Compass is about to launch a major programme to develop thinking about the New Economy. A key test for that programme will be how to re-connect the millions of people who live on outer city estates. 

In one respect, Aspley in Nottingham is typical of hundreds of other housing estates. Recent research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests that poverty has become increasingly concentrated in a small number of social housing areas, with ten local authority areas accounting for 43% of the occupied dwellings in the poorest 5% of social housing neighbourhoods. Aspley accounts for 6% of the city’s population but 28% of Nottingham’s benefit dependent households and one in ten of the city’s lone parent income support claimants.  

But what sets Aspley apart from most estates is its size and location. Almost 16,000 people – 35% of them under 18 – live on two inter-connected estates –  Broxtowe and Aspley – close to the M1 but  3.5 miles from Nottingham city centre.  

It is hard to be precise about the number of outer city estates or their total population because they do not exist as an official category, but we are talking about  between 3.85% and  6.7% of the UK’s households, using Experian’s Mosaic classifications, or approximately  1m. to  1.77m. households (2012 data).  Typical examples of larger  (10,000+) outer city estates are Easterhouse (Glasgow), Speke/Garston (Liverpool), Wythenshawe (Manchester) and Thamesmead (London). 

Large, outer city estates are in a class of their own for two reasons:

1. they are more cut off from  employment and isolated from other opportunities offered by cities 

2. despite their size, they are treated as a fraction of a local authority. A town of 10000 or 20000 would have its own council, like Hexham (13447) or Otley (14348).  Many much smaller parishes do.  But Aspley is represented by three ward  councilors who have to clamour for attention with 57 others

Their most striking shared characteristic is downward mobility, exacerbated by the Coalition’s swinging welfare and public service cuts.  Yet, for the first time in decades, there is no urban programme or single regeneration budget or priority estates programme. How to re-connect the Aspleys and Wythenshawes with investment and employment is going to be one of the toughest tests of the New Economy. 

It is also a major challenge for education policy. School improvement in these areas is typically slower than average. One of the schools serving Aspley has more than doubled the percentage of young people leaving with 5 good GCSEs including English and Maths since 2007, but  with well over half leaving without a useful qualification,  many will struggle to find a foothold in a worsening job market and some will end up as NEETs, largely lost to view. 

Asset based development

The problem for outer estate towns like Aspley is that their only claim to fame is how badly they do in the deprivation league table. So, despite all the talk about empowerment, engagement and active citizens, the reality is that residents in disadvantaged areas are stigmatized,  defined as deficient and thought incapable of taking charge of their own destiny. This is the disabling paradox at the heart of regeneration policy, whichever government has been in power. Regeneration policy and practice talks liabilities and needs but not assets: rarely does it look at the skills, knowledge and resources of local people. Every bid for funding requires a litany of calamity with no questions about the capacity for self-transformation and what local people can bring to the table. No wonder that local residents are rarely seen as equal partners in transformation. 

Regeneration and Recession

With public spending cuts and rising youth unemployment, the situation is set to worsen. Having failed to eradicate these concentrations of poverty when the going was good, government now faces a grimmer challenge. The risk  with long term unemployment set to grow is that a significant section of our urban population will be cast adrift. People who might otherwise make a contribution to society will come to be seen as a drag on development, making their presence felt through their call on the NHS and the criminal justice system. 

There is an urgent need to find new ways to tackle this problem before it gets much worse. 

Ways Forward

Outer city estates present the   most deep seated face of urban deprivation. They require a programme of measures stretching across government at all levels. But the   single key   lesson of the Labour Government’s urban regeneration policies is that the prerequisite of transformation is local people leading and governing their own communities: local democratisation, in a word. That is why there must be a consistent emphasis on 

* strengthening  self-belief and capacity for action of  residents so they create the networks and social capital necessary to support a positive and productive culture, rather than inward-looking negativity

* creating  more effective forms of local leadership and governance rooted in social networks underpinned by active collaboration between community and  public, private and third sector agencies

* improving the quality of local services, and exploiting the potential for joined-up whole system responses.

Economically, the focus must be on generating higher household incomes, strengthening local entrepreneurialism and reconnecting  outer city estates to mainstream economic, social and cultural activity.  Educationally, better coordination between providers is vital to ensure continuity of support for children and young people as well as a renewed emphasis on early years provision. 

Strategically, the aim must be to break down the isolation of outer city estates while exploiting the competitive advantage of their location and their environment.  There is now an exciting opportunity for transforming the fortunes of the outer estates by making them the basis for a network of eco-towns.  This new wave of 21st century  New Towns would provide the affordable housing that the country urgently needs but without serious incursion into the green belt. Developers would contribute to the cost of social infrastructure and government would offer incentives for Green New Deal industrial development.