Sarah Monk

Planning Gains, Providing Homes

Planning gain has long been used in Britain for infrastructure funding and has been increasingly used to secure land and funding from private developers for new affordable homes. This paper examines the theoretical and policy underpinnings of planning gain. It describes the growth in the number of new affordable, including intermediate, homes delivered through planning gain, the variations between planning authorities in the incidence of planning gain and the value of the contributions developers make. In the light of the environment after the credit crunch it considers the extent to which planning gain mechanisms can any longer deliver new affordable homes.

Barriers to Participation in Residual Rural Labour Markets

Structural change in rural areas has led to a differentiation in the ranges of experience of rural life. Within generally prosperous localities, some individuals may be unable to achieve what is widely accepted as an adequate standard of living. This article focuses on the barriers that individuals face with respect to participation in residual local labour markets in rural areas. A variety of factors influence capacity to participate. Empirical evidence is provided from a study that used in-depth interviews in two rural case study areas. The article assesses the barriers influencing labour market participation identified in the interviews, including the mismatch between skills and opportunities, recruitment practices, accessibility, the costs of labour market participation and housing. All may be influenced by the rural nature of the locations. The approach offers a framework for a qualitative analysis of labour markets from an individual perspective, avoiding the presumption of a common experience of a labour market determined by the general characteristics of labour market conditions.

Making housing more affordable: the role of intermediate tenures

Chapter 1: Why intermediate housing markets? (SM/CW). Chapter 2: Measuring the extent of the intermediate market (AH/SM). Chapter 3: Intermediate housing and the planning system (AC/CW). Chapter 4: Policies to extend the intermediate market (CW/SM). Chapter 5: How employers and employees see the intermediate market (RL/SM). Chapter 6: The relationship between housing and labour markets and the implications for the local economy (CW/KS). Chapter 7: Stakeholder views on the intermediate market (DL/AC). Chapter 8: Who is the intermediate market for? (CW/YC). Chapter 9: International approaches (CW/KS/JY). Chapter 10: Conclusions (CW/SM)

Job – housing mismatch: affordability crisis in Surrey, South East England

Rising housing costs and lack of affordable housing in London are affecting labour recruitment and retention, particularly in the public sector—the ‘key-worker problem’ of recent government statements. But housing and labour-market problems are not confined to London. In this paper we highlight the extent and nature of affordability, recruitment, and retention problems in a high-cost location outside the capital: Surrey in South East England. We suggest that changes towards a more professional and managerial workforce have impacted on housing demand and hence prices. Planning and physical constraints have contributed to housing shortages and exacerbated rising housing costs. High housing costs are linked to recruitment and retention difficulties not only for public-sector employers but also for certain types of private-sector employers in Surrey. This raises problems for the sustainability of the local economy. Measures introduced to address these difficulties are helping ‘key workers’ to access housing locally, but this simply bids up house prices rather than increasing the overall supply of housing that is affordable.

The De-industrialisation of the City

The industrial city in Britain is the product of nineteenth-century capitalism. Technical innovations in production and the accumulation of capital led to the development of large factories. At the same time it was advantageous for factories to be clustered near the focal points of the rudimentary transport network, such as ports, canals and railway terminals, and workers had little choice but to live close by. Few restrictions were placed on urban development. The result was that cities grew in an uncontrolled and cumulative manner following the cost-and-profit calculations of entrepreneurs. Britain was the first country to become fully urbanised: by the middle of the century over half the population lived in the new industrial cities.

An exploration of 'bundles' as indicators of rural disadvantage

Indicators are increasingly used in the allocation of resources in addressing problems of disadvantage. The most commonly used indicators have generally been developed in relation to urban problems and there is a concern that this fails to reveal problems as experienced in rural areas. Many of the indicators that might be used are ambiguous and there appear to be few single indicators that adequately capture the complex nature of the problems facing people living in rural areas. An alternative approach is proposed, involving the development of bundles of indicators that are defined around notional numbers of people living in particular sets of circumstances relating, for example, to employment, service provision, and access to housing. A number of bundles are suggested and illustrative results are presented for three counties. Analysis illustrates how the results may be used to compare the incidence of disadvantage between urban and rural areas, the concentration of disadvantage within rural areas, and the relationships between the various types of disadvantage. The approach has potential both for analysing the incidence of rural disadvantage and as a basis for the allocation of rural development assistance.

Affordable home ownership after the crisis: England as a demonstration project

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of affordable home ownership in the light of the recent global financial crisis.Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on recent research conducted by the authors and others which included analysis of secondary data and policy documents and interviews with key stakeholders including housing associations and developers. The theoretical scope of the paper is outlined in the first section which looks at the principles behind the two main approaches to providing affordable home ownership: shared equity and shared ownership. Given continuing aspirations on the part of most households in England to become home owners, the key comparison is with the attributes of full ownership.Findings – The paper finds that the main products share many of the attributes of full home ownership while remaining more affordable. The economic situation post‐2007 made both shared ownership and shared equity more difficult. The crisis and its aftermath also suggest tha...

The impact of the New and Expanded Town programmes on industrial location in Britain, 1960–78

Fothergill S., Kitson M. and Monk S. (1983) The impact of the New and Expanded Town programmes on industrial location in Britain, 1960–78, Reg. Studies 17, 251–260. Between 1960 and 1978 manufacturing employment in the New and Expanded Towns rose by nearly a quarter of a million relative to the national trend in this sector. Part of the increase resulted from the urban-rural shift in manufacturing which occurred throughout Britain, but 120–140,000 jobs can be attributed to public policy. Policy was most effective in the early 1960s, especially in the New Towns, though the expansion in the New and Expanded Towns was small compared to the decline in the conurbations. Since the mid 1970s both programmes have had little discernible impact on industrial location.

Supporting Rural Labour Markets

Deprivation and disadvantage in rural areas is often thought to be “hidden” from official statistics largely because people in rural areas are dispersed into small, scattered settlements. This paper draws on research undertaken in two contrasting rural areas to explore one aspect of disadvantage, the labour market, an d goes on to consider possible policy mechanisms which might be able to address rural deprivation . In particular, it examines the potential for more flexible policies, which appear to have been successful in urban con texts, but which are targeted at areas with high concentrations of deprivation so that rural areas do not qualify.

Residualisation of the social rented sector: some new evidence

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present new evidence on the reasons for and consequences of residualisation of the social rented sector in the UK.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a new analysis of data from the 2001 Census at a small spatial scale (lower level super output areas) to produce estimates of the proportion of social housing in each area. The second piece of evidence is an analysis of who enters and leaves the social sector in England, drawing on survey data and an exit survey of tenants leaving social housing which asked their reasons for moving. The survey included people not normally captured by the main household surveys because they do not remain a reference person.Findings – The analysis shows that very few places are still dominated by social renting. It suggests that in so far as the sector is becoming more residualised, this is caused by the differing profiles of those moving into and out of social housing.Research limitations/implications – While the small number...