No-go to go-go

Everyone in housebuilding has heard of Hulme. Over the past five years the 240-acre area to south of Manchester city centre has gone from no-go ghetto to the first stop on every urban regenerator’s fact-finding mission. Praise has been heaped on social housing schemes like Homes for Change, but less attention has been paid to the pioneering work done to establish a sizable private housing market there.

Until Bellway Urban Renewal started building in 1995, there was no private housing in Hulme. Under the regeneration, however, the 2500 units of social housing including the notorious Crescents are being replaced with equal numbers of social and private housing. Some 650 of those homes are being built by Bellway and so far, it has persuaded more than 300 Mancunians that a Bellway home in Hulme represents a good investment, with sales progress that is in advance of programme.

The scheme has made progress in other respects. The first phase of homes built by Bellway were two and three-bed standard housetypes, low in price and targeted at first-time buyers and former Hulme residents. The first reservation made was for a three-bed semi, priced at £41 795. Today, three-bedders are still available, but the price is £50 895. The buyers and the mix of housing available has moved upmarket to incorporate three-bed detacheds, and two and three-bed apartments in blocks that can rival Manchester’s best for urban chic. In April the housebuilder will set a new benchmark with the completion of the first three-bedroom, three-storey townhouses on the site. Priced at up to £77 000, the townhouses will be the most expensive, as well as the largest, homes it has yet developed there.

The key to this success has been “selling a reasonable product at reasonable prices,” according to Philip Whitehead, development manager at Bellway Urban Renewal. The housebuilder has also invested substantially in marketing to improve the public’s perception of Hulme. There has been radio advertising - featuring Bellway’s version of the Gold-Blend couple, Alison and Dave - and press advertisements carrying the optimistic slogan: “a colourful past - a bright future.”

“It’s not just our area, Hulme 5, it’s the whole of Hulme that’s changed,” says Frank Reil, managing director of Bellway Urban Renewal. “We were the private sale pioneers, but we were just supplying our normal disciplines to produce good quality, affordable homes.” Importantly, adds Reil, “there is not only a sense of place about Hulme, but also a sense of security,” generated by the self-policing street layouts, the courtyards that provide secure car parking and the clear boundaries, all features outlined in Hulme’s Guide to Development.

Still, regeneration would not have been achieved without pump priming. The cleared site was sold at a hefty discount to Bellway, which won the right to develop there following a contest of eight bidders. Bellway, the only housebuilder to make a solo bid for development, has outline planning permission on the whole site, drawing parcels of land down on leases in developable chunks. The housebuilder receives deficit funding from English Partnerships, which it draws down as it invests in its build programme.

From the start of Hulme’s regeneration some questions were raised about the wisdom of handing such large parcels of land over to relatively few players; alongside Bellway, North British Housing Association and The Guinness Trust developed the social housing and Amec the retail. It is therefore not surprising that Bellway’s housing, developed in accordance with the Hulme Guide to Development, but initially relying heavily on standard housetypes, has been criticised for its homogeneity. “The public authorities were so concerned about getting private sale into Hulme that they signed a deal for a huge area. With the best will in the world, it is difficult for any developer to build out that size of site without it looking samey,” says David Rudlin, director of Urban and Economic Development Group (URBED) and one of the co-authors of Manchester City Council’s Hulme Guide to Development.

“Now you would do smaller deals with a range of developers,” he continues. “The world’s moved on since Hulme was started. Assumptions about what is needed to sell houses have moved on, in terms of things like design and car parking. This was a testing ground for private sale in an inner city area, and there are lessons to learn from it.”

Bellway was aware of the potential problems of taking on a large site. “We were conscious of trying not to make it look the same, and as a consquence we have employed different architectural styles as we have progressed through the phases,” says Bellway’s Whitehead. “This has to be done on a large scale to generate confidence. When you are working in urban renewal, allied to private residential, you have got to convince buyers that there is a viability to it.”

Adds Reil: “With each phase we try to improve on the previous phase. We are continuously changing elevations and housetypes.” Buyers are obviously happy with the end results. Hulme even has investor buyers now, says Reil. And that must be the litmus test.