MPs in demand for action over housing failure

AN MP is demanding the Government set out plans for housing for the most deprived areas after it scrapped a scheme which regenerated parts of Oldham.

The Housing Market Renewal Programme was created in 2002 to tackle problems of housing market failure, where prices had often collapsed and areas were facing widespread abandonment. It was to benefit 12 areas, including the Oldham/Rochdale project which started in 2004, with ten areas set to benefit. Six — Alt, Derker, Hathershaw/Fitton Hill, Primrose Bank, Sholver and Werneth — are in Oldham.

But in March the Government announced it was ending the scheme eight years into the anticipated 15-year programme.

Now MPs are urging the development of a coherent strategy for renewing the housing market and housing for most deprived areas in the UK through a Commons petition.

A parliamentary motion criticises the “sudden termination” of the programme.

Ashton MP David Heyes, who is backing the call said: “The problem with the ending has been it was too sudden. It is bad enough it has been removed, it has left so many houses in a worse blight than we have seen for generations. If the Government was intent on ending this it should have done it with an exit strategy that would not have left devastated communities behind.”

The Government ann-ounced last month that five of the Pathfinder areas would share £30 million —but Oldham did not benefit.

In the motion, MPs added: “We welcome the announcement to provide £30 million but this level of funding does not compensate those areas for the loss of the wider Housing Market Renewal programme.”