Gearing up

Paul Lewin of Northampton Borough Council explains how the authority and its partners are working to ensure existing properties are fit for purpose while laying the groundwork for a major expansion of new homes. Andy Jowett reports

The housing issues facing Northampton will be familiar across the country – although few regions are likely to have experienced the full set. It is sometimes assumed that when it comes to housing, the North has its challenges – regeneration and the need to upgrade turn-of-the-century properties – and the South has its challenges – affordability and supply – and never the twain shall meet.

But in Northampton, where Victorian terraces and Radburn-style estates sit next to suburban semis and luxury converted apartments, these issues intertwine. On top of that, its position within the London commuter belt places it at the heart of one of the country’s biggest planned expansions of housing, with around 45,000 new properties expected to be built in sustainable urban extensions by 2025.

The local council is at the heart of addressing these challenges, not least because it is the town’s largest landlord with around 12,000 homes. But, as the authority acknowledges in its 2010-2015 Housing Strategy, it also has a “wider, strategic role” in helping to shape communities and facilitate both the delivery of new dwellings and the maintenance of existing ones.

Paul Lewin, the authority’s planning, policy and heritage manager, says this role involves working with public, private and third sector bodies to meet the town’s housing needs.

Northampton’s urban extension is one example. Lewin says the Homes and Communities A gency (HCA) will provide a large share of the land for development, enough for between 6,000 and 7,000 properties.

The council, which in 2009 secured a portion of the HCA ’s £250 million Challenge Fund to build its first new homes in 30 years, has “limited plans” to deliver more dwellings but most of the new stock will come from private builders using HCA sites. The authority will work with these companies to ensure that approximately 35 per cent of the housing is affordable.

Balancing the need for new homes is the need to maintain existing ones. Lewin admits the authority has “not done too brilliantly” on this front in the past. According to its own figures, almost half (46.15 per cent) of its stock fell short of the Decent Homes Standard in March 2009.

The council has initiated a number of changes to turn things around and it has undertaken a major restructuring to create a single housing directorate. Lewin has noticed the difference. Before, housing functions were split across different offices and there was no director of housing. “That’s all changed,” he says. “Across the council, there’s a much more sensible structure and you actually understand where issues are dealt with. The same thing happened with planning, it was split across the management service.”

Northampton has also secured £52 million from the HCA to help it “play catch-up” on achieving the Decent Homes Standard, which L ewin sees as a “vote of confidence” that it is on the right track.

Nevertheless, he acknowledges there are some major challenges ahead including the regeneration of areas like Northampton East, where there are 1970s Radburn-style estates built during the New Town expansion. Such designs have become notorious nationwide for their poor stock and layouts, which foster crime and anti-social behaviour.

In the case of Northampton East, there is an added issue of a lack of integration. Lewin says that because this area was built for residents moving in from London, it “wasn’t really embraced, perhaps, as part of Northampton”. That has helped to hold down property values, which makes regeneration “that much harder” because it is difficult to attract private investment. The public purse will have to drive the area forward – not easy in the current climate.

One potential solution currently under consideration is the possibility of taking back the HRA , which would allow the council to manage and develop its own stock without having to turn the rents over to central Government.

The council also wants to ensure that the Northampton East regeneration is a “stepping stone” to building integrated, sustainable communities and it intends to supplement the overall area strategy with smaller, neighbourhood-level planning that will give residents a say in future changes.

On other estates, such as Spring Burrows, the issue is whether renovating properties actually represents the best use of resources.

“We’re doing the research on whether it’s worth the sticking plaster approach of bringing those properties up to the Decent Homes Standard when in fact that’s very much a short-term solution. It might not be worth doing that stock because it doesn’t really meet existing needs and would be so expensive to bring up to the standard that we might as well start again,” Lewin explains.

He adds the authority needs to consider how a rebuild, if viable, would be delivered. He suspects it could be a mixture of partnerships between the council, the private sector and social landlords but there is “no definitive answer” yet. The situation is complicated by the fact that the borough council has a relatively new administration, which has yet to give a “clear steer” on how it wants to move forward on housing.

That does not mean that regeneration and redevelopment has ground to a halt. Over the past decade, the council has been supporting the renewal of Northampton’s central area and Lewin believes there is “a lot more mileage” in that work.

The centre was overlooked for years as development was focused on the suburbs and out-of-town schemes. During the 1990s, major employers like Barclaycard and even Northamptonshire County Council moved out of the area, leaving “a huge amount of space” to regenerate. In turn, remaining businesses lost crucial lunchtime trade, triggering a “vicious circle of decline”.

“The less busy it is, the less people feel the town is vital and viable and therefore, the more likely they are to move out of the town centre as well,” Lewin notes. Stemming the flow has been a big challenge but both borough and county councils are doing their bit.

The county council is looking to bring back staff to the town centre with the redevelopment of County Hall, which will offer around 30,000 square metres of office space, while the borough council has also relocated staff to the centre, housing them in the Victorian Gothic splendour of the Guildhall. In addition, it is looking to extend the town’s Cultural Quarter to create more space for recreation, hotels and commerce.

To boost Northampton’s retail offering, the council has backed plans for the redevelopment of the Grosvenor Centre that will see the town’s main shopping mall double in size. Furthermore, it is looking to add 100,000 square metres of offices along the waterside adjacent to the town centre. This includes the former Avon/Nunn mill. The cosmetics firm has built a new, 10,000 square metre European headquarters on the site and the authority hopes another 10,000 square metres of office space can be added.

Elsewhere, the authority is talking to the University of Northampton over plans for “quite a lot of purpose-built student accommodation” and the possibility of moving some of its campuses to the central area.

There have already been some notable successes – the new marina a short walk from the town centre at Becket’s Park, for one. But in terms of housing, one of the most significant achievements has been the rejuvenation of the town’s shoe factories.

Breathing new life into old buildings by turning them into swish apartments has, of course, already been a big success in places like Manchester and Leeds. Lewin says that Northampton’s factories are not on the colossal scale of the warehouses and mills up north – most developments are in the region of 15 to 20 dwellings – but the conversions have nevertheless proved popular. One such development, the Normal Boot & Shoe Factory, now offers duplex two-bedroom apartments.

Lewin is confident that in the long term, there is “definitely still the demographic there” to support demand for this type of scheme.

Nevertheless, looking at the overall picture, he acknowledges it is “an uncertain time for everyone” – particularly when it comes to the outlook for public sector funding.

Northampton is fortunate, he adds, in that it still has the West Northants Development Corporation (WNDC), which can raise additional resources from central Government to support infrastructure projects. In another “vote of confidence” in the council, the organisation’s planning powers will transfer to the authority in 2012. The WNDC is also parcelling up sites for development and providing access to land for further development as Northampton prepares to, as Lewin puts it, “raise its game”.

“We’re putting a lot of work in place now for the upturn,” he says. “When the market does pick up, it’s all systems go.”

At the heart of it

Northamptonshire’s mix of old and new has given the county a distinctive character – and some distinctive challenges

One way or another, Northamptonshire has been at the heart of things over the years.

Located slap bang in the middle of the country on the river Nene, the land that would later become the county was settled by Iron Age tribes in around 500 BC, who built hill forts at locations like Hunsbury Hill, two miles from modern Northampton.

The county is mentioned as early as 1011 in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle as Hamtunscire, or the shire of the homestead, and was later recorded in the Domesday Book following the arrival of the Normans. In fact, William the Conquerer chose the county as the location of Rockingham Castle.

Norman nobleman Simon de Senlis, the first Earl of Northampton, was also a fan of castle building, knocking together Fotheringhay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots would later await her date with the chopping block, and Northampton Castle, along with the town’s walls.

Indeed, Northampton became quite the bustling metropolis with the Normans and the town was so important that the king would regularly pop in to hold court there. In 1189, Northampton was granted its first charter by none other than Richard the Lionheart.

It later suffered a blow when Henry III dissolved its university, partly because it was a threat to the dominance of Oxford and Cambridge and partly because he didn’t take kindly to the town supporting Simon de Montfort’s efforts to grab his throne.

Northampton’s rebellious streak would cost it again in 1662, when Charles II had the town’s walls knocked down because its residents had sided with the Roundheads during the Civil War.

The king did not hold his grudge and in 1675, donated thousands of tonnes of timber to rebuild the town after it was devastated by fire. As part of the reconstruction, Northampton was given wider streets to prevent the spread of another blaze.

The Victorian age saw an explosion in the mass production of shoes and boots, which meant factories and rows of housing for the growing workforce. Today, terraced properties still account for over a third of Northampton’s residences.

The next burst of expansion came in the 1960s with the foundation of the Northampton Development Corporation.

Between 1968 and 1985, the population nearly doubled as suburban development was carried out to the east and south. During the 1990s, there was further expansion to the south-west and west.

The development of Northampton as a market town, industrial centre and New Town has left it with a fairly distinctive mix of housing – and housing issues. Rarely does a single area have to deal with the legacy of turn-of-the-century terraced housing, the design faults of 1970s estates and the pressure on affordability and supply that comes with being one of London’s major commuter towns.

It is also going to be at the heart of another major expansion over the coming decades. Between now and the mid-2020s, around 45,000 new houses will be completed in the Northampton Related Development Area and the town’s population is expected to grow by another 100,000.

In its latest housing strategy, the borough council has also said that by 2021, it wants Northampton to be recognised as a “European city of vitality” renowned for its quality of life, history, culture and green living.

It seems Northampton is gearing up to add a major new chapter to its long and varied story.

Northampton in numbers

Population: 205,200
(2008 mid-year estimate)

No of dwellings: 90,850 (2009)

Employment rate (Apr 2008 to Mar 2009):
78.6% (UK average: 73.7%)

Population forecast (2026): c.305,000

Housing type:
Northampton (%)
Detached - 23
Semi-detached - 29
Terraced - 34
Flats - 14
England
average (%)
Detached - 23
Semi-detached - 32
Terraced - 26
Flats - 19

Housing occupation (2010):
Owner occupier - 66,232 (72.3%)
Council rented - 12,214 (13.3%)
Private rented - 7,144 (7.8%)
RSL rented - 2,918 (3.2%)
Other - 3,077 (3.4%)