This is an interview Tom Bloxham did with BBC News Online on 17th April 2011:

Inner-city areas in England face decline without government support and civic vision, a pioneer of urban regeneration has warned. Urban Splash’s Tom Bloxham, who helped kickstart the renaissance of Manchester and Liverpool in the 1990s, thinks the “work is done” in many city centres. But he argued the areas around them would become increasingly “poor and depressed” without investment. The government said its ambition was for “locally-driven growth” to encourage business investment and promote economic development.

Urban Splash made its name buying up unwanted Victorian mills and converting them into loft apartments and offices for creative industries. After its first successful project, Concert Square in Liverpool, the firm started a trend for city regeneration that saw developments spring up in cities across the north and Midlands and greater investment in their infrastructure, leisure and culture facilities.

Market danger

A slew of company awards followed, while Mr Bloxham was awarded an MBE in 1999 for his services to urban regeneration and acted as a property advisor to the former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. Assessing the landscape in 2011, he told the BBC there had been an “incredible renaissance” in city centres over the last 25 years that was now almost taken for granted, driven by private finance and developers. He argued that targeted public sector finance had “often been the catalyst to get things going” and detailed his fears for the future.

‘I’m very much worried, not so much about the core city centres because I think the job has been done there, but there is still a doughnut around Manchester and most other city centres where there are real issues and real problems,’ he said.

‘I think there is a real danger that if you just leave everything to market forces, what will happen is the south east will get richer and richer… but areas of the north will become increasingly poor and depressed. There’s been a huge amount of positive work over the last 20 years, started by Lord Heseltine, looked at by Richard Rogers with his task force, John Prescott came in with his office and really pushed forward an agenda of regeneration. I do worry that unless positive action is taken, we will reverse the trend and rather than see areas improve and great new places develop, we will see other places go into decline.’

With the supply of Victorian mills drying up - partly as a result of its own success - in recent years Urban Splash has turned its attention towards the estates and tower blocks that form those “doughnuts” around city centres.

Regional growth fund

Terraced housing in Salford - brought back to life as Chimney Pot Park, 1960s tower blocks in Collyhurst, the huge concrete Park Hill estate in Sheffield and the 1970s Cardroom estate in east Manchester - now dubbed New Islington - have all been given the Urban Splash treatment.

Mr Bloxham’s current vision is to create ‘tenure blind” buildings in these new developments - a mix of owner-occupier, rented and social housing that does not differentiate between the wealth of their tenants.

‘Instead of central government prescription we are putting residents, local businesses, civil society organisations and civic leaders in the driving seat’.
Government spokesman.

This social housing aspect of its developments has helped Urban Splash attract grants for some of its biggest projects, such as New Islington in east Manchester, which is drawing £25m of its estimated £225m redevelopment costs from the public sector. The now-defunct North West Development Agency (NWDA) has contributed funding, while other cash came from government agencies which now find their budgets squeezed by spending cuts.

Mr Bloxham told the BBC the regeneration challenges he has specialised in would not have happened without such public support - and hinted that if the funding dries up, others were unlikely to pick up the baton.

‘In a way we are in a good position as Urban Splash in that we have got quite a bit of assets, we could quite happily just sit there and manage our existing assets, work those hard and collect the rent,’ he said. ‘But it does mean that areas that are in need of regeneration, if there isn’t the support they may not get the regeneration - they may stay where they are.’

New approach

On Tuesday, the coalition government announced details of its £1.4bn Regional Growth Fund, which Mr Bloxham said could be one source of delivering the support he has described. He also called on ‘vision’ from civic leaderships about the direction of their localities - combined with real action on delivering them. The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) believes the abolition of regional development agencies will make it easier for councils to lead local regeneration projects. It also cited the creation of enterprise zones - such as Airport city at Manchester Airport - and its new homes bonus, which will match council tax raised from new build homes, as schemes that will support communities.

A spokesman said the government agreed ‘wealth and prosperity’ had been concentrated in one part of the country for too long, and argued that Britain needed every region to fulfil its potential. He added: ‘Instead of central government prescription, we are putting residents, businesses, civil society organisations and civic leaders in the driving seat and providing them with local rewards and incentives to drive growth and improve the social and physical quality of their area.’

This is an opinion piece from the Greater Manchester Business Week Magazine from Thursday, March 10, 2011:

“So I’m here in Cannes in the south of France and I am wearing steel capped boots, not my usual opened-toed sandals, because MIPIM is much tougher this year.

It’s not just the weather that’s not being as kind to us all, the economic climate is still just as unfriendly. And, who knows, I may need the boots to kick down some doors!

What is noticeable going around the Palais exhibition hall is that a lot of cities have not come at all this year, or if they have, they have come with a far smaller contingent. It is very difficult for local authorities, particularly for politicians who are having to make cuts at home, to turn up and be seen in the south of France.

However, I am very pleased that Manchester is here. And I am pleased with the way Manchester is handling it.

It’s the strongest ever private sector presence and they are funding it. From the city, there is only Sir Howard and one other officer here and it has been done on a very tight budget.

What is also different is they way all these companies come together with one single voice about Manchester.

When you go to other stands you are faced with competing brands and companies and projects but for the 49 partners here, Manchester is that company, it is the project. If it succeeds we all succeed and that force of numbers gives a very clear message to the world.

When I first came to Manchester 27 years a go I was attracted by the confidence. Back then it was about the music and the clubs and Manchester had a huge confidence and swagger, arrogance possibly.

I don’t think it is any coincidence that the people who were involved in the music business and bars back then, Colin Sinclair who is now with Bruntwood, Nick Johnson, who chairs Marketing Manchester, and myself, are now involved with property and regeneration.

And in the same way that Manchester took to the world stage with music, so it should be shouting loudly at MIPIM about what a great place it still is.

This week also lets you remind yourself what others are doing. It is dangerous to get complacent and introspective. Manchester is competing not against UK cities but globally and it was interesting to see the scale of ambition of some of our European neighbours at the key cities debate. They too have faced challenges and are responding.

Barcelona has a new port, new airport, high speed rail tunnel and is opening a new university campus to the world. Interesting too that both it and Hamburg are building thousands of new apartments to grow that central population, something that I believe is crucial for cities to thrive.

It was the first time that I had met Jim O’Neill from Goldman Sachs who spoke at the event. He’s a Mancunian and a fellow Manchester United supporter to boot so I cannot think why our paths have not crossed before.

He put the funding crisis that we are experiencing in the UK and wider Europe into perspective. For the rest of the world it is a North Atlantic problem and on the darkest days we should remember that other economies, notably China and Brazil, are thriving. The investment world is not going to end!

Jim’s going to come in for a coffee and chat some more next time he is in Manchester. So at least there’s been one positive outcome from the week.

They are long days and while MIPIM is great for seeing what the world is doing I tend to only do business in the UK. But the people I want to see are all here- chief executives of councils, banks and other developers to swap ideas with. It allows you to have half an hour with them in a very efficient manner, much better than charging around the country.

And as we are amongst the short-listed companies bidding for the Olympic Village I have spent some time on the London stand. We are in there amongst much bigger companies from the capital and overseas and it helps spread the message of what Urban Splash is all about. We find out in April who is in the final three.

I also met a developer in London who wants to work with us, the artist who is doing some public art with us in New Islington and a guy from Holland who enthusiastically told me that Urban Splash was the most innovative, ambitious and progressive developer in the world.

So MIPIM’s quite good for a confidence boost too.”

It’s a longstanding Urban Splash tradition that when staff have worked here for 10 years (after all, you get less than that for murder!) they get treated to (the dubious pleasure) of a day out and a swanky lunch with the company Chairman (me!), as well as an additional week’s holiday that year.

In the past I’ve held this celebration in London at restaurants like Nobu or wherever’s the hottest new place. It’s a nice treat and a thank you to staff and an opportunity for me to spend some quality time with people from all different parts of the business in more informal circumstances.

This year, as a special treat, I invited staff celebrating their 10 year anniversary with the company, who were from our accounts, admin, construction and development teams, to have lunch with me at my house in the South of France as cheap Jet2 flights meant it was more economical than a trip to London.

The staff were duly excited as I drove them to the airport.

The anticipation for a nice lunch in the sunshine was palpable however, it was one of the days of French industrial action meaning that many flights were cancelled. Ours showed on schedule so we all had a drink in the bar. And another. And another… Eventually after a couple of hours we were instructed to go to the gate and even called for our final boarding but were advised by a girl in the Lounge (which I’d also managed to blag us all into) to stay put.

So we had a few more drinks and by now it was 7pm, five hours after our airport arrival. It was time to eat however instead of the delights of a posh London restaurant, or even the sunny terrace in the South of France, it was a hassled Giraffe restaurant at Manchester Airport Terminal 1; a meal that can only be described as ‘absolutely… average’.

As you can probably guess, the announcement came that the flight was cancelled. It wasn’t the day we’d all hoped for but still good fun with plenty of reminiscing of ten good years, fun staff dos and Christmas parties. I’m lucky to have such good colleagues and of course have rebooked another date to take them for a proper lunch. In the sunshine!