Housing Market Renewal Initiative
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Housing Market Renewal Initiative (HMRI) is a package of policies in the United Kingdom aimed to improve housing in England. HMRI is also referred to as Pathfinder. There are 9 geographical areas identified in this initiative.
The ambitious plan involves massive investment into these areas of a total of £1.2bn up to 2008.
Each area's scheme was given an individual brand name, i.e. Merseyside's Pathfinder area is also called NewHeartLands[1].
These areas are:
- North Staffordshire(Stoke-on-Trent/Newcastle-under-Lyme)
- Birmingham and Sandwell
- Merseyside(Liverpool, Sefton, Wirral)
- Manchester and Salford
- East Lancashire (Blackburn, Hyndburn, Burnley, Pendle, Rossendale)
- Newcastle and Gateshead
- Humberside
- Oldham and Rochdale
- South Yorkshire (Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster)
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[edit] History
HMRI was started in 2003, from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister ODPM, at the time responsible for the Department for Communities and Local Government [2] The Labour Government had adopted as one of its policies the improvement of urban areas that had suffered numerous social problems, originating from decline of traditional industries in the North of England, like the closure of coal mines, ship yards, textile industry. The basis was a report by the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies CURS at the University of Birmingham[3], which informed lobbying by the National Housing Federation of the Government's 2002 Comprehensive Spending Review.
From the beginning on there was criticism of HMRI, from residents of the affected areas, politicians as well as experts in the field of historic buildings. SAVE([4] ), Save Britain's Heritage have published an analysis of the pathfinder scheme that is highly critical of the proposals. Some local residents organisations are opposing the plans for their areas, e.g.
- Welsh Streets Home Group
- Granby Residents Association
while other residents groups have supported the policy and participated in its delivery.
[edit] Merseyside (Liverpool, Sefton, Wirral)
The Merseyside Pathfinder area is also known as New Heartlands. The area was broken up into geographical parts: Dingle, Granby, Arundel, Picton, Abercromby, Smithdown, Kensington, Tuebrook, Everton, Breckfield, Anfield, Vauxhall, Melrose and County.
[edit] Granby
The area of Toxteth is located close to the historic Princes Park. The streets include Beaconsfield Street, Cairns Street, Ducie Street, Jermyn Street and Granby Street. These streets are bound to the west by Princes Avenue with large, representative Victorian Houses, to the east by Kingsley Road and to the north by Eversley Street. Other streets in the area have been demolished and rebuild (when?) and are not included in the renewal area. The local authority also refers to their plans as the '4 streets project', reflecting the fact that 4 streets are covered: Beaconsfield Street, Cairns Street, Jermyn Street and Ducie Street. All these streets cross of lead off Granby Street.
