Prototype for inner city rebirth

When the wrecking crews moved into the St Ann's district, it marked the beginning of a long-term plan to regenerate deprived inner-city areas. So began the prototype for a new Nottingham

It's not the kind of news any civic official, or any resident for that matter, wants to hear about their home town - but this month insurance company Endsleigh declared Nottingham top of its national burglary league.

That's never good news, of course, even if British Crime Survey figures point to an overall fall in such crimes. For Nottingham, embarking on a major regeneration project, not to mention a wider vision of renaissance of the city's image, infrastructure and prospects, it's but another vexing blight on that neatly-envisaged future.

Burglary, of course, is no joke, but it is but one strand in a range of social problems that besets the city. In that respect, Robin Hood's old home town very much endures its share of the nationwide social ills. Not that, in any way, that detracts from the concerted efforts of Nottingham City Council and other agencies in forging new partnerships and maintaining continual pressure on solving what are, essentially, national problems.

But according to the Local Strategic Partnership, One Nottingham, for instance, the city has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in the country, life expectancy in deprived wards is three years shorter than the national average; and the city suffers from a high incidence of drug related crime.

Of the city's 20 wards, 13 are said to reside in the ten per cent most deprived wards nationally. In recent years, some of the most severe problems of such urban deprivation have earned the city some severely unflattering headlines. Definitely, not the kind of press a growing, aspiring and affluent city wants to read of itself.

Of course, one has to take the bad with the good. This represents the darker side of Nottingham's story. There's a much brighter side, one that the city dignitaries naturally would prefer to see illuminated; that's the Nottingham that one of the strongest players in the regional economy, a growing city enjoying the benefits of inward investment, and its transformation into a centre of 'creative industries' with a strong involvement in science and technology.

Last year, according to the city's Economic Review, the gross value added (GVA) for the Greater Nottingham area was £10.7 billion. The annual comparative spend in retail is put at £1.3 billion, reflecting the city's stature as a major retail centre - as well as sector employer. Combined with leisure, retail employs 58,000 people, catering in some way shape or form to the requirements of the 12.5 million visitors drawn to the city every year.

All told, Greater Nottingham is home to 637,000 people, with 409,000 of those of working age, and it accounts for some 300,000 jobs - or 16.2 per cent of all the jobs in the East Midlands. The population of the city itself is around 273,900, and a further three million people live within an hour's drive of the city centre.

The city is also home to the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University, which between them boost the city's inhabitants by about 60,000, not to mention the cultural, social and economic impact the study bodies brings with them.

All told, this represents the “thriving, confident, forward looking city” - the very body of the future which seems to be leaving behind a relatively large proportion of the city's less fortunate or favoured, or indeed perhaps merely more feckless inhabitants.

No matter the complex soup of deprivations that breed the social ills besetting Nottingham, the city's twin faces very much reflect the 'two cities' and 'two nations' problems of rich and poor and the growing gap between the two that is familiar the length and breadth of Britain. It isn't so much the problems themselves that are the issues, of course, but how those problems are met and handled.

On that front, there is no easy solution, but we live in an age where regeneration has been propelled to the forefront as a lynchpin holding together a complicated web of interlocking agents and agencies charged with overcoming social deprivation.

After some two years in the planning and preparation, in January Nottingham City Council mobilised the bulldozers to make a start on what is currently its largest regeneration programme. The wrecking crews were sent in to the Stonebridge Park estate in the St Ann's ward to tear down four three-storey blocks of flats, amounting to 54 homes. These will be replaced by a mix of family homes and flats for single people and childless couples. Properties that survive the cull will be renovated with external cladding, additional insulation and other improvements.

The four-phase scheme, carried out by the council in partnership with RSL and regeneration company LHA-ASRA, is worth £50 million and will ultimately see the 1970s estate transformed. Eventually, a further 200 properties will be cleared to make way for 360 new homes and the layout of the estate altered. The new homes will be of a mixture of council (ALMO) rented properties, housing association rental properties, shared

ownership homes and properties intended for outright sale.

"We are delighted to see the first phase of demolition," said Robert Nettleton, LHA-ASRA's director of regeneration. "We have been working with local people and Nottingham City Council for nearly two years on shaping what promises to be a landmark regeneration project not only for Nottingham but for the East Midlands. The scheme will offer a broad choice of housing options to meet a range of needs, as well as a host of design features which will greatly enhance the image and appeal of the area. It will transform the quality of life for local people for decades to come."

According to the council's thinking, this major project will help with the "long-term sustainability" of the neighbourhood by creating a mixed tenure residential area; a shift in its socio-economic demographic that - as the typical regeneration theorising goes - will enable the higher earners to boost the local economy, bringing jobs, uplifting a 'demoralised' local mood and lift the fortunes of the residents generally.

In many respects, if all goes to plan, the fortunes of St Ann's will be replicated in Nottingham's other inner city wards. Though, of course, the regeneration will not bear full fruit for some time until it can be known if such high hopes are realised. Optimism, though, is high on the agenda as the programme gets underway, not least because of the now wellestablished partnership with property and security specialists Orbis.

"This is one of the most ambitious schemes undertaken by the city council and will make a huge impact on the regeneration of the inner city," said Cllr Alan Clark, the council's portfolio holder for neighbourhood regeneration. "It will provide a mix of good quality attractive housing for sale, for rent and for shared ownership close for the city centre. The scheme is a prototype for similar regeneration projects that could take place in the future in Nottingham."