It's not all about housing. Here, education specialist Leisha Fullick explains how the plan's focus on decent homes will help children do better in school and keep teachers living and working in deprived areas
The Communities Plan followed a steady stream of urban regeneration initiatives unveiled in the past six years. The approach has increasingly been to use "people-based" initiatives to empower communities. Education has been at the heart of this as there is a belief that higher educational attainment is key to ending poverty and social exclusion and to breaking the cycle of decline in deprived areas.

To some extent, this preoccupation with education has paid off. Educational attainment in the most deprived local authorities has been rising faster than the national rate of improvement. But this statistic belies the reality of of education for many people in challenging circumstances: refugees and asylum seekers, children from homeless families, children experiencing high levels of mobility or overcrowding. Schools with high numbers of such children are not bucking the trend, demonstrating that there is a link between the conditions in which children live and their performance at school. There is also a link between high teacher turnover and pupils' achievement.

In this context the Communities Plan could be hugely important to the life chances of the country's young people – and central to any strategy for real educational equality and social cohesion. It will only do this if housing strategy becomes central to the thinking of all those involved in the "softer" side of community regeneration and if the plethora of bodies and agencies who are to be involved in the delivery of sustainable communities do more to integrate with education planning and policy.

Planning for teacher retention means vastly improved school buildings and transport must be part of the new housing plans

Initiatives such as Excellence in Cities and Partnerships for Progression are focusing on support programmes for pupils from deprived backgrounds and on getting more such pupils into higher education. Why not build in, from the start, similarly ambitious programmes in the housing growth areas?

Meanwhile, key worker housing investment is only part of the picture for teacher retention and will only help in the longer term if the Department for Education and Skills is making other opportunities available to increase teachers' sense of worth – professional development opportunities and better teachers' centres, for instance. But planning for teacher retention also means new or vastly improved school buildings, better transport and leisure facilities that will give teachers a sense of being part of a common community enterprise that gives them recognition and tangible benefits. These are all part of the thinking needed for the new housing plans.

Plan’s people: English Partnerships

As well as the Housing Corporation, five newcomers to the sector are delivering the plan. The first is English Partnerships – it may sound like a Joanna Trollope novel, but actually it’s a quango. So what does it do?
It aims to create “quality places to live and work”, boost regeneration funding and help the government accommodate at least 60% of new household growth on brownfield. In its spare moments, it tackles housing market renewal, overseeing growth area investment and working with NHS Estates to free up land. It has a joint protocol with the Housing Corporation to bring forward sites and tackle low demand and will sit on the new regional housing boards. It is also investigating a new gap funding regime to plug shortfalls between development cost and sale price. Is it any wonder some say it’s treading on the corporation’s toes? So, can it deliver the goods?
Housing professionals regard the quango as having greater political influence than in previous years. A bigger remit, a no-nonsense chair and a strategic national vision mean it has good potential for grasping what one consultant calls “big-picture regeneration, renaissance on a grand scale”. Continued close working with the Housing Corporation is vital to this – indeed, English Partnerships might absorb the corporation altogether (see “The Brenda agenda”, page 28). But I hear it has a dubious past …
Source say the agency has been “slow moving and ineffective”, and it’s had precious little to do with housing in the past. Councils have complained that it works in a vacuum, ignoring housing and infrastructure issues. It’s had something of a chequered history, too: apart from presiding over the beleaguered Millennum Dome site – a ball and chain until it was sold to developers last year – it suffered the embarassment of the Millennium Village at Allerton Bywater running four years behind schedule. Plus, staff have had a reputation for being a trifle bolshie. Surely there must be some hope.
Yes, according to tough-talking chair Margaret Ford, who has been in the job for almost a year now. “I’d heard that English Partnerships had an attitude problem,” Ford told Housing Today last October. “I’ve been saying to staff that I don’t want to hear that anymore. If they’ve got an attitude, lose it damn quick because I’ve got no time for it.”

Source

Housing Today

Postscript

Leisha Fullick is pro-director for London education at the Institute of Education and former chief executive of Islington council, north London