City on the rise

Partnership has provided Manchester with the clout to write its own success story in recent years, but that was in the good times before the recession. If the city is to continue its way forward, the council knows those partnerships, and some daring ideas, are essential to ensure the vision of a world class city with prosperity for all is delivered

There was a time not so many years ago when, like many of its peers, Manchester was a major stock-owning council, but a series of stock transfers, two PFIs and the creation of the ALMO Northwards Housing transformed the social housing landscape in the city – and added to the already established stock of partners for the council to work with in developing the city’s future.

The reasoning behind this, of course, is very much the story of social housing as it has modernised over the last decade or so, as councils and their tenants took a long hard look at their respective situations, and considered the options to bring about improved homes but also better targeted, higher quality services.

For the council, there was added reasoning behind the city’s housing transformation. Tasked with managing so many properties on a day to day basis, in an urban environment as varied as Manchester, a city that was – and still is – at the forefront of major urban regeneration, there was a need to ensure clarity in its focus on the strategic delivery of more affordable homes and excellent housing services. So, the separation of the delivery of housing management, ownership (for the most part), and the delivery of day to day services out of the council’s hands and into those of more specialised delivery agents was considered essential to take the city’s housing – and its social and economic regeneration – forward.

“This was about establishing the strategic housing role of the council, which has always been there, but was dominated by the scale of housing management and the other housing delivery functions,” said Paul Beardmore, the city council’s director of housing. “So, with all the transfers that have occurred, the PFI, and the ALMO, all that has enabled the council to focus on its strategic role. We calculate that this has brought about £1.5 billion worth of investment into housing across the city, which we think is a fantastic achievement. Where we are going now, post that investment in Decent Homes, is to think more ’big picture’ about the supply of homes that we’ve got and what the need is for the longer term.”

The council, of course, works very closely with the housing associations that took over its stock, Northwards Housing, and a host of other partners, to fulfil its strategic role, not just in enabling the provision of greater numbers of affordable housing, but in all the ‘ancillary’ aspects around housing – the broad-reaching fields that help to make a neighbourhood a place worth living in – whether that
is worklessness, anti-social behaviour, financial exclusion and more. One of the council’s primary tools in achieving its aims is the Strategic Housing Partnership (SHP), and this body is not just a forum for talking shop, but actively engages in delivering hard outcomes, with workstreams delegated to members. There are partner RSLs, for example, that are delegated responsibility for the economy including worklessness, neighbourhoods, access to housing, and respect and community cohesion – considered the four key streams to the partnership’s work.

“The SHP was established by the council and is led and facilitated by it, but we have strengthened the structure so that all our main RSL partners have very real roles to play within it. We’ve got chief executives from each of the RSL partners heading up each of the workstreams,” Beardmore said. “It’s very much about engaging and drawing these partners into the delivery of what we all need to do
and in developing our plans to meet this need. When we are talking with our external funding agents, such as the HCA, we are able to articulate a case on behalf of what we need to deliver and in support
of our delivery agents who are able to bid for HCA funding – we are able to offer very clear support of bids and we make progress that way.”

Partnership, both in terms of the SHP, but also the council’s wider partners both within the city and outwards in the Greater Manchester city region, has enabled Manchester to strengthen its clout in terms of raising awareness, arguing its case at regional and national levels, and in levering investment into the city.

“Manchester has been singularly successful in drawing in significant amounts of investment funding from the HCA. Just this last year we’ve attracted a further £26 million through the local authority new build programme, and a £35 million investment from the National Affordable Housing Programme. So I think the SHP has paid very strong dividends for the city,” Beardmore said.

“The strength of the SHP is that we have got such a variety and depth of different housing partners and we can draw on that expertise virtually on any subject. Even if a partner RSL hasn’t done something in the city, they might have carried it out elsewhere, and they can bring this experience into the partnership. A good example is the recent local offer from the Tenant Services Authority (TSA). We have RSLs who are engaged in pilots elsewhere in the country, able to make a presentation at our partnership meeting, to explain what they have achieved, prompt a debate and enable us to learn what we can do locally in Manchester.”

Over the years, then, this division of labour that underlies the stock transfers and the creation of specialist housing partners, has served to help the council raise its strategic game by pooling expertise without it becoming an overload to the partners. This was important enough even in the ‘high-rolling’ days of ‘easy money’ that preceded the credit crunch. In these harder times of recession and the expected forthcoming squeeze on public finances, that united strength invoked by partnership will be all the more essential.

The council isn’t shying away from the harder times ahead, but is actively looking at means of how it can maximise income and investment in the tough times ahead, and do what it can to ensure the delivery of its strategic goals despite the era of belt-tightening the country faces. The challenges will perhaps be all the greater as the city’s regional role – and resulting partnerships – grow and develop, but in some respects these are also an answer and a means to continue delivering for the city and beyond. It might not quite be a case of divided they fall, united they stand, but certainly joining
forces into greater partnership working is considered an essential way to continue making progress.

Towards the end of March, it was announced that all 10 of the local authorities that make up Greater Manchester had agreed to take forward the formation of the so-called ‘combined authority’. This is essentially building on the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA), which over the last two years or so has become a constituted body with a host of shared service agreements across the 10 districts. Essentially, it is a partnership writ large, unifying the collective delivery of aligned services, and enabling the city region to negotiate nationally with one voice, rather than as a collection of disparate authorities.

“Collectively we can make a much stronger case for investment in the city region as a whole, if we have a cohesive argument that talks about where our main housing and our place-shaping focus should be in order to deliver sustained economic growth within the city region,” Beardmore said. “We can present a much more cohesive and cogent case for what kind of investment there will be in Greater Manchester, so collectively all the authorities benefit better than if all 10 districts tried to make their own cases in competition.”

As it moves forward, the city council’s strategic view is to boost the delivery of affordable homes – but that doesn’t mean only social rented homes. The council is clear that ‘affordable’ is not restricted to one tenure. There is no ‘one size fits all’ if the city is to meet its future housing needs, so the name of the game is flexibility and diversity of tenure. To that end, Manchester is looking to deliver more homes to buy, giving first-time buyers a chance at the property ladder with shared ownership or equity schemes, it is also looking at strategies to develop the private rented market too. A gain, it is all about creating a balanced mix of housing options.

“In terms of social rented housing the total supply represents 36 per cent (almost 70,000) of the city’s total housing stock which is virtually double the national average. So in a sense comparatively there is already a good supply of social rented housing,” said Beardmore. “It’s a situation where we want to move towards a more owner-occupation model, but supported by equity shares in the property to enable affordability. It’s still a high priority in terms of aspirations that people want to own their own homes – and I don’t think we should ever lose sight of that. What we are doing is trying to manage that and enable this home ownership model to work. “

There are obviously a lot of challenges to realising this vision of a flexible mix of tenure, not least the financial constraints that are expected, nor indeed ascertaining the complex picture of people’s needs, but of identifying the land, building the homes, and achieving the right balance that ensures the homes are affordable – whether they are shared equity, outright sale, private rent or social rent.

Much of the strategic outlook remains speculative, in the sense that ideas are being thrashed out into more cogent policies, such as private management companies taking on the management and delivery of shared equity schemes, of RSLs broadening their business streams to play a role in this flexibility, and indeed the idea of flexibility in terms of an individual property, perhaps shifting from rented, to shared owned, to outright owned according to the occupier’s changing circumstances.

Nobody ever said that delivering housing was easy, but the city is clearly not shying away from the tough decisions, and daring concepts that emerge out of the ongoing debates to meet current and future need. I n many ways, Manchester is a microcosm of the national endeavour to deliver more houses, to raise the game in terms of delivery, and find the mix of type and tenure to meet the complex requirements of a modern society.

Some may balk at Manchester’s vision; many more are doubtless watching closely, looking for tips to raise their own game.