Sink estates are not sunk – they're starved of funding
The government has put great emphasis on the role of personal factors in poverty. The Department for Work and Pensions’ social justice framework focuses on issues such as family stability, entrenched worklessness, and drug and alcohol dependency.
What this neglects are the wider social and environmental factors that can cause and entrench poverty – or provide people with greater opportunity, as the Royal Town Planning Institute has examined in a new report.
Without this, the government’s ambition to confront “big social problems” seems destined to miss the target.
At first sight, theannouncement of a “comprehensive approach to regeneration” for so-called sink estates appears like an attempt to correct the social justice agenda’s skew towards people not place.
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In January this year, the prime minister vowed to blitzpoverty and announced government plans to replace what he called run-down housing estateswith attractive and safe homes. The government has committed to £140m in loan funding to private sector organisations to get additional funding for the regeneration of 100 estates, and an estate regeneration advisory panel to be overseen by Lord Michael Heseltine.
As many commentators have suggested, this funding is far too limited. The government has heralded successful estate regeneration schemes such as the Packington estate in Islington. But Packington alone benefited from £33m in public funding.
Attempting to regenerate many more estates for much less suggests that any new schemes are likely to be financially viable only if social properties are let at higher market rates, raising significant questions about the extent to which genuinely affordable housing for existing residents will be maintained.
Indeed, too many past attempts of regeneration, such as Elephant and Castle or Woodberry Down (another example highlighted by the government) have led to a net loss of social housing.
There’s a bigger issue however, and that’s thinking about regeneration not just as physical improvement but a broader social programme. Some regeneration projects in the past have struggled to make a significant impact on poverty and inequality because their approach has been too narrow.
If you believe that the local environment plays a role in causing and deepening poverty – and many people would – then the obvious implication is that demolishing and refurbishing estates isn’t enough.
It is worrying that 40% of local authority plans do not make any specific reference to poverty and inequality
Take the £220m regeneration of the Ocean Estate in Tower Hamlets, London. This single investment dwarfs the government’s new scheme. But more importantly, alongside improving 1,200 council properties and building more than a thousand mixed tenure homes, it provided new retail and community facilities, including a community centre offering an extensive GP service, housing services, space for community groups, and play areas.
The point is, environment matters.
Improving life chances has to mean more than better properties. It has to mean better places.
The language of “sink estates” only serves to reinforce a sense of segregation. They’re not sunk, they’re starved – of amenities, infrastructure, open spaces, good design, and all of the other things that anyone would want from where they live.
So let’s start from a different, more positive question: what makes some estates successful? What in these environments gives people a chance, a sense of security, and a stake in the community? What makes them sustainable?
These are questions that good planning can answer, of course, which makes swiping at “pointless planning rules” not just misleading but misguided.
There are many things that local authorities and new mayors can do to adopt a more holistic approach to planning and improve the places that people live in.
Sink estates are people's homes – they don't need to be demolished
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From putting housing in the right location to designing better bus services, planning at city, county and regional levels can and should tackle physical and social deprivation more directly as a core part of housing delivery and growth deals, supported by social services that address local needs.
It is worrying that 40% of local authority plans across the UK do not make any specific reference to poverty, social exclusion and inequality.
Personal responsibility is part of reducing poverty, but it’s not the end of the story. Advancing social justice also requires a social approach, focusing on better places, not just “better people”.
Victoria Pinoncely is research officer at the Royal Town Planning Institute. Place, poverty and inequality: why place-based approaches are key to tackling poverty and inequality is available on the RTPI website.
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