Oldham Borough Council Development Plans Exclusive Housing Modular

Ahead of the Greater Manchester Economic Growth Conference we hear exclusively from Oldham Council on the huge opportunities within the region, what major infrastructure schemes like HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail could bring to Oldham, and how they’ll be approaching the need to accelerate housing within the region:

 

How will Oldham Council support the socio-economic regeneration of its citizens to enable them to benefit from the growing Greater Manchester economy and the regeneration of Oldham. 

The council launched the Get Oldham Working campaign in 2013 to support Oldham citizens with access to employment opportunities with Oldham, including key regeneration and inward investment schemes.

To date the programme has supported over 6,800 citizens into work related schemes including 4606 citizens into work, 842 into Apprenticeships. However, it became clear during this period that a lot of the employment support programmes were doing little other than placing citizens in low paid, low skill work. The Council in its Work and Skills Strategy decided we needed to do more to support citizens to acquire better skilled employment.
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We launched the Career Advancement Service, which is working with nearly 400 citizens, 48% were working part-time and were benefit reliant, of which 85% want full time employment. Through this service we are offering personalised support plans, leading to increased skills acquisition, movement into sustainable and full time employment and critically improving wage levels (average wage increase of nearly £6k per citizen) which can further support the local economy.
 

HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail are two exciting infrastructure projects set to arrive in Manchester in the future which will be a key focus of the Greater Manchester Economic Growth Conference. With your proximity to the City how will Oldham benefit from the arrival of these transport schemes and how will you be integrating them into your local strategy to maximise the opportunities to benefit from them? 

 

Both Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2 will bring huge benefits to the Greater Manchester region and will help to rebalance the north-south economies.  As one of the Greater Manchester local authority areas, we would expect to benefit from investment in transport in the north and the opportunities for regeneration and jobs this will bring. We are working closely with our Greater Manchester partner authorities through GMCA and Transport for Greater Manchester to ensure that the benefits the investment in Greater Manchester brings are felt by all our residents and that they have access to future jobs and other opportunities. In addition to our residents being able to benefit from jobs and opportunities created outside the borough, we are also anticipating that inward investment in the borough will follow from investment in HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail as access into Oldham from outside Greater Manchester improves.

We have strong links with Transport for the North, through Transport for Greater Manchester, which plays a key role in that Partnership, representing both Greater Manchester’s strategic interests and the local needs of the ten Greater Manchester local authorities. We have a long tradition for working at a strategic GM level to develop transport policy and deliver transport infrastructure, which is reflected in our GM2040 Transport Strategy. GM2040, alongside the emerging Greater Manchester Spatial Framework, has formed part of the evidence base for TfN’s work in developing the draft Northern Transport Strategy.

We would particularly welcome delivery of Northern Powerhouse Rail and the long term rail strategy for the north, which together will improve both intercity connectivity and increase the frequency of local services, improve reliability and reduce journey times, which are local priorities.  We are particularly keen to see the completion of the TransPennine Route Upgrade and the benefits this will bring to our residents, which we hope will include a fully accessible station at Greenfield and full electrification of the route between Manchester Leeds and York. The Calder Valley Line also serves Oldham and we would hope that delivery of Northern Powerhouse Rail and the long term rail strategy for the north would include the electrification of that line and an increase in service levels for local, inter-urban and intercity journeys. 

 

One of the key needs of the UK currently is housing. How are you approaching the need to accelerate the delivery of housing across Oldham and how do you think innovative solutions – such as modular – will fit into the plans? 

 

We are approaching the need to accelerate the delivery of housing across Oldham by firstly taking a root and branch review of our current housing strategy. We are taking a fresh approach by gaining a much more detailed understanding of our local housing markets and how they currently operate. We are connecting this much more strongly with our statutory local planning requirements, for example through our local housing needs assessment and identifying the type of housing and tenures which are most need across the Borough.

The emerging Greater Manchester Spatial Framework and Oldham’s place within this is also aligned with the need to accelerate further growth.  In developing our new housing strategy alongside refreshing our local plan, this will put us in a robust position to understand where the best opportunities to accelerate housing exist.  We will not only understand our current housing markets and land supply but how we align these to the wider GM ambitions of rebalancing our housing markets and economy.

We also plan to make best use of our town centre development proposals to accelerate residential growth. We are currently considering what delivery vehicles and innovative approaches best suit our circumstances and will encourage the right development at the right pace in the right areas.

We fully recognise the national housing crisis and the need to accelerate delivery but we want to do this from a fully informed position of both our local housing markets and how we can make the most of our opportunities within a sub- regional context.

We also recognise that our local housing markets work differently than in other parts of the Greater Manchester conurbation and therefore our approach to growth will look at both innovative and more obvious solutions that help us meet our particular challenges for example:

  • On land under our control we are speeding up delivery through relatively simple measures such as making sure we release land to developers with all necessary supporting information including site investigations, legal title pack and planning statements so that they can access and value sites quickly and have a shorter lead in time to start on site. 
  • Modular housing has been around for many years and is now becoming a real viable alternative to traditional methods of construction and in Oldham we are currently developing a pilot scheme in conjunction with Homes England. There is a well-documented severe shortage of skilled labour in the construction industry which is adversely impacting delivery on sites across the sector and is predicted to worsen through the process of Brexit. The shortage of labour and materials is having an impact on costs which are rising quickly. It is clear therefore that modular construction can help provide a potential solution to this, with the benefit of production factories leading to an improved working environment and more consistent mechanicalised processes. Modular sites can also have a better finish and less defects than traditionally built homes. The use of modular construction has a shorter build programme than traditional methods and if managed and coordinated efficiently this will lead to homes being available for rent or sale earlier.
  • Funding – There are many sites, especially in the north of the Manchester Conurbation, that are simply unviable to develop due to a mix of low values, contaminated land, largely as a legacy of our historic cotton industry and high remediation costs.  We require direct grant funding (rather than loans) to help get these sites into a position where developers can build them out.  Funds such as the Housing Infrastructure Fund (Broadway Green recently secured £4 million through this) has helped but this is only funded a small number of sites across GM. 

 

The Greater Manchester Economic Growth Conference is set to be held in Manchester on the 2nd October 2018.

Tickets start from £137 and can be purchased here.

The conference will see 350+ delegates, 35+ speakers and 25+ exhibitors – with over 200 companies set to attend. 
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