All aboard the Farrell Express

It was a savvy move by Kent County Council to enlist Sir Terry Farrell to sprinkle some "starchitect" stardust over an already published regeneration framework.

The Farrell-authored 21st Century Kent A blueprint for the county's future launched yesterday builds on council leader Paul Carter's document Unlocking Kent's Potential and puts connectivity and landscape at the heart of its 20-year vision for economic growth.

As the man behind recent developments such as Incheon International Airport in South Korea and Beijing South Railway Station, Farrell (pictured above at St Pancras Grand) certainly has a track record in designing major transport hubs. And with High Speed 1 now up and running, shuttling passengers from central London to Ashford in 17 minutes (and to further afield Ebbsfleet in under 40 minutes), Kent has some hubs of it own in the making. Farrell reckons the population of Ashford alone could double by 2030 to 110,000. And as a further sign of the county's ambitions, it has already been in discussions with Microsoft - who brought along Intel for the ride - to talk digital infrastructure and Saatchi are apparently close to signing on to create a new Visit Kent campaign aimed at both domestic and international tourists.

For now, towns on Kent's east coast, such as Margate - where I was told yesterday that there are suburbs with 50 per cent of residents on some kind of benefit, remain cut off from high-speed rail. We look forward to hearing precise details from Kent County Council and its various partners on putting the flesh on the bones of Farrell's vision so that in coastal towns where levels of deprivation are high, jobs can be created from an increase in tourism. One of the challenges is getting this message across.

As Farrell told me at the launch: "It’s a challenge of communication. How do you get complicated ideas expressed in such a way that everybody can buy-in and feel joint authors with, from the lowest to the highest, from the widest to the narrowest. How do you get buy-in?"

Salford revisited

Last night, an in-depth feature on the BBC's Newsnight programme examined the success of the Labour government's attempts to regenerate two neighbourhoods in Salford, Greater Manchester. After former Prime Minister Tony Blair swept to power in 1997 saying that his party would be judged on how it dealt with the poorest people in Britain, Newsnight adopted the two neighbourhoods - Ordsall and Langworthy - to gauge Labour's progress in tackling deprivation. Last night's programme saw Newsnight revisit the two neighbourhoods 11 years on, to look at how plans for regeneration had fared.

According to the programme, when Newsnight first visited in the late 1990s, Langworthy's estates were derelict and Ordsall had a reputation for poverty and crime. Much of Salford "certainly looks different" now, the programme stated, highlighting the "swish new apartment blocks" at Salford Quays. Different developers have been at work at Langworthy over the last decade, the programme, said. Newsnight's initial impression of the results of the work was a positive one. 

However, Newsnight delivered a less positive verdict on the impact of Salford's regeneration on the area's residents. The programme interviewed two Langworthy residents, who had been moved under a house swap scheme which saw them rehoused in refurbished properties and their old homes demolished. One resident, Mark Tandy, said that he received £25,000 for his original home, while his new home was valued at £78,000, leaving him owing the council £53,000. He said: "It's a big difference when I've already owned my home for 30 years, and I find myself a pensioner with a lump sum around my neck." Another resident, Tina Berry, said that she'd rather had stayed in her old property. "I'd have stayed there. I didn't want to move," she told the programme.

Meanwhile, Stephen Kingston of the Salford Star newspaper, pointed out that many of the homes demolished in Langworthy had yet to be replaced. "Those people have gone, and gone forever," he said. "There's not even a developer in place to put new homes up. There's just grass crofts. It's like a ghost town."

What did you think of Newsnight's portrayal of Salford's regeneration? Please comment below.

End of the pier show

Nearly six years ago, for my first features assignment for Regeneration & Renewal, I travelled to North Wales on a cold and wet June day. I was there to meet a man called Steve Hunt, who had sold his house to buy Colwyn Bay's pier in 2003, and was mounting a campaign for its restoration. "I like a challenge," he told me at the time. "You get kids who want to be train drivers or astronauts, but I wanted a pier." When I met Hunt in 2004, the Grade II-listed pier had very clearly seen better days. "The pier is in need of TLC," Hunt had said. "It's not quite derelict, but in a few years it will be. It's kind of uneconomical to save it now, but never mind."

Sadly, it seems that Hunt - despite his enthusiasm and investment - was unable to halt the pier's decline. He was declared bankrupt in 2008 (his bankruptcy was discharged in last April) and the pier is currently in the hands of receivers. The BBC reported last week that a packed public meeting, called by Clwyd West MP David Jones, had discussed the future of Colwyn Bay's pier. Jones has said that the "progressively deteriorating" state of the pier was a "huge concern" to most residents. According to the BBC, there was an overwhelming show of hands in favour of renovating the pier at the meeting. Hunt, meanwhile, still believes the pier has scope for redevelopment. "It is an important heritage building which should be kept for the future of Wales," he told the North Wales News earlier this month. "The potential is unlimited."

In order for this potential to be unlocked, serious financial backing is needed. Time will tell whether the help required is forthcoming.

White Elephant or West Ham?

Lord Coe can’t be too happy today. In his role as chair of the London Olympic Games Organising Committee, Coe – a key figure in winning the Games for the capital – has long insisted that the Olympic Stadium in East London should retain its athletics track in legacy use. But Coe’s vision, to drastically cut back the stadium from 80,000 to a modest 25,000 and make it a home of athletics in London, has long been the subject of fierce debate. Many argue that such a move would be a disaster, as without an anchor tenant and with limited demand for athletics as a spectator sport, the venue would become a white elephant.

Equally, critics say, it is a nonsense to build a world class venue only to then downscale it so severely. These critics say the Olympic organisers should follow the example of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester – where Manchester City took on the stadium - and have a football team become the anchor tenant. This option has been explored. But Coe has continued to insist that the athletics track should remain, whoever the anchor tenant, meaning football clubs, who have no interest in stadiums with tracks separating the supporters from the pitch, lost interest.

But not now. This week West Ham’s new owners – life long Hammers fans – said they wanted the club to move to the stadium after the Games - so long as there is no athletics track and it can seat around 55,000 fans. Ministers, the Mayor of London, the host boroughs – and the taxpayer – ought to be jumping for joy. The opportunity to have one of London’s premier football teams, whose current stadium is only three miles down the road, as anchor tenant of a stadium which currently does not have one ought to be leapt at with open arms. The absence of a legacy tenant for the stadium is one great stadium sized hole in the current legacy plans and West Ham would fill it. 

Olympics minister Tessa Jowell has said the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), which has now taken charge of the legacy planning from the Boris Johnson’s economic development agency, will look at West Ham’s proposal. Even before West Ham’s renewed interest, Baroness Ford, OPLC chair, said she wanted to review plans for the stadium. Boris Johnson too has been occasionally outspoken in bemoaning the lack of a viable legacy use for the stadium and has said he favours a football club. These three key players – along with the host boroughs (Mayor of Newham Robin Wales, a Hammers fan, said West Ham was the “obvious” solution to the stadium problem) – should now do all they can to turn West Ham’s interest into a concrete commitment. That will of course cost money. Converting the stadium into a football venue and removing the track could cost around £150 million, the OPLC says. It will also require Coe - who did a grand job winning the Games for London - to be sidelined. Those with an interest in making the legacy a success must be allowed to give the West Ham option the attention it deserves.

NB: The author is an Arsenal supporter and therefore is in no way biased towards West Ham.

Japanese lessons

Bullet train technology. X-shaped pedestrian crossings. Knotweed. These are all things for which regenerators must thank the Japanese. To this list we can now add pod-style hotels.

Last week, Westminster City Council granted permission for a hotel with 495 rooms, some of which will measure a mere 12sq metres, at the Grade II-listed Trocadero building in London’s West End. These pod-style rooms are inspired by the even tinier sleeping compartments stacked side by side and one above the other found in Japanese capsule hotels. If you’ve ever stayed in one of those, you’ll know it’s like sleeping inside a shoe, only worse-smelling.

Pod hotels aren’t, strictly speaking, new to this country. The first, Yotel, was created by Gerard Greene and Simon Woodroffe, who knows a thing or two about borrowing ideas from the Japanese – he’s the entrepreneur behind the Yo! Sushi restaurant chain. It opened at Heathrow Terminal 4 in 2007; others have since followed.

Here are four other Japanese innovations we think could work in this country:

1. Underground bicycle parks. Automated parking spaces such as Eco Cycle in west Tokyo’s Jiyugaoka district store cycles beside the train station in moving carousels for members who pay around £18 a month to use the park, resulting in less clutter and less cars.

2. (Proper) superfast high-speed broadband. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the UK is placed a lowly 21st out of 30 in terms of internet connection speed, below Greece and Portugal. Most subscribers in Japan access the internet through fibre optic technology and the top advertised speed is 1 gigabite per second. Although business secretary Peter Mandelson’s Next Generation Fund proposes to upgrade the UK’s digital infrastructure so that 90 per cent of the country has access to super-fast broadband, this is likely to be at a speed of 50 megabits per second only. Can Britain remain competitive when the playing field isn’t level?

3. Turn Heathrow into a transit hub. Haneda airport is the world's fourth-busiest airport and less than 15 minutes from downtown Tokyo. Could Heathrow ever become so close to the capital? Interviewed by the Sunday Times last year, transport secretary Lord Adonis talked about integrating Heathrow into the future north-south High Speed 2 rail line, calling it "an attractive idea.'' Such a hub would encourage more passengers get to the airport by train and mean some passengers ditch air travel altogether for trips to the continent.

4. Garden cities. Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara has for a while been encouraging companies to grow plant and vegetable gardens on top of skyscrapers to lower city temperatures and provide green spaces for the public. If communications giant NTT can harvest sweet potatoes on its own rooftop farms and human resources firm Pasona can run a farm that adjusts temperatures, humidity and lighting so vegetables can grow under the ground, how about, say, Swiss Re growing gherkins on the side of the Gherkin in London’s City? Or is that just pie in the sky?

Photo by Kaarin T

Empty properties, temporary use

Earlier this week, the Development Trusts Association (DTA) gave me an update on one of the programmes it is helping to run. The government-funded Meanwhile Project, which Regeneration & Renewal ran a story about last year, aims to encourage temporary community use of empty shops that have been forced to close during the recession. It’s a great way of both rejuvenating a run-down area and also helping to get local arts, education or other community-led initiatives off the ground.

Since we wrote our story in August, the DTA has confirmed that the Meanwhile lease that was being drawn up by government lawyers to enable community groups, development trusts and charities to occupy empty buildings has been finalised and many more new Meanwhile projects have been launched as a result.

Word is that a Meanwhile lease for land is being worked up, too, which would help community groups take over land that may have been earmarked for development, but subsequently delayed, for a range of temporary uses such as community food growing schemes, community parks, gardens or other green spaces. (Click here for further info.)

In the meantime, we’ve put together a list of several community projects that are taking advantage of the scheme.

• The Cambridge Film Trust (CFT) is using the old Habitat building on Fitzroy street, Cambridge, to produce and screen short films from the East Anglian Archive and some produced by Cambridge students, as part of the People’s Cinema Shopfront Screening Project.
  
• Popup Space is a new national website database, that identifies temporary shop space and commercial lets with potential landlords and agents. The team is based in Brighton. Another Brighton-based initiative is the Empty Shops Network, which has been around a while, but which lists various empty shops for artists.
• Margate Renewal Partnership has launched Windows of Opportunity – arts displays in empty shop windows.
• Arts organisation Crescent Arts runs Windows to the Borough, which also produces living art productions in the windows of empty shops in Scarborough. It also runs arts and educational workshops.
• Sharrow Community Forum in Sheffield is planning a two-month mini arts festival, connecting artists with empty shop space via a ‘dating’-style website.
  

Have you any thoughts on how the Meanwhile project could be further developed?

By SARAH TOWNSEND

Photo by Dave Patten

Poll: Would tax breaks for married couples help fix broken Britain?

Tory leader David Cameron's plans to give married couples a tax break have recently come under fire. Full details on the policy are far from concrete at the moment, but Cameron has repeatedly said that he wants to recognise marriage in the tax system. This morning, The Times suggested that the marriage tax allowance is now likely only to apply to married couples with children.

Criticism

Children's secretary Ed Balls said at the weekend that the policy was "unfair" and amounted to "social engineering". Balls said the Tory proposal for supporting marriage in the tax system was "hugely expensive and unfair" as it would discriminate against women who had to leave their husbands due to domestic violence and stigmatise children whose parents were not married.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, meanwhile, also criticised the plans in an interview on BBC One's Andrew Marr show. He said: "It is immensely unfair. What does is mean for the poor woman who has been left by some philandering husband who goes on to another marriage and gets the tax break and she doesn't?"

Responsibility

But Cameron says that he wants to send out the message that "if you take responsibility, you'll be rewarded". Supporting marriage, he said, was an important part of his plans to tackle Britain's social ills. "A stable home is the best start a child can get. That's why we'll back commitment by recognising marriage in the tax system - and we'll also end the couple penalty in the tax credits system which, unbelievably, encourages parents to live apart," he wrote in the Mail on Sunday.

What do you think? Would Cameron's tax break plans help fix broken Britain? Let us know by voting in our poll (top right) and commenting below.

* In last week's poll, we asked whether blog readers were planning on leaving the regeneration sector in 2010. Fifty-five per cent said they were not planning to leave the sector, 17 per cent said they were and 27 per cent said they were not sure.

City challenge

Last week, business secretary Lord Mandelson unveiled plans for a nationwide competition to award a UK urban area city status in 2012. In a Lords debate, he said that the competition would be launched later this year and would form part of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. According to reports, the competition announced by Lord Mandelson is likely to mirror events in 2002, the Golden Jubilee, when four new cities were created — Stirling, Preston, Preston and Lisburn and Newry — after entries from 26 towns. In 2000, Brighton and Hove, Wolverhampton and Inverness were granted city status to mark the Millennium. Here, we give you the lowdown on four early runners and riders...

Milton Keynes
Famed for its concrete cows and roundabouts, Milton Keynes (picture, left, by Troy Johnston), which has a population approaching 200,000, has already unsuccessfully attempted to win city status, in 2000 and 2002. Following Mandelson's announcement, a team is being formed to prepare the bid, including businessman Gavin Anderson. He said city status would be good for businesses and civic pride and took a swipe at the other new towns. "If you compare us to other new towns, they have drugs problems, they need regeneration," he told the MK News. "Here we are a success story, incorporating a quarter of a million strangers over 40 years." Before Christmas, Milton Keynes was named among the host cities for England's 2018 World Cup bid.

Perth
Perth, billed as Scotland's "Fair City", previously had city status, but lost it in local government reorganisation in 1975. Perth hopes to win city status before 2012, and has completed a formal submission to Lord Chancellor Jack Straw outlining its claim. “Perth’s claim is a reinstatement of dignity lost,” Provost John Hulbert told The Times. “Our case is different and special. We have the support of the First Minister of Scotland, and the good wishes of the Secretary of State. I hope this process allows us to move forward in 2010 and we will submit our claim within two weeks. We will wait until 2012 only if we require a long-stop position.”

Wrexham
Efforts to secure city status for Wrexham have been backed by Welsh secretary Peter Hain and Wales' new First Minister Carwyn Jones. Hain said: "Wrexham has much claim to become Wales' next city and I wish it every success in a future bid." Jones, meanwhile, said: “It is difficult to assess Wrexham’s chances, but I think Wrexham deserves to be a city. Wrexham is the biggest town in North Wales and deserves to be a city. Several things that happen when a town becomes a city, first of all it is extra kudos and secondly I think it engenders an even greater sense of pride that people have in the community that they live in.”

Croydon
Croydon, in south London (picture, left, by Les Chatfield), is likely to bid again for city status after losing out in 2002. Mike Fisher, leader of the London Borough of Croydon, said: “It is almost certain we will consider putting in a bid for city status. This gives us a distinct identity as a borough and will allow us to mark ourselves as separate to greater London.”

How do you rate their chances? Comment below...

The hoodie is now chic

The fashionistas have claimed the hoodie. We know this because wafer-thin models have been spotted wearing this must-have fashion accessory for the Asbo generation as they strut the catwalks of Paris, while quite possibly giving off a menacing pout that could scare Middle England to death.

We’re told that fashion house Balenciaga’s hoodie sweater comes “in panelled black leather with a snow-white lining.” Stella McCartney and Marc Jacobs have also got in on the act, designing their own hooded tops, albeit for their more downmarket lines. So if the hoodie is now part of high fashion - and on its way to being a staple of the high street – where does this leave your average hoodie-wearing yoof on the street?

Probably without a hoodie. For if anything signals the death knell of something once held dear in the eyes of the young, surely it’s mainstream acceptance.

In his now-infamous "hug-a-hoodie" 2006 speech to the Centre for Social Justice, Tory leader David Cameron said: "We - the people in suits - often see hoodies as aggressive, the uniform of a rebel army of young gangsters.” If teens shun the hoodie, then here’s hoping the media can no longer fall back on the easy stereotype of hoodie as knife-wielding criminal.

Photo by Lollyknit

Regeneration in the snow 3...

Thanks to Sean Cleverley, of West Hull's Newington & St Andrew's Regeneration Team, for these pictures of the Newington and St Andrew's regeneration area taken in the recent snowy weather. Click here to see images of Liverpool's Edge Hill area in the snow and here for images of London regeneration schemes in the snow.

Please send any images you have of regeneration in the snow to jamie.carpenter@haymarket.com and we'll publish the best on the blog.

Is Britain great? Or broken?

In the run-up to Christmas, we posted a link to possible stocking fillers for regenerators, the ten best design and development books of 2009 by US urban planning site Planetizen.

Well, either Santa doesn’t read this blog or the likes of the nearly 600-page-long Riverscapes: Designing Urban Embankments were just too big to fit down the chimney. I didn’t wake up to any of Planetizen’s top 10 tomes on Christmas Day.

What I did wake up to was a copy of Is Britain Great? 2 by Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale. Published at the end of last year, it is the second book in the self-described quest of the two "social artists" to locate 21st century Britain’s "genius loci," or spirit of the place, with a digital camera. Publishers the Caravan Gallery describe it "as a latter day photographic Domesday book." Others might think of it as a kind of Martin Parr-esque take on Broken Britain. As one Amazon reviewer puts it somewhat reservedly: "There is nothing here that could remotely be used as a tourist agency to encourage overseas visitors."

That’s because in their portraits of the industrial estates of Redcar or the seaside promenades of Seaton Carew, Hartlepool, Williams and Teasdale capture real life. Invariably their lens focuses on parts of the country that were once thriving but have since entered economic decline, despite – or perhaps even because of – regeneration efforts. In two photographs of a Sunderland estate, one resident has painted on the side of a house: “Free speech council paid ½ million 4 year’s ago 4 a survey + masterplan we havn’t seen yet, who’s doing it elvis?”

If Williams and Teasdale weren’t so sympathetic to their subjects, Is Britain Great? 2 might quickly become depressing. But when the two are able to portray the fondness that some of their subjects have for Britain, such as beachgoers at Southsea, that fondness becomes infectious.

One regret: An index with the names of estates and towns featured in the book would have made navigating Is Britain Great? 2 a lot easier.

London Assembly live webcast

Over @regenerationUK we are live tweeting on the webcast (click on the top link) on the London Assembly's Strategic Regeneration Framework public meeting.

On the agenda: how the Olympic Park can bring benefits to Londoners. On the panel is Regeneration & Renewal editor Richard Garlick.

Capital gains

The European Capital of Culture has been running since 1985, when Athens, the capital of Greece, was awarded the title. Since then, the competition has expanded so that more than one city can be Capital of Culture in a single year. Interestingly, 2010 sees a first – the Ruhr region of Germany has become the first region to be awarded Capital of Culture status. It shares the title this year with the city of Pecs in Hungary and Istanbul in Turkey.

It’s notoriously difficult to demonstrate the economic gains from cultural activity. An interesting analysis released today, however, underlines the boost that Capital of Culture status can provide to city-regions. The figures show that the value of tourism to Liverpool’s economy rose by 25 per cent in 2008 – the year it was Capital of Culture – generating a total spend of £617 million, up from £493 million in 2007. Visitor spend in the Liverpool city-region (picture courtesy of Digital Desktop Wallpaper) as a whole rose from £1.4 billion in 2007 to £1.6 billion in 2008, according to the Scarborough Tourism Economic Activity Monitor figures.

Unfortunately, due to the enlargement of the European Union, a UK city (or region) will not be able to claim Capital of Culture status until 2032, so city leaders will have to look elsewhere if they wish to harness culture to boost regeneration. The Department for Culture, Media and Sports' City of Culture initiative, which from 2013 could see successful cities host high-profile media events including the Turner Prize, BBC Sports Personality of the Year, The Brits and the RIBA Stirling Prize, could provide a boost, but whether it will have the same impact as the Europe-wide programme it is based on is questionable.

Regeneration in the snow 2...

We've been sent some more pictures of regeneration in the snow. These are of the Edge Hill area of Liverpool, which is being cleared through the housing market renewal programme. Thanks to Dr Olivier Sykes, a lecturer in European spatial planning at the University of Liverpool.

Please send any images you have of regeneration in the snow to jamie.carpenter@haymarket.com and we'll publish the best on the blog.

Poll: new year, new career?

In our recent Careers and Salary Survey, most of those polled said they expect to still be in the sector in a year’s time.

The survey also deduced that the current economic climate calls for a rethink in the approach to training if practitioners are to see out 2010 still in the sector.

Now that the new year fog has cleared (to be replaced by snow), we're opening the question of job security to our blog readers: We're asking you if you are planning to leave the regeneration sector in the next 12 months. Vote at the top of this blog.

Regeneration in the snow...

The big freeze continues... This image, of Hackney's Woodberry Down regeneration scheme in the snow, was sent to us this morning by blog reader Chris Thomson.

And the image below, sent to us by north London blog reader Clare Byrne, shows the redevelopment of Arsenal's old Highbury stadium.

Send any images you have of regeneration schemes in the snow to jamie.carpenter@haymarket.com and we'll publish the best of them on the blog.

Agenda: 10 key dates in 2010

Following yesterday’s blog, which brought you the ten figures likely to shape the regeneration agenda in 2010, we now bring you ten key events to look out for over the coming year.

January
The Conservative Party has said it will publish a planning green paper, originally scheduled to be released before Christmas, in January 2010. A long-awaited regeneration green paper is expected to follow early this year.

February
A revised masterplan for the development of the Olympic Park in east London (pictured left) after the 2012 Games will be published by this spring, Andrew Altman, the chief executive of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, said in November.

The schemes to receive cash from the second round of housing and regeneration quango the Homes & Communities Agency’s Kickstart fund to unlock work on stalled sites are expected to be announced early this year. A shortlist of 265 bids was announced before Christmas.

March
Transport secretary Lord Adonis is to set out how the Government intends to take forward its plans for a high-speed rail link between London and Scotland by the end of March. Over Christmas Adonis was presented with plans for the first section of the line by the High Speed Two company, set up by the Government to consider the case for new high-speed services between London and Scotland.

The Infrastructure Planning Commission, the new quango set up to make decisions on planning applications for infrastructure of national significance, is expected to receive its first planning applications from March. The Conservatives have promised to abolish the quango if they are elected.

April
Chancellor Alistair Darling (left) is likely to deliver his final Budget report before the general election in April. The chancellor’s Pre-Budget Report, published before Christmas, promised to set out plans to remove local area agreement indicators that are no longer needed by April 2010. Plans to bring together fragmented funding streams and guidance on pooling and aligning local budgets are also due to be published by the Budget.

The second tranche of Flexible New Deal contracts are expected to be signed in the spring by the Department for Work and Pensions. The Conservatives have pledged to tear up or renegotiate those contracts on the basis of their own proposals.

A new duty on local authorities to carry out assessments of local economic conditions is due to come into force on 1 April. A consultation on draft guidance closes in March.

May
A general election is widely tipped to take place on 6 May. Whatever the outcome, the implications for the regeneration sector will be far-reaching.

December
Football’s world governing body Fifa will appoint the hosts for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups on 2 December. Last month, England’s bid team named the cities that would stage World Cup games should its bid be successful.

Ten to watch in 2010

To kick off our blogging in 2010, we’ve had a quick think about the ten figures we think are likely to shape the regeneration agenda over the next 12 months. Here’s what we’ve come up with:

Andrew Altman
In August 2009 Altman became chief executive of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, the regeneration vehicle set up to deliver a lasting legacy for the Olympic Park now being created in east London. The former US planner is currently reviewing the masterplan for the development of the Olympic Park after 2012 and told reporters before Christmas that the revised plan should be complete by spring this year.

Clive Dutton
Formerly Birmingham City Council’s head of regeneration, Dutton moved to the London Borough of Newham as its new executive director of regeneration, planning and property in September 2009. He is responsible for leading Newham’s post-2012 Olympic Games regeneration strategy.

Eamonn Boylan
Boylan is housing and regeneration quango the Homes & Communities Agency’s deputy chief executive and corporate director for new ventures and partnerships. He oversees the HCA’s programmes relating to land and private finance. In a period where public funding is likely to be tight for regeneration, these initiatives, including the private rented sector initiative (PRSI) to encourage institutions to fund homes specifically for private rent, will be key.

Caroline Spelman
The shadow communities secretary’s team is to publish a long-awaited regeneration green paper early this year, the Conservative Party confirmed just before Christmas. Before that assurance, shadow regeneration minister Stewart Jackson had told Regeneration & Renewal that he “hoped” that the paper would appear early in 2010. A planning paper is expected to be unveiled by the party this month.

Gideon Amos
The outgoing chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association will become a full-time commissioner at quango the Infrastructure Planning Commission in March. The body has been set up to make decisions on planning applications for nationally significant infrastructure projects.

Phillip Blond
Blond, the director of think-tank ResPublica, has been hailed as Tory leader David Cameron’s “philosopher king”. Blond’s brand of “red Toryism” advocates a form of politics that is socially conservative, but sceptical of neoliberal economics.

Nicky de Beer
De Beer is general manager of the Leadership Centre for Local Government, which is leading the key Total Place initiative to map public spending in 13 local authority areas with a view to cutting out duplication. She is project manager for the Total Place programme.

Iain Duncan Smith
Former Conservative leader Duncan Smith is chair of think-tank the Centre for Social Justice. In 2009, Tory leader David Cameron signalled in his party conference speech that Duncan Smith would serve in his cabinet, with responsibility for social justice, should the Tories win the general election.

Lord Adonis
In March the transport secretary will reveal the Government’s final plans for a high-speed rail link between London, the West Midlands and then further north. Over Christmas, Adonis was presented with plans for the first section of the line by the High Speed Two company, set up by the Government to consider the case for new high-speed services between London and Scotland.

Matthew Elliott
The chief executive of lobby group the Taxpayers’ Alliance, which under his watch has grown from a group of volunteers to eight members of staff working from two offices in London and Birmingham. The lobby group, which has called for the regional development agencies to be abolished (describing them as “wasteful, self-congratulatory bodies that produce very little other than jobs for themselves and a good deal of hot air”), is influential in Tory party circles, although denies being a Conservative “front organisation”.

Is there anyone else you think should be on the list? Please comment below to let us know what you think.