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§ Mr. John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington)The overriding aim of this debate is to secure from the Government a recognition of the problems associated with the economic, social and environmental decline of many suburban areas and to suggest a way in which to develop a policy programme targeted at those communities. Straightforwardly, it is an unashamed attempt to influence the drafting of the White Paper on the future of urban policy, which is promised for publication later this year. I hope that that will provide an opportunity for a fundamental reappraisal of the urban agenda of central and local government.
The debate on our suburban areas has been a long while coming. Understandably, discussion of urban policy in Britain has concentrated on the dereliction and decline of our inner-city areas and the terrible social consequences for many of their residents. Any discussion of suburban areas has largely focused on their role in the relocation of inner-city populations and as dormitory towns for commuters serving the central urban core.
In the 1980s in London, however, attempts were made to broaden the debate when the Greater London council launched its community areas programme. That acknowledged that significant pockets of deprivation had grown up in suburban areas and required the special attention of central and local government. The programme allocated additional resources and enhanced policy-making powers to those communities so that local organisations throughout the public, private and voluntary sectors could work together to regenerate their areas. The abolition of the GLC by the previous Government halted the community areas programme and contributed to hindering the development of discussion of policies for suburban communities, certainly in London and possibly nationally, for nearly a decade.
By contrast, internationally, there have been several major studies of the problems of suburban areas which have stimulated a healthy debate leading to specifically designed policy initiatives. In this country, the problems and challenges of suburban areas have, in recent months, been placed back on the agenda through a combination of initiatives.
The first was this Government's recognition that several large suburban estates with high levels of unemployment, poverty, alienation and crime demand their urgent attention. The social exclusion unit, set up by the Prime Minister within No. 10, has established policy action teams to launch a strategy for neighbourhood renewal targeted at those estates. Useful lessons will be learned from that initiative, which I welcome. Nevertheless, its remit is geographically limited and although it is often targeted at sizeable estates, it is not envisaged that it will encompass a whole suburb or town or strategically cover a town centre, estates, mixed ownership housing areas and industrial estates.
The second development that highlighted suburban regeneration was the publication in February of the Joseph Rowntree Trust report "Sustainable Renewal of Suburban Areas". The report provides a valuable stimulus to the suburban debate. It confirmed that few recent studies of the suburbs have been undertaken in Britain, in contrast to international analyses. It identified the fact that some 1088 suburbs show signs of stress, with deteriorating community facilities, declining local centres, car domination and monotone housing which does not reflect population and social change and has undermined community spirit.
The report drew up a checklist of sustainability criteria and described how some suburbs were becoming less sustainable than when they were first built. In the researchers' judgment, there was a good case for careful intervention in some suburbs by working with the local communities to try to improve facilities and transport patterns and to adapt the housing stock. The researchers argued that there was a need for an urban renaissance and for the contribution of the suburbs to be recognised and fully explored.
The study identified four themes that were regularly identified where scope for early action clearly existed—transport integration and the need to reshape local centres, improve community facilities and renew housing. In a range of recommendations, the report suggested that the Government could pilot community-based programmes in a number of suburban areas and consider how we could tackle the specific problems of suburban communities.
I welcome the fact that the coincidence of Government concerns about the deterioration of the quality of life on suburban estates and the publication of the Rowntree report has contributed to broadening the urban debate. Both initiatives reflect the experience, analysis of problems and emerging policy programme that are evident within my constituency. My area is a typical example of the suburban areas that are under stress, as highlighted in the Rowntree report, and is open to the same policy solutions recommended in it.
After the general election in May 1997, a common theme emerged from my discussions with community groups, employers and residents. People were angry about the state of our town and how it had been allowed to deteriorate. They were angry about issues ranging from the litter in our streets, the running down of our parks, the decline of our town centre and the level of crime to the standards in our schools. They were also worried for the future, especially about the prospects for our children. People were becoming increasingly frustrated that there was nobody to listen to their concerns and that, when they expressed their worries or complained to many official bodies, they appeared to be ignored.
As a result of those discussions, I felt that we could not continue to stand back and let our town decline into a suburban slum. I took the view that we must and could take action to turn that situation around. For that reason, I convened a community conference at our local theatre, to which I invited representatives from as many community organisations, firms and public bodies as I could identify—roughly about 2,500. The aim of the conference was to discuss the future of Hayes and Harlington. For each problem that our community faced, I was determined that we would identify a solution.
All who attended the conference were surprised at the large number of representatives —450—who came and actively participated. The conference was not only well attended, but genuinely representative of all sectors of our community and overwhelmingly positive. It examined the main issues that confronted our community. Our analysis described the long-term spiral of economic, social and environmental decline that had afflicted our area. 1089 We produced evidence of the lack of stable investment in our public services under the previous Government and the policy mistakes and neglect that we had experienced at the hands of local and national decision makers.
The result of that neglect was a town with a weakened sense of community, an incoherent structure of community leadership and a lack of any sense of direction or vision. In summary, if we were a school, we would be classed as failing. We had a failing town on our hands. On the positive side, however, we acknowledged that, in the past two decades, we had survived three recessions and that, with a change of Government, we now faced a period of planned, stable investment over the next five years. In addition, the public agencies pledged to concentrate anew on Hayes and Harlington.
The community conference had awakened a new sense of community activity. We concluded that it could stimulate a new structure to give Hayes and Harlington a new start, laying new foundations for a prosperous and successful town in which we could all enjoy living and of which we could all be proud to be a part.
At that conference, subsequent conferences and what we described as brainstorming sessions, we agreed that a succinct and readable prospectus should be drawn up describing the vision for the future of our town and setting out a series of recommendations for action aimed at securing that objective. The aim was not only to describe a way forward for our community, but to agree a programme of action that we could all sign up to and implement over the coming decade.
In 1998, a further community conference was convened to launch the prospectus for consultation. The prospectus tried to address the main concerns within the community and set out the policies and ideas designed to tackle those issues and to give our town a future. It was circulated to local community groups, companies and public bodies for their comments and advice. Numerous local organisations across the public, private and community sectors signed up to support in whatever way they could the achievement of that vision for the future of our community.
Last month, I led a delegation of the chief executives of local bodies, including the chamber of trade, the police, the health authority and the local authority, to present the prospectus to No. 10, and met the head of the Prime Minister's policy unit to discuss the development of suburban policy making.
The prospectus examines the economic, social and environmental problems facing our community and sets out our solutions. A key factor in our decline has been the restructuring of our local economy. Recent structural changes in the economy have led to major losses of traditional sources of employment. There have been significant reductions in employment in, for example, the defence industry and its subsidiaries. There has been intense downsizing in the manufacturing sector. Although there has been growth in the number of jobs at Heathrow airport, even in recent years there have been significant lay-offs at airport-related firms. Those structural changes have produced a black-eye effect around Heathrow, which depicts Heathrow as a centre of heightened economic activity, which is surrounded—especially to the north and east—by an outer ring of relative deprivation. Structural changes and rapid technological advances are forecast to 1090 continue and the future of Hayes and Harlington may ultimately depend on how we can respond and adapt to such changes.
Hayes town centre has suffered particularly from the consequences of economic decline and a reduction in residents' spending power over the past two decades. The development of out-of-town retail parks and supermarkets, which was given permission to go ahead by the previous Government, has had a severe detrimental effect on the town. Those developments have drawn people away from the town centre in large numbers. Our task now is to develop the town in a way to enable it to survive alongside the out-of-town parks.
We believe that, if the regeneration of our town is to be successful, we need to bring together a new structure and co-ordinate new initiatives that build on the current successes and avoid present failures. A central aim, therefore, is to build on existing partnerships, notably our single regeneration budget partnership, and those with the Hillingdon chamber of commerce and the West London training and enterprise council, to launch a new economic development forum to promote the growth of economic prosperity in our area. The forum would promote and support initiatives to tackle three key drivers of local economic regeneration. These are business development and competitiveness, developing our skills base and improving the environment and infrastructure to attract inward investment.
Education is seen throughout the community as a key ingredient for the future success of our local economy and for improving the life chances of local people of all ages. We have identified the central questions to be addressed if we are to provide a high-quality education service in Hayes and Harlington. They include the supply of pre-school, school and college places. That has been greatly aided by new Government initiatives. A new school is being built in Hayes and Harlington, as is a new extension to our local TEC college and the first Sikh college in the country.
We have also identified the need to raise standards of attainment at local schools and to retain high-calibre staff, teachers and governors. We have a broad range of very high-quality, committed head teachers and teachers, and we need to retain them within the area. We need more support for parents and pupils out of school. We agree that we need to strengthen local partnerships between schools and business. We need also to develop facilities for lifelong learning. Again, that is greatly assisted by current Government policy.
As local people gain the skills to enter and progress within the local jobs market, it is crucial that we retain them as residents within the area. Too often, an increase in income in Hayes and Harlington has resulted in families moving away. Those residents move away to secure a safer, cleaner and healthier environment in which to raise their families. Our aim, therefore, must be to transform the quality of our local environment so that they remain within the area.
One of the issues is crime. To make our community safer, the community, the council and the police are already working together to tackle crime in Hayes. Consultation on our new community safety plan for the area has recently been completed. The plan highlights the role of partnership between the police, the community via a local sector working group and neighbourhood watch 1091 schemes in enhancing safety and tackling issues such as security by design, including street lighting and the use of closed-circuit television; anti-social behaviour and disorder; youth offending; racial harassment and domestic violence; and, unfortunately, drug and alcohol abuse.
We aim to promote a healthier environment and life style in our community, and our prospectus has kick-started action on a number of issues, including plans and consultation to establish a new community hospital in Hayes after the closure and sell-off, under the previous Government, of our two community hospitals. We want to improve the facilities for doctors' surgeries in Hayes and Harlington. We already have two new health centres on the stocks. We want to promote healthy living and increased awareness of conditions that, unfortunately, are increasing in prevalence within the area, such as diabetes and asthma. We want to address the environmental issues that affect health locally—for example, pollution and asthma.
One of the hardest challenges for us is how we can restore the quality of our green environment. Local residents can chart the transformation of Hayes from an industrious town surrounded by villages separated by open fields and market gardens into an urban sprawl. Its open fields were used for gravel pits and rubbish dumps, and its Edwardian parks, gardens and municipal buildings were allowed to fall into dereliction, particularly over the past 20 years.
This historical decline is reflected in the number of key environmental issues that have become self-evident concerns for local residents. These include—they reflect many urban areas such as Hayes and Harlington—street cleanliness and the quality of our built environment, the loss and dereliction of our open spaces and parks and their inaccessibility for social and cultural activity, the protection of local wildlife, air pollution arising from the confluence of the airport and the M4 and M25 motorways and the heavily congested local road network, the lack of adequate recycling facilities and a strategy for minimising and recycling waste.
It has become clear that there is a need for a comprehensive programme to include the quality of the environment in which we live. That is reflected in many suburban areas. That should start with some basic improvements in local environmental services and facilities, leading on to long-term and more ambitious environmental regeneration projects.
Key components of our environmental programme are, first, providing good-quality affordable homes by new build and refurbishment and experimentation in the provision of homes by, for example, converting offices and derelict shops; secondly, enhancing our street environment by tackling litter and fly-tipping and involving residents in the assessment of their own street, architecturally and environmentally, as well as involving them in discussions about improvements; thirdly, reclaiming our parks and open spaces from dereliction and vandalism; fourthly, creating a biodiversity plan for the area, protecting our local wildlife; and, fifthly, implementing a sustainable transport and energy plan which is aimed at reducing air pollution.
The community conference process has identified a weakened sense of community within Hayes and Harlington as one of the key issues to be addressed. There is a general perception that, over recent years, there has 1092 been a decline in the organisation of and participation in community and cultural activities. This has led to feelings of isolation and exclusion and a breakdown in many of the networks of support which traditionally existed in our area. The problems that community organisations face in our community include a lack of volunteers, especially people who will take on a leadership role, a lack of resources, a lack of a comprehensive network between groups and a lack of acknowledgement of their valuable contribution to the community.
Although there is a wide range of local community organisations, there is an obvious need to strengthen their ability to act more effectively in serving their communities of interest. There is a need also to ensure that the community organisations in our area come together regularly and are linked to the networks of support in the rest of the borough. This is all about capacity building within our community, and it needs assistance. In particular, it needs assistance through fundraising and the provision of the professional resources to ensure that grant applications are successful.
I am proud that my community, in which I live and which I represent, has risen to the challenge of renewal. Suburban areas are located at the geographical periphery of urban areas, but, for too long, we have been on the periphery of the political agenda. Too often, the image of leafy suburbs has hidden the real deprivation that many suburban areas experience. However, we can succeed in tackling this problem only if the Government go further in recognising the needs of suburban areas such as mine in the development of their urban policy, and especially in the development and drafting of the future White Paper. My community needs that little extra governmental attention and resources to fulfil the promise of our community prospectus. The investment of energy and resources now in suburban areas under stress will halt their decline into inner-city squalor.
I hope that my contribution has given my hon. Friend the Minister some food for thought as he and his colleagues finalise the drafting of the White Paper. I end by inviting my hon. Friend to visit my constituency to see our renewal programme in action and to ascertain what further could be achieved with his assistance.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Alan Meale)First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. McDonnell) on securing this debate on what we in the Government feel is a very important subject. He has drawn attention to just one part of the work that interests us in undertaking the various tasks that we have set ourselves in terms of economic generation.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend. It is typical of him that, yet again, he is busily at work representing his constituents in a macro-economic approach. His history in the movement in that direction, in everything from being a member of the Greater London council, being a leading figure in local government, particularly in London, and to working in trade unions, has shown him to be someone who is a good soldier in fighting for those whom he represents.
The work carried out by my hon. Friend and the local community in preparing the Hayes and Harlington prospectus makes a valuable contribution. Many new 1093 Members should follow his example and try to produce similar reports outlining the economic needs of their areas.
It is right that, from time to time, we should focus on the suburbs. Too often, they are taken for granted. The media often focus on the needs of rural areas, and rightly so, as many topics affecting them need to be discussed. Equally, the issues affecting inner-city areas are often examined, but little attention is paid to the suburbs. Perhaps that is because they are seen, by and large, as pretty ordinary places.
As my hon. Friend commented, the debate on suburban regeneration has been a long time coming. The suburbs are, of course, home to the majority of Britain's urban population. Those who live in the suburbs know that issues affecting the future of their neighbourhoods are well worth considering. I congratulate the Civic Trust and the Rowntree Trust on identifying the need for research on the topic, and on giving us a fine report to stimulate debate, such as our debate today.
It is odd that the word "suburban" is sometimes used in a derogatory manner, especially by people seeking funds for such areas. To many people, the word—wrongly, in my opinion—conjures up an image of rows of semi-detached houses occupied by families keeping themselves to themselves, with a neat lawn and a car in the drive, although such people commute daily to work. The image is respectable, domestic and perhaps rather boring, compared with the vitality of many city centres, or the natural beauty of our rural areas.
The reality is often quite different, as my hon. Friend knows. The suburb is perhaps a peculiarly British development. Few continental cities have suburbs, whereas many of our towns and cities have developed highly successful suburbs over the years. At one time, areas such as Chelsea and Brixton were suburbs of London, but much has changed since then. With the movement of the population to the cities and the growth of public transport, new suburbs were created. The Civic Trust report describes the various categories.
Some suburbs were viable and remain so. Bedford Park in west London, for example, is still an architectural gem. In other cities, there were planned suburbs, such as Bourneville in Birmingham. Those "leafy" suburbs offered the growing urban classes a better quality of life than was available in the inner cities. The original objective of the Barbican centre was to create a new inner-London suburb. The suburbs met the urban population's need for accommodation in a broadly sustainable way.
More recently, there have been some less successful examples. As cities expanded outwards into urban sprawl, we created low-density homogenous suburbs which lacked the distinctiveness and character of earlier suburbs. The newer suburbs tend to be dependent on the car, which makes them less sustainable in terms of transport, social mix and the amount of land that they use.
The report by the Civic Trust and Ove Arup and Partners focuses on different types of suburb and includes some useful case studies based on particular cities. The authors give a timely warning that there is evidence that some suburbs are becoming less stable and sustainable with respect to their local economies, social structures and environment, as my hon. Friend pointed out.
1094 The report draws attention to deteriorating community facilities such as community centres and green spaces, declining shopping centres and parades, public transport that is not adapting to changing needs, and large areas of ageing houses of a single type. Such problems may not be as stark as those in the more deprived inner cities, where there are multiple causes of deprivation and social exclusion, but the authors argue that a stitch in time may prevent the problems from becoming more serious and leading to rapid decline.
The authors of the report make various recommendations directed at government, local authorities and other agencies. They highlight the need to encourage and assist suburbs to adapt to the future. They rule out large-scale restructuring of suburban areas, and suggest that smaller-scale changes over time could improve the quality of suburban life and foster community involvement and civic pride, while contributing to a sustainable urban renaissance.
I am pleased that the report places a high premium on community involvement, as it is recognised in all parts of the House that change that does not have the support of the community will not be sustainable.
The report is timely. As the House knows, the Government will issue White Papers on urban and rural policies later this year. The urban policy White Paper will look at towns and cities, including suburbs, and will suggest how we can help them to become vibrant and prosperous, offering a good quality of life to those who live and work in them.
As my hon. Friend mentioned, Lord Rogers is leading a task force established by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister to examine the future of urban areas. It was born out of the need to make sure that we make the best use of previously developed land in meeting the demand for new housing, so that the pressure on green-field sites will be reduced. However, Lord Rogers and his team will consider all the factors affecting the development of urban areas, and will report in the summer.
The social exclusion unit is studying related issues, including neighbourhood management. Some aspects of the Rowntree report will be relevant. Today's debate will become part of the consultation exercise. The unit will produce a strategy for neighbourhood management next year.
My hon. Friend spoke about the economic problems faced by suburban areas. The key to resolving them must be to create national conditions that provide a climate for our towns and cities to prosper. We must promote national economic performance and sustainability, and maintain a stable macro-economic climate with support for enterprise, skills and work initiatives, which will be essential to improve the quality of life in all parts of the country.
That agenda will be driven forward by the recent Budget announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the work that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has put in train following his competitiveness White Paper. The Government's aim is to provide employment opportunities for all. We are encouraging economic growth, and we are committed to ensuring that everyone has the chance to share in the benefits. My hon. Friend pointed out that, after the election, the Government 1095 wasted no time in introducing the new deal initiative to get people back into work. So far, more than 350,000 people have participated, and 70,000 have found jobs. That is real progress.
I know that we are running out of time, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I assure my hon. Friend that I will accept his invitation to visit his constituency shortly.