Housing Corporation to head up £500m regeneration programme

Senior staff have joined the boards of all nine pathfinder organisations for market renewal, and one is to speak for social housing within the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Corporation investment director north Max Steinberg is to pioneer the regeneration work. He said: “We want to ensure the pathfinders share good practice and offer techniques for use elsewhere.”

Steinberg has seconded corporation strategy and policy manager Derek Long part time to the ODPM to join a team working up plans for the pathfinders.Long said: “Housing associations will have a key role as delivery vehicles for the pathfinders.”

The team is working with the pathfinders to draw up formal contracts setting out how they will operate, the distribution of the expected £500m funding, and their structure.

The pathfinder board members are to act as “critical friends,” the corporation said. It is keen to ensure good practice is shared among the new organisations.

In some of the pathfinders, housing associations will be major stockholders. The corporation wants to encourage associations to take on wider regeneration and neighbourhood management roles.

Until now, associations have found it difficult to become involved in regeneration and pilot schemes as new approaches have been very limited, but the corporation hopes that the prospect of new funding will see them moving to centre stage.

Prime Focus head of group strategy Brendan Nevin has been appointed to head the North Staffordshire market renewal pathfinder. His work on demand at Birmingham University’s Centre for Urban and Regional Studies prompted calls for a long-term fund to turn around ailing housing markets across tenures.