Councils must "hunt together in packs" to share resources and gain extra cash, experts told the Chartered Institute of Housing's North-east conference on Thursday.
Housing Quality Network director Alistair McIntosh said smaller district councils lacked the resources to deal with the government's agenda by themselves. He said many of the best staff were being pulled away from service delivery to spend time writing strategies. "It is an act of government sabotage," he said.

Tees Valley Housing Group chief executive Alison Thain said the five councils and two housing associations working to regenerate Teesside have already secured £1m from regional development agency One North East to build a strategy together. The councils could make a single bid for housing investment programme funds, she said.

Denise Caudle, communities director at the Government Office for the North-east, backed the idea, saying the housing investment programme had "run its course".

She called for the programme for individual councils to end. Two or three councils, or a sub-regional group, should put in single bids, she said, warning: "We can't go on the way we are. Is it realistic for each council to produce a strategy that's totally at odds with its neighbours and has no synergy with them?"

Thain added that single reports by regeneration groups to councils would help secure the leadership needed to take decisions on clearance.

"We need people with the skills to sell the idea to residents and to tough it out when it comes to hard decisions," she said.

Source

Housing Today