communities. The Social Exclusion Unit highlighted that where there are high concentrations of deprivation, residents are four times as likely to be from ethnic minority backgrounds. These concentrations are overwhelingly in urban areas.

And how does the report address the needs of indigenous communities? Regeneration for many people in London has meant closed doors or complete displacement.

The reality is that many people want to live in inner London, Brighton and Bristol. The challenge for London and the south is that house and land prices are spiralling out of the reach of local people and affordable housing providers.

Many of the new residential developments in 'regenerated' London are owned by people who live there part time and have little interest in being part of a community. As a consequence, they are ghost towns in the evenings and weekends. This kind of redevelopment is neither regeneration nor urban renaissance.

For neighbourhoods suffering from abandonment and decline, so graphically illustrated on the Panorama programme the night before the Task Force launch, should we be thinking about redrawing city boundaries and ambitiously creating new urban greenfield sites? Additionally, should we be looking at creating business parks in urban areas where there is unemployment, rather than creating new, developments by the sides of motorways and on greenfield sites?

And what of the new vision of partnership? Not far from London's South Bank is the Greenwich Peninsula where the first Millennium Village is to be constructed. Was this not to be one of those public-private partnerships which would deliver the new vision for millennial living? Accusations have flown that the developer has put the affordable housing in the least attractive part of the site - instead of integrating it with the rest of the units - and that traditional construction techniques are being used because they sell better.

The architect resigned, the developer terminated the arrangement. These things happen, but the story somewhat overshadowed the launch and the report.

The biggest winners from the task force's work look likely to be local authorities and consequently they have most to lose if the report is shelved. The new regional and community focused agenda is squeezing local government's traditional place. Just as a door seemed to be shutting behind them, a new one is opening.

There is much they can do in the meantime to prepare and pave the way for some of the reforms that the Task Force have offered up. This could act as political leverage for enhanced allocations through current regeneration funding streams. Registered social landlords have done well also - a recognition of the role they currently play in delivering sustainable regeneration. More than anything, we have a recognition that housing is a catalyst for change.