Housing Minister visits Chelmsley Wood

FACT FINDING: John Halton from the North Solihull Partnership,
Housing Minister Brandon Lewis, Meriden MP Caroline Spelman
and Ben Wright from Bellway Homes

HOUSING Minister Brandon Lewis has paid a visit to a local community centre to find out how the North Solihull Regeneration could help shape similar redevelopments of UK council estates.
Mr Lewis was welcomed to Chelmund's Cross by his parliamentary colleague, Meriden MP Caroline Spelman.
The visit came after the Government announced plans to plough £140million into rebuilding so-called "sink estates" around the UK.
The redevelopment programme will be overseen by former Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine, who previously supervised plans to redevelop the Liverpool and London Docks in the 1980s.
While these schemes are likely to influence the latest plans, Mrs Spelman believes that the transformation of some of the most deprived areas of her constituency could also serve as a blueprint.
“Fifteen years ago Solihull Council embarked upon an ambitious project to regenerate the north of the borough," she said.
"This provided local people with new amenities, focused regeneration around community hubs such as Chelmund's Cross and provided employment opportunities.
"I believe that the Government’s estates regeneration team can learn a lot from the approach we have taken to regeneration here in Solihull, and advised the minister that first and foremost, regeneration is something to be done with local communities, not to them if they are to succeed in the long term."
Mr Lewis has said that the plans will go a long way towards reducing anti-social behaviour and poverty around the country, although the idea has not won universal backing.
Critics argue that £140million divided between 100 estates is nowhere near enough money, while others claim that the Conservative Party's own right-to-buy policy may ironically prove a major obstacle.
A spokesman for the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said: "The Government certainly needs to put in place guarantees to ensure that existing tenants and owners, as well as affordable housing providers, are not adversely affected."