The recommendations of the taskforce, set up by deputy prime minister John Prescott to find solutions to reverse the decline of Britain's inner cities, are likely to form the basis of an urban white paper. This is to be published in October, along with a rural white paper.
The taskforce is set to deliver a radical blueprint for what needs to be done to attract people back into inner-city areas, and will call for a complete rethink of the way urban schemes are designed. It will also make clear that the government must bear a large part of the cost of the urban renaissance. "Recreating our cities won't come cheap," a taskforce member told Building. "And the government must accept that it has to bear the brunt of the cost."
The good news for housebuilders is that the report will tell government that its target of building 60% of new homes on brownfield or derelict land will not be achieved unless local authorities take a more proactive approach to development. The bad news is it will also recommend that restrictions, in the form of punitive taxes, be placed on greenfield development in an attempt to ensure that housebuilders and developers direct their attention towards poorer urban areas.
It will call for the creation of partnering agreements between local authorities, developers and businesses to ensure that urban areas are underpinned with long-term employment. This could be done by encouraging developers to offer businesses incentives to locate in certain areas –low rents for an initial period, for example. There will also be tax concessions for businesses that locate in targeted inner-city areas.
Lord Rogers has made no secret of his belief that urban regeneration must be design-led, sustainable and environment-friendly. Consequently, the taskforce will call for an end to what one leading member described as the "plantation of unattractive suburban boxes and cul de sacs in urban areas".
Instead, it will call for imaginatively designed, high-density, mixed-use developments with limited or no parking facilities and improved public transport links. It will also recommend the introduction of road pricing and extending workplace parking tax to other areas, such as supermarkets, in an attempt to reduce car use in cities.
The Dutch model for town roads, which have designated lanes for cyclists, buses and private cars, formed a large part of the taskforce's thinking on urban regeneration.
Creating pedestrianised communities
The essence of the report is an intention to create communities where people are less reliant on their cars and can walk or cycle to work or school. Provisions to attain this include the creation of pedestrianised communities and greater use of traffic-calming measures. The new urban areas should also include public parks and other communal spaces, where, according to a taskforce member, "people can interact with each other, improving the overall quality of their urban life".
Lord Rogers' admiration for the blend of subsidised and private housing schemes common in The Netherlands and Germany is renowned, and he has expressed his desire to see schemes where the two types are mixed and indistinguishable from each another.
To this end, the report will recommend the "pepper-pot approach" to housing, where private dwellings are interspersed with subsidised housing rather than segregated in different blocks. The report will also recommend an end to housebuilders "opting out" of section 106 agreements (whereby housebuilders commit to allocating part of a development for social housing) by offering local authorities a lump sum. This will ensure that all developers build in a social housing element.
These recommendations are unlikely to find favour with housebuilders. As the director of one volume housebuilder put it: "My customers do not want to find themselves living next door to people who have a clapped out Ford Cortina resting on four sets of bricks outside their gate. Pepper-potting is unworkable."
However, housebuilders may not have a choice. One taskforce member was equally blunt: "If they don't like it, they can lump it. I mean, where will they go? If they want to build schemes, this is what they must do." There will be a carrot dangled before housebuilders, probably in the form of tax concessions for those adhering to the high-density, mixed-development criteria, and possibly even government funding. "Clearly, there needs to be government assistance to get social housing into schemes. Developers are not going to gain points from shareholders if they do it for nothing," explained one taskforce member.
Other measures to cheer housebuilders include a fast-track appeals process (predicted in Building on 8 January), to encourage housebuilders to lodge appeals in cases where local authorities fail to decide on an application within the recommended eight-week period. The report will also call for some brownfield sites originally earmarked by local authorities for industrial development to be freed up for residential use.
Re-educating local authorities
Proposals to ensure a more effective use of compulsory purchase orders in targeted areas could include provisions for reducing the time allowed to appeal a CPO. However, the general consensus – as planning minister Richard Caborn found in his investigation into the use of CPOs – is that local authorities simply need re-educating in how to use CPOs effectively.
With this last point in mind, the report also calls for the establishment of a number of "centres of excellence" (also predicted in Building) at colleges and universities, where urban development specialists, planners, developers and architects can gain MBA-type qualifications in urban design and planning.
Lord Rogers and his taskforce were keen to address other issues affecting urban life, including schools, welfare provision and healthcare in his report. However, deliberations on such matters were ruled out by Prescott, who feared the project was getting out of control and that the taskforce was going beyond its remit.
Also, an entire chapter calling for a sequential approach to development had to be scrapped when the government published draft Planning Policy Guidance Note 3 in March, which ordered local authorities to ensure that all available brownfield sites were considered for development before releasing greenfield land. "That was one of the main planks of the report," lamented one taskforce member. "Prescott and Caborn completely pre-empted it."
The question mark hanging over the entire exercise is how all these measures will be funded. For all the grand ideas of private-public partnerships, greenfield taxes and other fiscal measures, the government will have to come up with additional funds to put the taskforce's recommendations into practice.
Sceptics argue that, because the taskforce has no statutory powers, the government is not obliged to act on any of its proposals, and can ignore its recommendations entirely.
However, there is a general consensus among taskforce members that Prescott will push for many of its recommendations to be implemented. One member put it succinctly: "Prescott needs something big to prove he is listened to in government, so we're confident it will be pushed at the highest level."
But whether Lord Rogers' report does go on to form the blueprint for transforming Britain's inner cities, or is left to gather dust on a shelf in the Treasury, remains to be seen. Prescott's integrated transport white paper has yet to see the light of day, and many believe the Treasury will ensure a similar fate for the taskforce's report.
