Regeneration tweeters: Five of the best

Whether you love it, hate it, or just think it's completely pointless, there's no doubting the popularity of social messaging website Twitter, which allows users to post frequent updates on their activities. Regeneration & Renewal launched its own Twitter page - www.twitter.com/regenerationUK - back in March, and it has now clocked up more than 500 followers and over 850 tweets.

The PM's wife Sarah Brown, comedian Stephen Fry and US president Barack Obama are perhaps the most well-known tweeters. But regeneration practitioners and related organisations have also got in on the act. If you've not yet embraced Twitter, here are five renewal-related tweeters to get you started:

tobyblume
Whose page is it? Toby Blume, chief executive of voluntary sector umbrella body Urban Forum.
Sample tweet: "back from a partly enforced twitter sabbatical. though i have realised that it is possible to live happily without twitter (but not email)"

THEPLANNERMAN
Whose page is it? Blackpool-based town planning consultant and chartered surveyor Ian Butter.
Sample tweet: "Nice quiet day today prepping planning applications on the Portal and befuddling myself with PowerPoint. F1 @ 5.00 though so time for break."

grantshapps
Whose page is it? Shadow housing minister Grant Shapps.
Sample tweet: "Will be on front bench for PMQs today. Rest of time working on a variety of housing and constituency issues."

Mike_Plunkett
Whose page is it? Mike Perry of the Plunkett Foundation.
Sample tweet:"Will the village shop on The Archers be saved. Maybe based in the pub? Maybe build a new premises? Will the community take ownership?"

emptyhomes
Whose page is it? David Ireland, chief executive of the Empty Homes Agency.
Sample tweet: "Government concludes that monopoly house builders are the problem. What took them so long?"

Are we missing any out?

By JAMIE CARPENTER

'Set the phasers to equality'

Just how closely does the fictitious Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship in BBC2's savage political comedy “The Thick of It” resemble the very real Department for Communities and Local Government?

The first episode in the third series of the show may well have had the policy wonks at the DCLG squirming in their swivel chairs.

It was Cabinet reshuffle day and spin doctor Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) was on the hunt for a new secretary of state for the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship - any “mammal with a head” would do. Enter the thrusting Nicola Murray (Rebecca Front, who made me laugh out loud years ago here).

“My primary focus is social mobility - that's my big thing,” said Murray to her two hapless advisers, Ollie and Glenn, in an early attempt at consensus building. “I suppose I am telling you that partly to get your take on it and so you can start spreading the news: Fire up the turbo chargers, set the phasers to equality - it's Murray time.”

Alas, social mobility isn’t exactly high on the list of priorities at Number 10.

“Social mobility – making people richer – costs money,” says Glenn. “And we don’t have that.”

Nicola doesn’t advance her cause when she announces she is planning to send her youngest to an independent school. Rips Malcolm: “You are saying that your local state schools that this government so drastically improved are knife addled rape sheds.”

Could any dissenting voter have put it to her better?

Nicola then refused to share a lift with her tormentor, not because he’d be hurling insults at her all the while but because she is – get this - claustrophobic.

“It’s about not being able to get out,” she said.

Any civil servant stuck in some kind of bureaucratic stasis will know what that feels like.

We’ll be watching next week with interest, not least to see how the life of the Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship holds its own – or not – against the tyrant Malcom.

But will the good folks at the DCLG be doing the same - or is "The Thick of It" just a little too close to the bone?

Fitting tribute?

The latest news emanating from London's City Hall is that Boris wants to build a 394-foot monument in the Olympic Park in order to "seal his legacy".

Early designs for the monument give the impression that it will look like an electricity pylon, though apparently sources close to the Mayor of London claim he envisages it as something "quite stunning in its ambition ... a tribute to London that people will fall in love with".

Aside from the fact that, judging by the designs, it's hard to imagine the proposed tower inducing amorous feelings in Londoners, don't we have other priorities in the Olympic Park?

Such as ensuring the regeneration legacy promises for east Londoners that were a key part of the bid are actually delivered. Only last week Baroness Ford, the head of the new Olympic Park Legacy Company, warned that the Olympic Village, in its current design, was in danger of becoming a sterile housing estate after the Games.

Ford said she was exploring the possibility of keeping the stadium at 80,000 seats, rather than reducing it to 25,000. But she insisted that an athletic tracks would remain a permanent legacy - immediately ruling out the possibility of a football use, despite her protestations otherwise. (She said in Europe many clubs have athletic tracks around their pitches. This point conveniently ignores the fact that no top flight in the UK has one and wouldn't stand for it.)

These are just some of the issues that need attention, rather than the distraction by of building an overblown, rather pointless, monument to Boris' own ego?

I'll sidestep the issue of whether a pointless, overblown tower would be a fitting tribute to London's leader and let you decide for yourselves.

By BEN COOK

Councils swing the axe

News on the front page of this week's R&R that two councils have axed dedicated regeneration departments is likely to send a tremor of fear down the spines of sector practitioners – whether or not they work in council departments.

Why? Because while there’s an argument for mainstreaming regeneration activity across all work carried out by local authorities, the bottom line is that it needs to have its own strategy, its own budget and its own specialist team to ensure it is kept firmly on the agenda – particularly during a time of widespread public sector cuts.

While researching this story, R&R came across another local authority that had done away with its regeneration department, a team that had consisted of (precisely) 1.5 people to begin with. It begs the question: How many more councils are planning to swing the axe on regeneration departments?

BY SARAH TOWNSEND

Chester 1-0 Rhyl

Three Dragons' Den-style investors descended on this year's Northern Regeneration Summit for the newly-created "Pitch-Pit" forum, which aimed to give insight into what boxes would have to be ticked to make investors part with their cash. Theo Paphitis from Dragons' Den wasn’t there to harp on about his children’s inheritance, but three key investors in the regeneration sector were present to hold the fort: Guy Butler of Grosvenor, Simon Wilkes of Legal and General Property and Ken Knott from Ask Property Developments.

First up were Charlie Seward and Noel O'Neil from Chester West and Chester Council, who pitched their vision for a sheme in Chesterfield. While their pitch was a no-thrills affair it did outline their ideas for the town, which included plans for the development of three former industrial sites to create a new business space alongside retail and leisure projects.

Guy Butler suggested they give the scheme a bit more punch by linking up with universities, but said he was impressed that the council has taken on the lead on Compulsory Purchase Orders. "As a developer, CPOs are a major thing we are not interested in, and would influence me to positively walk away from a scheme," he said. "However, if you [local authority] take on the land assembly, that would de-risk the site and interest us."

Meanwhile, Ken Knott wanted to see more detail on the sequencing of the three sites, and which one would be developed first to act as a trailblazer for the rest of the scheme. He said he wouldn’t bid for the scheme "but would get in the car to have a look".

Simon Wilkes said the pair’s pitch focussed too much of the "scene-setting" and not enough on the vision.

Next up was the "Keeping it Rhyl" pitch from regeneration consultants DPP Shape. After a colourful opening by one half of the team, architect Mike Timpson, the hooked audience awaited for the specifics of their ambitious plans for Rhyl, a struggling Welsh seaside town (picture above by mseasons). They never came.

Simon Wilkes was first to congratulate the team for its "visionary" approach, but said the pitch lacked enough substance for him to make an investment decision, and Ken echoed this by saying he was "immensely disappointed" by lack of detail.

The poll was cast and although close, the audience voted in favour of the let's-stick-to-the-facts speech from Chester West and Chester Council.

POSTED BY SUSIE SELL

BNP poll

Last night saw the controversial appearance of BNP leader Nick Griffin on the BBC's flagship Question Time show. Griffin was given a hostile reception both inside and outside the Question Time studio: protesters gathered outside BBC headquarters before his appearance (picture, above, by Mike Fleming), while the BNP leader was subjected to a grilling by the studio audience and panelists.

Griffin was forced to answer tough questions and was visibly nervous. The programme was dominated by questions on the far-right party's stance on a range of issues. Griffin claimed that a Ku Klux Klan leader was "almost totally non-violent", drawing gasps from the audience and admitted that he had once denied the Holocaust but had since changed his mind.

It will be interesting to see what impact Griffin's prime time TV appearance has on the BNP's popularity. The Times today says: "Despite a couple of early wobbles, he got his key dog whistle messages across ... and by portraying himself as hated, made himself look like a victim of an 'establishment'."

Use the poll on the right to let us know whether you think that Griffin's appearance will lead to an increase in popularity for his party.

The Inverted S

When he wasn't addressing the throng at the Northern Regeneration Summit in Manchester earlier this week, Lord Adonis could be seen practising his doodling. Here is an exclusive design of the Government’s proposals for the implementation of high-speed rail hand-drawn - but, alas, not signed - by the transport secretary and snaffled by a Regeneration & Renewal staffer on the sidelines of the summit.

The route of the Adonis design takes the form of an inverted "S," starting with Glasgow, and takes in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds/Bradford, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands before winding up in Greater London.

Do we think the peer missed his calling as a sketch artist?

Urban hymns

Delegates at the Northern Regeneration Summit were in for a treat on Monday night when the pre-conference dinner at Manchester Town Hall turned into a poetry slam by young people from Moss Side (picture, left, by Gene Hunt).

Young Identity is a group of around 32 kids – all passionate and budding poets - from an area of Manchester that was once notorious for its violent drugs and gang culture – not to mention the race-related riots that have taken place there. A fair amount of money has been pumped into the community so that it now has quite a lot of cultural groups and activities going on – when I was at Manchester University (I left in 2006) it was the third-year haven of a few wannabe-edgy students – and areas like Wythenshawe and Hulme are now almost as infamous. So when we were watching the eight or so performers from Young Identity I was a bit taken aback by the number of poems that talked of gun crime, death and survival and so on. Clearly there’s still some work to be done.

Nonetheless – I think it’s safe to say everyone was pretty impressed by the standard of the poetry, with one particularly powerful one standing out (a girl with an incredibly beautiful voice sang while her friend recited his poem – it was eerie, but effective).

In its brochure, Young Identity says its work is an “important part of the future of literature in the North West” and that it “strives to stimulate young people’s ambitions to pursue further education within the literary field”. The group is partnered with various organisations including the regeneration team at the council, Manchester Libraries, Manchester Youth Service and the university’s Contact Theatre, and in February it won an £8,000 grant from the DCSF’s Youth Opportunities Fund – so it’s obviously doing well in getting its message across. The group’s leader, Shirley May, is a loud and charismatic woman who rather disconcertingly recited a poem about her sex life with her husband, claiming that she wanted to lift the mood of the evening after the intense and brooding work of her protégées. She didn’t fail.

Afterwards she said she was working to try and recruit kids from other communities in Manchester, who hadn’t ever considered writing poetry and who were perhaps less outwardly gifted and motivated than the current crop. This might present its own difficulties, she said, because it could lose its credibility as a community organisation if it got too big. For now, she’s focusing her attentions on Moss Side – and there’s nothing wrong with that.

BY SARAH TOWNSEND

The future of structural funding

Today is the penultimate day of Open Days 2009 – the European Commission’s annual cities and regions conference, hosted in Brussels and attended by around 7,000 delegates from across the European Union. As I mentioned in my last post on Monday, despite the fact that we are not even three years into the current 2007-13 European funding round, discussions are already underway in Brussels into how the next round of structural funding will work.

This morning I attended a session on the future of European cohesion policy after 2013, when the current six-year round of structural funding ends. The most significant development to report is that the European Commission is giving serious consideration to overhauling the way structural funds are managed to focus more on results. Speakers from the EC’s directorate general for regional policy (DG Regio) and directorate general for employment acknowledged two problems with the current system. Firstly, they said that the current process – with its strong focus on financial management and control – is too complex. Secondly, they admitted that the EC has struggled in the past to point to positive outcomes resulting from the spending of regional aid. Katerina Mathernova, DG Regio’s deputy director general, said: “DG Regio has been busy working on the technical side. The solutions can be found. We all feel financial accountability fatigue.”

Fabrizio Barca, who produced a report for former regional policy commissioner Danuta Hubner on the possibility of managing structural funds on a results basis, told delegates that the quality of indicators currently used to evaluate the outcomes of structural funding is “extremely poor”. He suggested that recipients of structural funding that missed targets should not be fined. Instead, he said, the EC should evaluate why the targets were missed and then make recommendations. Sanctions should only be applied should those recommendations be ignored, Barca recommended.

It remains to be seen whether the overhaul will actually take place - the change would need approval from the European Parliament in order to be enacted. “I’m a little sceptical on this front,” Mathernova admitted.

In other news – and perhaps unsurprisingly – the Tory Party’s stance on the Lisbon Treaty has proved unpopular here in Brussels, where huge significance is attached to the treaty. Yesterday, I asked the EC’s regional policy commissioner Pawel Samecki what impact the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty would have on cohesion policy and structural funding. He said that the treaty contains a reference to the notion of “territorial cohesion”, which does not exist in any of the EC’s previous treaties. The upshot of this, he said, would be that the EC would have to take more into account “territorial features” and factors that “hamper the development of specific regions”. It would need to “be more looking in this kind of direction in spending money from the EU budget”, Samecki said.

Brussels opens for regions event

I’m in Brussels until Wednesday afternoon for Open Days 2009 – the European Commission’s annual cities and regions conference. Despite the fact that the event is pretty much unheard of in the UK, the EC sees it as a pretty big deal. Around 7,000 delegates are expected to attend from across the European Union.

Speaking earlier today, Pawel Samecki, the EC’s regional policy commissioner, said that the conference represented an “unprecedented learning exercise”. “There’s a growing need for the exchange of information between regions and cities,” he said. “This is particularly important in times of crisis.” He added that the conference also offered the EC the opportunity to listen to what regions say.

The themes being discussed at the conference give a fair indication of what the EC’s current and future priorities are. Unsuprisingly, restoring growth is high on the agenda, as is climate change. But a third theme – “territorial cooperation”, or working across borders – is also being debated in a number of workshops. The phrase “territorial cooperation” may sound nebulous, but the EC believes that cross-border working can help beat the economic downturn. It highlights a strategy being drawn up between Sweden, Finland, Poland and Germany – the “Baltic Sea Strategy” – as a good example of this.

Finally, despite it being nearly four years until the next round of structural funding begins in 2013, the EC is already starting to talk about what this might look like. Pawel Samecki offered a brief glimpse of the EC’s thinking on this earlier today – he said in future the funds would have a greater focus on results and would be simplified. Over the course of the next few days I hope to get some more detail on this.

Stoke place branding strategy launched

A new place branding strategy has been launched by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Newcastle Borough Council and the North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership. The "Make It" brand has been produced by communications agency Liddell Thomson and design agency Graven Images.

The brand is intended to promote North Staffordshire's assets, including its industrial and cultural heritage, creative skills, "luxury brands", and "attractive and distinctive" towns. It also aims to promote the area's "green spaces, canals, gardens and the Peak District", 

strong communities and welcoming people, and the area's location in the heart of England.

I quite like the "Make It" phrase - it's snappy and links nicely to the area's potteries heritage. But is it sufficiently distinct from other place branding strategies? Would a Pennine Lancashire-style attempt to rebrand the area have been a braver move?

What do you think?

Housing sector's Birmingham bash

Last week saw the National Housing Federation conference take over at the Birmingham ICC. However, with the current uncertainty over future public expenditure, the mood was definitely subdued. The delegates that I spoke to were far from enamoured with the keynotes speeches from both the housing minister John Healey and shadow housing minister Grant Shapps. They felt that, while Shapps’ delivery was more lively than Healey’s, both lacked any real substance on how tackle the chronic affordable housing shortage.

The shadow housing minister questioned the continual change of housing minister, which has seen Healey the third minister appointed in 12 months. Whatever political persuasion you might be, it’s clear that Shapps does have a point. Providing solutions to the current problems is a huge undertaking, and the conveyor belt of housing ministers over recent months can’t have had a positive impact on producing policies that are going to make a real difference.

Healey did insist later that he was in it for the long-haul. “I’m quite conscious there have been some rapid changes in housing ministers over the years," he said. "But, I want to do this job for a long time.” But judging by the way things have gone at this week’s Labour Party conference, Healey may not have his wish.