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Mark Isherwood: Instead of regeneration, Wales, since devolution, has suffered from 13 years of missed opportunities as a result of dogma, with worsening levels of child poverty, youth unemployment and economic activity years before the credit crunch, recession and the change of UK Government, with the Welsh Labour Government subsidising rather than tackling the deep-rooted causes of worklessness and dependency and with Wales left at the bottom of the UK pile. |
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Communities First was implemented in 2001, when Edwina Hart was Minister for Finance, Local Government and Communities. Mrs Hart was also the responsible Minister when the Welsh housing quality standard was launched in 2002. However, a Wales Audit Office report published in July 2009 on Communities First identified serious weaknesses in financial planning and the processes of funding the programme, an absence of basic human resource and financial planning, that monitoring was weak and that there was no evidence that anything was done with the feedback. A recent Wales Audit Office report on the Welsh housing quality standard stated that there is no clear framework for measuring success. |
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4.30 p.m. |
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The joint paper published by the Wales Council for Voluntary Action and Community Development Cymru, 'Communities First: A Way Forward’, detailed proposals for an achievable future vision for communities that would be more effective at tackling deprivation, building stronger communities with less bureaucracy and cost, and more community ownership. It found that the original design of the programme was flawed and did not have clear aims but, nevertheless, created overambitious expectations. It said that the missing link in achieving community ownership was the lack of a longer-term vision. |
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Jocelyn Davies: Thank you for taking the intervention. You mention the beginning of the Communities First programme and the setting up of the Welsh housing quality standard. You say that Mrs Hart was responsible, but this place, at that time, was a corporate body and we all bought into that. |
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Mark Isherwood: This identified ministerial responsibility at that time. They may have not been called Ministers, but they had ministerial roles. You are quite right: it was before the 2006 separation of power, which formalised the arrangements that, in practice, already existed. |
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The WCVA proposed that one way forward to fill the missing link was the community anchor, where community organisations in an area would be a focus for services and activities to meet local need. As it said, it would move beyond programme and Government dependency and provide the community-owned dimension that is so often sought but seldom achieved in creating a better Wales. However, this Welsh Government is proposing to develop and consolidate programme and Government dependency. Yes, there are improvements with regard to clustering and more flexible borders and, yes, there are some excellent programmes on the ground, but it could do much more if regeneration was liberated. |
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In order to maintain command and control, local Labour politicians are using scaremongering and misinformation to frighten Flintshire’s council house tenants into voting against stock transfer. They are threatening to condemn them to unfit housing and to deny them for years to come the wider regeneration potential that stock transfer to a not-for-profit community housing mutual can bring through local accountability and control, which includes the creation of local jobs and training opportunities, and support for local businesses to grow and thrive. They are not telling tenants that the ballot is in accordance with Welsh Labour Government policy, funded by the Welsh Labour Government, to achieve the Welsh Labour Government’s Welsh housing quality standard, which is supported across the Chamber. Housing is the key vehicle to sustainable community regeneration. The last 12 years of a Conservative Government delivered 28,000 new social housing units in Wales, but the figure fell to 12,000 during the first 12 years of Labour-led Welsh Government. The social housing grant is now facing further cuts. |
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The Minister for Housing, Regeneration and Heritage talks of filling the gap via a whole-sector approach, and quite rightly. However, at a construction meeting with leading north Wales housebuilders on 27 January, we heard that, compared with England and other European countries, Wales seems to gold plate procurement directives, making the burden unnecessarily hard and costly for both the public and private sectors alike. We heard about the total absence of a coherent procurement strategy in north Wales, resulting in costs amounting to millions of pounds annually for both the construction industry and the public sector in unnecessary procurement exercises. |
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We heard about the proactive way in which the UK Government is helping the English housebuilding industry with the First Buy scheme, mortgage guarantee scheme for first-time buyers with small deposits, and the Kickstart initiative. Mortgage lenders and housebuilders are up for this in Wales but are having to look on enviously as England and Scotland move ahead. |
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With regard to wider economic regeneration, a north Wales company, which also operates in Scotland, told me last week that the Scottish Government has a very different approach to that of the Welsh Government, despite similar demographics. Scottish Ministers ask how they can help and grow their businesses and, thereby, the wealth and jobs of Scotland. The company asked why we cannot have this in Wales. The Welsh Government’s micromanagement of its regeneration agenda is not working. We can only achieve this if we drive through improvement by liberating the third, voluntary and independent sectors as real partners in strategy and delivery. |
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