Hull raiser

As is often the case with revelations, Bob Pringle realised the secret of success in the toilet. In the award-winning public toilets next to The Deep aquarium in Hull, to be precise.

“It was fantastic,” he explains. “Everything was pristine and the attendant was so enthusiastic – he gave us the history of that whole little bit of Hull. Hull people are very friendly and proud of the city, and he was the epitome of that.”

That was Pringle’s introduction to the quiet but unshakeable civic pride of Hull’s citizens and it’s this he intends to harness in his new job as chief executive of the housing market renewal pathfinder in Hull and East Riding.

When we meet, he’s been at Gateway, as the pathfinder is known, for a month and his enthusiasm shows no sign of waning. Just as well, because turning round Hull’s housing market will be no small task. While Hull does not necessarily present a greater challenge than the complex terrain of the East Lancashire pathfinder area, its economy is comparatively isolated and the city has a distinct public image problem. Gateway itself has been slow off the blocks, dogged by political in-fighting at the council. It finally submitted its housing strategy to the ODPM last month, eight months after the others.

Visitors to Hull could be forgiven for missing its potential. The train draws in past rows of derelict terraces and the first view of the city proper – the adjoining bus station – is ugly and dilapidated. According to a 2002 report by Birmingham University’s Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, just over half of Hull’s housing stock – 56,000 homes – is at risk of low demand. More than three-quarters of its homes are in the lowest council tax band. The city has only 41 homes in the top band, including the mock-Tudor castle that John Prescott, deputy prime minister and MP for Hull East, calls his official home.

Hull fails to capture the wealth that flows through its expanding freight and passenger port. Few graduates from its two universities choose to stay and even the indigenous population (248,000 people in 2002) is fleeing to more prosperous East Riding, which surrounds the city. To add insult to injury, last summer Hull topped The Idler website’s poll of “crap towns”.

Pringle was head of regeneration at Coventry-based Keynote Housing Group when he was approached about the Gateway job. He admits the role did not immediately grab him, but he was pleasantly surprised: “There’s a sense that something is going on. The place is on the turn for the better.”

Pringle is excited by the size of the challenge. “Hull is arguably the biggest prize of all the pathfinders,” he says. “If we can solve the problems of Hull and reinvigorate it, you will have the re-emergence of a major city in the country – and it will help to take the city-region idea forward.”

It’s a bold vision and exactly what Hull needs to pull it out of the doldrums. Strolling through the city centre, Pringle points out reminders of its prosperous history – the imposing architecture of the buildings, a statue on every street corner. “Hull’s a sleeping giant. You can see how affluent it was at one time and there’s no reason it can’t be again,” says Pringle.

There is, he explains, palpable evidence of an upturn, including the success of The Deep and the KC Stadium, a 25,000-capacity sport and concert venue. Both are being extended.

Pringle compares Hull to Manchester or Liverpool 20 years ago. “Hull’s not as advanced, but it’s got the potential. It’s got water features, historic buildings, it’s nicely placed within the region. All the right ingredients are there.”

Moving from a regeneration director role to the pathfinder, Pringle says, was a logical move: “The pathfinder is not just about housing so much as neighbourhoods and the wider regeneration agenda.”

Pringle hopes this ambitious vision can inspire others: “It’s about giving confidence to the city. In Newcastle Gateshead, for example, there’s a very confident air. In Hull, people are just starting to get that confidence and it needs to translate in the general population rather than just the suits involved in economic development. We need to give people a view of what can be done and raise their aspirations.”

The pathfinder is just one of the bodies set on turning Hull around. The city also has an urban regeneration company, Hull City Build – a joint venture between the council and the regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, with English Partnerships playing a supporting role. It has prepared a masterplan for the city centre, which will feed into the pathfinder’s own plans, and aims to boost infrastructure, office and retail space.

The bus station will be redeveloped over the next four years into a £180m, 16 ha shopping, leisure and transport complex including 200 city-centre homes. As well as bringing in stores that have never had a presence in Hull before – Zara and H&M, for example – it will provide a new home for the highly regarded Hull Truck theatre company and create 2000 jobs.

Hull is arguably the biggest prize of all the pathfinders. If we can reinvigorate it, you will have the re-emergence of a major city in the country

Bob Pringle

Slicker city

Drawing people back into the city, Pringle believes, is a matter of providing an attractive variety of accommodation and improving the shopping and leisure facilities.

We take his photograph in front of his own home, a luxury 115-unit development where just eight flats are left, selling for between £125,000 and £260,000 – unthinkable in the city even five years ago. The bottom three floors are the new base of the BBC’s regional news operation, something of a coup for the city.

Gateway is due to start spending in April. Pringle will spend the next few months negotiating with the ODPM over the pathfinder’s bid for £70m. He admits that the department has a “healthy scepticism” about Hull’s ability to deliver, but is confident that the strategy is “plausible and logical”.

Pringle mentions the need to rebalance demand and supply, mix tenures, improve transport and address community infrastructure and safety issues. In particular, he will work with the city’s education department to match school places to housing. But with no guarantee of how much cash the ODPM will grant, he is cagey about specifics: “There’s been a lot of consultation for a long time in Hull and people want to see something happen. I don’t want to raise their expectations prematurely.”

Because housing is such a political football in Hull, Pringle was the only person surprised when the local press gave his appointment extensive coverage, branding him a “housing czar”. Previous regeneration projects had been hindered by point-scoring between Labour and Lib Dem factions in the council. Now Labour-controlled, the local authority has been under partial supervision since November 2003 because of its failure to agree a housing strategy.

So what makes Pringle think the pathfinder can finally make progress? “We’ve got this far and got the prospectus in. It’s been well put together – we’ll see what happens at the end of the negotiations.” He cites the appointment of new chief executives at Hull council and at Hull City Build as auspicious. He also believes the pathfinder has helped to resolve tensions between Hull and neighbouring East Riding council. Even though all the intervention areas are in Hull, by drawing people back into the city, the strategy should relieve mounting pressure on land in towns such as Beverley.

We don’t need no politicisation

Keeping the community on side, and resisting the politicisation of the pathfinder plans, is key for Pringle. Rather than embarking on controversial wholesale demolition, Pringle says it will follow the wishes of communities in each intervention area, and begin building housing to “raise aspirations and give people an alternative”.

“We want to ensure the community stays together if it wants to, we don’t want to force people to move. Building on what’s there is obviously the best option,” he says. “Compulsory purchase is a last resort.”

Pringle’s CV holds another clue to how he developed his vision for the city. He oversaw the £40m Docklands campus of the University of East London, completed in 2000. “There are a lot of parallels with Hull – port-related activities, difficult to get around, low skilled population, declining industry. If you’d told people what Docklands would look like now, no one would have believed you,” he says.

“A lot of achieving things is about believing you can do it. You get that in other cities, I don’t see why we couldn’t do it here.”

Pringle recalls a conversation with a young mother when he visited a primary school in a low-income east London district. “She pointed to Canary Wharf and said, ‘I want my kid to work there’. That’s what we need to do in Hull – we need to get people to be confident that they can achieve things.”