Avoiding concentrations of poverty

The underlying drivers of neighbourhood decline and polarisation had moved on since 1999, but so too had policy. Local authorities and other agencies were getting their acts together over the management of disadvantaged areas (Chapter Nine) but, using new ideas, tools and powers handed to them by central government, they were also beginning to think more strategically and to look for new solutions to the bigger problems of housing and labour that were highlighted in Chapter Ten. The new approach to neighbourhood renewal was not just to manage the immediate problem but to avoid concentrations of the poor in the longer term. It was about flattening the hierarchy of areas, so that neighbourhoods that had traditionally been poor did not simply continue to attract only those with no choice. By 2001, new schemes to improve housing, mix tenure and reduce worklessness were beginning to be implemented. Our second round of visits gave us an opportunity to investigate their early progress.

Improving housing

In 1999, serious housing stock problems had affected about a third of the small neighbourhoods in our study. Nine of the areas had more than 50% council or housing association housing, giving us an opportunity to look at stock condition across a range of different types and ages of housing. The worst problems were in the more modern stock, built since the 1960s, with poor materials or design. Half of the neighbourhoods with this kind of stock needed major investment. In Caerphilly, Valley Top’s 1980s homes were experiencing damp problems because external cladding had decayed. In Rosehill in Nottingham, heating systems were inefficient and homes were poorly insulated, making heating very expensive. The worst stock problems were in The Grove in Hackney, where some of the tower blocks were structurally defective, a third had no central heating, and many suffered from severe condensation. The council had estimated the repair bill at £45,000 per dwelling. By contrast, estates built in the 1930s and 1940s were generally sound. They needed modernisation, to windows, kitchens and bathrooms, rather than structural attention.

Quite apart from the self-evident need to provide a better standard of housing and thus avoid the knock-on effects on physical and mental health and child development, it was obvious that a low standard of housing could only serve to perpetuate poverty concentrations, since no one would choose to live in it unless they had to.