Slipping through the net?

Turn a corner and you are confronted by a desolate open space where such-and-such a factory used to be.

And abandoned houses, discarded fridges and rubbish-strewn gardens are an all too common sight in the outlying council estates.

It's a place where whole streets, even entire estates can go from relative stability to complete collapse within six months. All it takes is one anti-social tenant with a sideline in scrap metal, it seems.

On sunny days the few remaining tenants in the worst-affected areas sit blank-faced in front of their homes. They seem to be wondering how things could have gone so wrong so quickly.

Welcome to Bradford.

Great strides have been made to find new sources of wealth and employment following the collapse of the once-mighty textile industry, with call centres, retail and leisure schemes - but urban decay and poverty are still there.

Not that this is anything particular to the West Yorkshire city. As everyone from the government, Lord Rogers to Anne Power is saying, this is a story being repeated in city after city in the north and midlands.

So it is no surprise then that Bradford continually wins funding through the Single Regeneration Budget - the all-embracing, multi-billion pound regeneration challenge fund designed to combat these problems.

In fact the city has won funding in every one of its four rounds. And now, with the winners of the latest, fifth round due this week, the city has two more bids - one to improve run-down private housing, and a citywide capacity-building initiative.

But what exactly is SRB and how well has it performed?

When it was conceived by the Major government in the early 1990s, it was one of the first area-based challenge funds, designed to attract large amounts of private funding into deprived areas through public-private partnership.

After three rounds under the Tories, the new Labour government surprised many people by giving it a new lease of life - in stark contrast to similar regimes such as Estates Renewal Challenge Fund, which was unceremoniously dumped last year.

SRB's wide-ranging remit allowed the new government flexibility to refashion it away from the 'bricks and mortar' approach of the Tories to a more people-oriented focus encompassing employment, education and health - the 'joined-up' agenda we now know so well.

And after an initial SRB funding round after taking office, the changes gained momentum in last year's Comprehensive Spending Review. From now on, SRB would work in tandem with the new regeneration flagship - New Deal for Communities.

While NDC would target concentrated deprivation in the poorest neighbourhoods, SRB would cast its net over a sligtly wider area. In all, some £2.3 billion will be channeled into deprived areas over the three-year period of the spending review through the regime.

At the same time, control of SRB was passed on to the new regional development agencies.

According to regeneration minister Richard Caborn, strong regional economic development financed through SRB would begin to tackle the enormous problem of north-south migration - to give people a reason to stay in the regions.

This would relieve housing demand in the south east and boost it in the north and midlands, he argued.

SRB would also link in with the all-embracing Social Exclusion Unit, playing a key role in its national strategy for neighbourhood renewal.

In fact, it was only last week that Caborn was in Bradford to see for himself how SRB could help, visiting an SRB-financed initiative called Youthbuild. The programme, part of the £9.5m Manningham/Girlington round four SRB aims to attract young Asian people to housebuilding trades.

Under Youthbuild, Bradford and Northern housing association provides a local properties in need of repair. In partnership with the local TEC, young Asians learn a range of skills from joinery, electronics and bricklaying 'on the job'.

After the house improvements are finished, B&N reinvests the property's increased capital value back into the project.

SRB community development co-ordinator Ehjaz Gull says: "We just noticed how few Asians were getting into the modern apprenticeships, when those skills are desperately needed around here. When Caborn saw those lads - who are pretty inarticulate - up on stage making speeches I think the point really hit home."

Just a few miles down the road in Wyke, Royds Community Association is over halfway through its seven-year, £100m SRB regeneration of three post-war estates in the south of the city.

Working in partnership with four housing associations - Hanover, Habinteg, Family and Brunel, Royds is implementing a three-pronged strategy combatting unemployment, poor education and living conditions.

Royds Community Association General manager Tony Dylak has little doubt about the reasons for their success which has seen an average of £18,000 spent on each house and local unemployment halved - previously 40 per cent it is now little over 20.

The secrets are maximum resident control, minimum council interference, and a clear vision, he says "Firstly and most importantly we have a resident majority on the board," he says. Twelve out of its 22 members live on the three estates, providing a walking talking 24-hour tenant participation function.

"They are there all the time. Everyone knows who they are, and they can and are stopped in the pub, on the street if people don't like what we are doing. That is real feedback," he maintains. Secondly the board is its own accountable body so receives funding directly rather than through the council. This greatly increases its independence, Dylak maintains.

The council is held in poor regard, he says, and independence is essential for engendering enthusiasm and belief.

Thirdly, the SRB knows exactly where it is going and how its programme will continue after the funding runs out. "Unsustainable regeneration is not an option. You build in from day one a forward strategy - what will happen when the money runs out. Every project has to meet this criteria. We will not allow a scheme to go ahead if it won't continue beyond the life of the SRB," says Dylak.

But it is far from plain sailing for all SRBs - things couldn't be more different at Bradford's Newlands partnership.

In 1996, when this £50m round three scheme was putting its bid together, it was advised to take out the housing element from the SRB and submit a parallel Estates Renewal Challenge Fund bid.

According to vice chair Gareth Logan, it was poor advice which has cost Newlands dear. Because although the SRB was given the go-ahead, the ERCF bid was knocked back, leaving the initiative with an education and employment remit but poor living conditions remain untouched.

At a stroke a key plank of the SRB's raison d'etre was removed, leaving residents seeing little tangible improvement in their immediate environment.

Logan suggests that this problem has compromised the partnership in other areas - if people don't get decent housing they could be too demoralised to train and get work, he maintains.

"Improvements to housing are vital for regeneration. The way things have gone it could be that many people will say that this SRB has not been a success - they will say "what has it done for me, my house has still got damp, rotten windows and no central heating," he says.

The irony means that while exterior improvements can go ahead - road calming, fencing, pathway revamps and so on - children can still be living in squalor inside.

Other attempts to secure funding for housing improvements such as PFI and New Deal for Communities have also failed, leaving board members feeling bitter.

A meeting between the partnership, council, government regional office and the RDA is scheduled for later this month but board members now have little faith that their needs will be met. Overall, of course it is impossible to draw up a balance sheet of the success and otherwise of the multifarious SRB initiatives across a city like Bradford, let alone England as a whole.

And many people would say that the scale of the problems people are trying to tackle are so deep-seated that any initiative is doomed to failure in the long run.

But the depth of innovation coming out of SRB projects, its continual re-invention to meet new priorities, and the obvious commitment from government suggests it will be around for some time yet.

And as long as it is, cities like Bradford will need their share.