§ Mr. Austin MitchellTo ask the Deputy Prime Minister (1) on what statistical basis councils were chosen as Market Renewal Pathfinders, as described in the White Paper Sustainable Communities; who chose them; and what changes have been made since the Pathfinder status was announced last year. [99057]
§ Mr. McNultyThe then Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions chose the areas to be invited to establish low demand pathfinder projects by reference to two primary data sources:
(i) the statistical returns compiled by local authorities as part of the Housing Investment Programme; and, where available,
(ii) local housing market studies undertaken by the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (Birmingham University) and others. On the basis of this data, the Department looked at the scale of the low demand problem across sub-regional housing markets, as well as individual local authorities. It sought to identify the most acute problems of low demand in terms of scale and intensity of the problem.
Since pathfinder projects were established last year, we have added Rossendale Borough Council to the East Lancashire project.