We can weather the housing gloom

As the credit crunch bites and the gloom deepens, a man with £90million to spend on housing must be a popular figure. Alastair Graham heads the Oldham and Rochdale Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder scheme, charged with improving the quality and the mix of homes in run-down areas where the Government believes the housing market is on the verge of collapse.

Janice Barker asked him how the country’s financial woes are having an impact on the plans for Derker and Werneth.

THERE are no problems, only opportunities, the saying goes.

If true, Oldham must be the town poised to make the most of its chances as the credit crunch, financial downturn, shrinking mortgage market and lending problems loom like dark clouds.

The silver lining is that Oldham is better placed to weather the storm and take advantage when the upturn in the housing market begins, according to Alastair Graham.

The director of the Oldham and Rochdale HMR scheme believes that while developers are mothballing commercial schemes across the country, they are sticking with Oldham’s plans.

The HMR team has £90 million to spend in the two towns before 2011.

And now is the time to acquire sites and properties. He said: “There aren’t very many people in the market at the moment.

“If we come along prepared to offer an agreed market value, we can buy on a voluntary basis, assemble sites, carry out demolition, prepare the ground, and we are ready to go when hopefully the market starts to pick up.”

Mr Graham added: “It is true the credit crunch is going to mean we are not going to get as much new housing out of the ground as quickly as we hoped, but Oldham doesn’t exist in a bubble, and we are not immune.

“The main thing is that the public subsidies going into these schemes give developers confidence that the schemes are going ahead.

“They are still building, still managing their sites. It is slowing but it has not ground to a halt.

“The subsidies pay for clearing contamination and dealing with things like mineshafts, preparation which would not be commercially viable. That is why very little new property was built in Oldham’s pathfinder areas in the last 10 or 12 years.

“HMR is about transforming places into neighbourhoods where people want to live. People had moved out of those areas and left behind quite a lot of poverty and deprivation, poor houses and a poor environment.

“HMR is providing much higher quality, larger homes, and a better variety, with environmental improvement for those living in the houses.

“As of now, we are where we want to be. In a year’s time we won’t be, but no schemes are on hold and we are working with developers to get them building houses as soon as possible.

“Developers are still working in Oldham. They may be putting other schemes in mothballs but they are not doing that in Oldham, they are pressing ahead.

“We are quite well placed to weather the storm.”

The day before we spoke, Mr Graham had been with Oldham’s selected developers working in the HMR areas, who told him they are still committed to working in the borough.

One of them is Gleeson, the developer which last month withdrew from an HMR Pathfinder scheme in Burnley, east Lancashire, because of the economic climate.

However, Lee Sale, managing director of Gleeson Regeneration and Homes said the Burnley scheme was quite different to Oldham and only in its very early stages.

In Oldham, he said, Gleeson is still keen to carry on.

Another developer, Keepmoat, is developing the Suthers Street site in Werneth. The first phase of large family houses has proved so popular that a number of apartments have been substituted with four and five bed houses.

Ian Fletcher, of Keepmoat, says Oldham is different to other Pathfinder HMRs.

He explained: “Oldham has allowed money in its programme to support higher standards of design than would otherwise be possible, and we can access that money throughout the construction process, which is critical in these difficult economic times where cash is at a premium.

“This support allows us to proceed with a greater level of confidence than on many schemes. This has turned out to be quite a positive move by Oldham.”

The downside of the housing slump is that the HMR team could be left with a lot of empty spaces as it waits for the expected upturn.

Mr Graham said: “We will look after the environment and make them look reasonably attractive, but we will have quite a number of vacant sites.

“Having prices going in the opposite direction is a good time to invest wisely.”

Other Oldham schemes due to come forward soon are Spencer Street, Chadderton, where land is already cleared for 150 homes, and the Albert Mill at Derker, which will be demolished early in the New Year.

A Compulsory Purchase Order has also been approved for the Hartford Mill in Werneth.
Despite being a Grade I listed building, the empty mill has been targeted by vandals for years, and firemen have warned about the danger that arsonists have cause to the 101-year-old building.

Mr Graham’s team hopes they can get the mill taken off the list and demolish it, but if not they are also talking to developers who specialise in mill conversions.