Government Office … upping the pace and shaping the place

Jun 12 2007 By The Journal

Places are becoming more important as drivers of economic growth and prosperity. Building strong, prosperous and cohesive communities where people want to live and work, where they feel comfortable and proud and where businesses want to invest, is central to the Government's ambition to put place at the heart of what it does.

In 2005, the Government set out its vision of what a sustainable community looks like - a place where people feel safe and have a stake in, a well designed neighbourhood, with decent housing, good local services, good transport links and a range of job opportunities.

These are fine words, of course, but it's action that's needed to make these things happen and the local government White Paper Strong and Prosperous Communities provides fresh impetus to increase the pace of delivery, with its emphasis on giving communities and local public service providers more freedom and power to bring about the changes they want to see.

Here in the region, Government Office for the North-East has been busy gearing itself up to meet the challenge.

Government Office's head of division, housing and planning Diana Pearce said: "We've been working for some time to get ourselves into the best possible shape to help deliver the Governments `Places' agenda here in the North-East."

"We have completely restructured, with the focus very much on places - dedicated teams providing support to partners in the four sub-regions to help them and their local communities identify what's important and build it into their sustainable community strategies and local area agreements." For an example of what can be achieved when local partners and local people work together to make things better, we need look no further than Longbenton in North Tyneside.

In the past, Longbenton had a reputation as a "problem" estate, but after a widespread consultation exercise a partnership of council officers, local people, councillors, businesses and regeneration agencies put together a master plan which included new housing, improvements to council homes, a new shopping centre, leisure and community facilities and better public transport.

The project has been so successful that it won the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) North-East Project of the Year Award in 2005 and was short-listed nationally.

Where run-down pubs and shops once stood, developers, in partnership with the council, have built private sector homes which have sold quickly and interest remains high.

This has enabled the council to finance improvements to the social housing stock to bring it up to the Government's decent homes standard and further public sector investment will follow as the private house building programme is completed.

Ms Pearce said: "It's great to see what's happening in Longbenton and the proposals in the White Paper make it more likely that similar projects will get off the ground in other areas."