From Housing Need to Housing Markets: Changing Institutions and Structures of Governance

1. From Housing Need to Housing Markets: Changing Institutions and Structures of Governance Martin McNally

2. Presentation overview • Research aims • Approach to the research • The factors influencing the analytical framework • New institutionalism and rationale • Key structures of governance in West Yorkshire • Making sense of governance and territorial rescaling - key questions and themes • Conclusions • Did new institutionalism work? • Questions / comments

3. PhD Research Aims • To examine and investigate the roles and responsibilities of (mainly public) institutions who have a ‘stake’ in relation to understanding housing markets analysis • To examine the utility of different analytical and methodological approaches to understanding housing markets • To consider practical use that is being made of the data being generated and whether it translates into housing market intervention • To look at role of new and emerging institutional structures of governance and the impact they are having on existing stakeholders charged with understanding housing markets • Case study focus on West Yorkshire due to the significance of housing market interventions; characterised varied markets and interpretations of housing markets • Policy relevant: funded as an ESRC Case Studentship and sponsored by the West Yorkshire Housing Partnership

4. Approach to the research • Approximately 50 interviews have been conducted with mainly with key stakeholders in West Yorkshire • Focus group with managers of the Housing Market Renewal (HMR) Pathfinders • Attendance at key stakeholder conferences and meetings • Documentary analysis • The identification of three case study areas East and South East Leeds (EASEL), Castleford and Pontefract (growth areas) and Ilkley (rural housing market).

5. The factors which have influenced the research and analytical framework • The increased saliency of housing markets linked to a political shift in concern away from housing need, tenure and neighbourhood leading to the residualisation of social housing (Lambert and Malpass 1998, Mullins and Murie 2006). • The growing academic and policy interest in and awareness of the need to understand and intervene in housing markets at various spatial scales (inter alia Maclennan and Tu 1996, Meen 2001, Cole et al 2003, Jones 2002) • The shift to housing markets and strategic housing at an institutional level (Bramleyet al 2004) • The existence of differentiated housing markets – one size now does not fit all • Variety of conceptualisations and interpretations of housing markets • The link between the housing market and macroeconomic performance - The Barker Review of Housing Supply (HM Treasury 2004) • And a recognition that housing markets do not respect administrative boundaries and the consequences for institutional working and emergence of complimentary structures of governance

6. New institutionalism • New institutionalism is presented as the central theme of the analytical and theoretical framework ’new institutional theory highlights the importance of the formal andinformal rules, norms and conventions through which social action is shaped’. (Newman 2001:26)“new institutionalists concern themselves with informal conventions, as well as formal rules and structures; they pay attention to the way in which institutions embody values and power relations, and study not just the impact of institutions upon behaviour, but the interaction between individuals and institutions”.(Lowndes 2001: 1953)

7. Key Structures of Governance and Institutional Relationships in West Yorkshire

9. Regional Governance post SNR Source: WYHP

10. Regional arrangements being planned Source: WYHP

11. West Yorkshire Sub-region West Yorkshire Housing Partnership • Representing component local authority strategic housing interests • Became designated as a Housing Market Renewal Area • Developed a sub-regional housing strategy • Managed a substantial investment programme addressing neighbourhood regeneration, private sector housing renewal, empty homes, and fuel poverty • Collaborated on research, policy, and lobbying activity in a number of key areas

12. Leeds City Region • The Leeds City Region Partnership brings together the eleven local authorities to work together toward a common prosperous and sustainable city region in areas such as transport, skills, housing, spatial planning and innovation. • The Leeds City Region is the real economy for 11 local authorities across North, South and West Yorkshire. It is the area across which people travel to work, spend their leisure time, go to school, and live • We work as a city region because the day-to-day lives of people do not start and stop at local authority boundaries. The LCR Partnership is about councils working across the boundaries in which people choose to live, work and spend their leisure time

13. Institutional alliances below the sub-region The spatial and institutional configurations which can reflecting how housing markets are understood and conceptualised

14. The Discourse of City Regions • Recognised as a new scale of strategic and administrative government (Robson et al 2006, HM Treasury, DTI and ODPM 2006, DCLG 2006b, Core Cities Group ) • Cities increasingly seen as the locus of economic activity and development • Performing a central role in lifting and accelerating regional and economic growth • Existing local administrative boundaries ‘less representative’ when compared to their real strategic and functional reach (Robson et al 2006) • The link between the geometry of labour markets and housing markets through journeys to work and commuting flows • The alternative arguments • The need for variable geometries in structures of governance (Robson et al 2006) • Kooiman (2008) Interactive governance

15. Making Sense of Rescaling and Changing Structure of Governance • The shift to housing markets and strategic housing brought about the need to work in a variety of institutional settings – partnerships and policy networks • Institutional structures attempt to reflect the changing perspectives regarding the configuration, conceptualisation and functioning of housing markets • Therefore rescaling and changing structures of governance are important shapers in relation to how stakeholders respond to and instigate their strategic housing responsibilities and housing market analysis • Stakeholders required to make sense of governance and rescaling • Raised questions about the optimal scales of governance for understanding and responding to housing markets

16. Changing governance and institutional structures; key questions and themes • To what extent can higher level structures and strategies articulate local priorities? • Is the city region a better, more optimal scale of governance for strategic housing than existing sub-regional governance e.g. the West Yorkshire Housing Partnership? • Is sub-regional governance politically and institutionally possible? • Collaboration versus competition • Politics and democratic accountability • The bigger picture • The dominance of Leeds • Increasing layers and complexity of governance and institutional relationships • Local priorities, higher strategies and the increasing difficulties of translating policy into delivery

17. Collaboration versus Competition • The tensions between achieving collaboration versus competition“as soon as you start looking at how housing money is going to be divided up – who’s getting what? What are the programmes? Then the councils begin to act quite differently and people are then looking to get as much of a bite as they can.” Senior Housing Manager • The push towards strategic networks and partnerships versus local concerns and priorities • The dominance of the larger metropolitan authorities • Seeing the bigger picture“you have to have a bigger voice than simply (the neighbourhood) …advocating to government about what’s needed. …if we didn’t have WYHP then everyone has to deal with government separately, then the more vociferous ones get the money. …They have more clout ..and they have got people who are experts in the field. They (WYHP) are almost the honest broker to make sure that the voices at the lower level are heard’ Neighbourhood Manager

18. Politics and Democracy • The call for elected members to think outside the political box versus the democratic deficit of regional and sub-regional governance • Criticism of the constitution of the Regional Assembly – being politically controlled by council leaders “pedalling their own political desires” • Not enough involvement of professional officers“If there’s a housing requirement for a particular area, then it’s not something that there ought to be political intervention in and that’s the difficulty because a large amount of the housing crisis is down to the fact that we don’t release or control the release of housing as and when it is actually required”. Private sector planner • Recognising the democratic deficit of structures of governance“politicians are elected on a local ticket and therefore have to deal with difficult and sensitive decisions back to their respective cabinet colleagues and ward constituents” Senior Regional Assembly Manager“I find regional government very worrying actually because it is not democratic for starters and we are taking a great part in the … city region. I am on the regional transport board and I am also on the regional planning board. The hat I wear tomorrow morning is Leeds city region and that’s for planning. When I go to the transport board I am West Yorkshire authorities, and I am the one representative of all those authorities …I think it’s absolutely appalling …I suppose the argument is you have to be strategic and space yourself out, but that isn’t really what politics is about. That’s not what people elect you for; they have elected you as a representative for them and I can’t possibly represent all those areas …I just don’t think it’s representative at all.” Local councillor

19. Increasing Layers of Governance • “I think sometimes it just adds another layer of confusion …to the challenges and the business that people are trying to get on with …I just wonder if we really do need any more complexity in terms of political structures and how they work together and all the play offs and the stuff that it inevitably brings with it. I just don’t know that it’s fully embedded itself in people’s way of thinking and peoples’ understanding and what it’s going to mean for Halifax or Dewsbury; I’m not clear on that.” Senior Local Authority Housing Manager • “…I think sometimes we get so wound up about what’s the region, what’s the sub-region, what’s the city ….and people just get switched off. It’s just like …well what are we actually delivering? What are you actually implementing? I know we have to have the overall coordinated approach and I know we have to have the ideas and priorities as you’d get nothing done, but sometimes I think we debate things that, you know, you just feel like saying ‘Let’s just get on and do it! And see what it’s going to do’ …..I just think there seems to be a lot of layers, a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of strategies …but what are we actually delivering on the ground?” LSVTO Director • “…the thing is with all of this sort of stuff, there is so much discussion about frameworks, strategic alliances bla bla bla bla bla that what gets forgotten is that there is a little old tax payer who wants a return for the money which is taken out of their back pocket. One of the messages for local government is that there is too much structure and architecture of change in the front of people’s heads and not enough work under the bonnet.” Big Town Plan Project Director

20. High Level Strategy versus Local Priority • The remoteness of regional and larger sub-regional governance“The regions are far too big; there’s nothing that happens in Hull that looks anything like what happens in Craven.” • The lack of synchronisation with top down strategy results in compliance at the local level“Just thinking about this now …how many times will I look back and say ‘this was the housing strategy from the local authority?’ Not really. The housing strategy might say ‘you have to consider low cost home ownership’ that might be in the back of my mind somewhere but it’s not something I’ll go through with a fine toothcomb …Which ever strategy it needs to fit into get the bloody money nationally!! Come on Martin, you know you’ve been around you know what it’s about – you have to make things fit don’t you?” Senior Housing Association Director • “I am sure it will do (connect to city regional strategy) but I am too ignorant of the detail of that agenda to really answer you accurately. If I am writing a funding bid I can bullshit about the city region and Northern Way and all those kinds of things.” Programme Director Ayerton Case Study talking about the link to local Ayerton strategy.

21. Setting the sub-regional boundary (I) • The city region as a new scale of governance: • Doubts about whether a formal structure could be established • There is evidence of political ‘buy in’ as well as conflict and democratic accountability • The most ‘sensible’ scale of governance (e.g. for housing markets) • The need for variable geometry and systems of governance that are fit for purpose (Kooiman 2008 , Robson 2006) • The view of the city regionalists–They (city regions) are just a recognition of the reality aren’t they? If you map out how people move around the notion that it’s bounded by a district or an artificial boundary like West Yorkshire is a nonsense we create more problems for ourselves by sticking to these boundaries. That’s why we have to create things like a Golden Triangle partnership etc. Senior Manager – City Region Secretariat • Arguments against the remoteness of regional government could arguably apply to the city region

22. Setting the sub-regional boundary (II) • The West Yorkshire sub-region has its roots in the political, historic former WYCC • Cultural, geographical and demographic similarities compared to the city region • Its post-industrial urban landscape • The concentration of BME and other marginalised communities • The characteristics of its housing stock, e.g. social housing and back to back terraces • The partnership’s track record and expertise – managing an investment programme of £200m 2008-11 and leverage of £300m • The predominant paradigm of the city region is pro-growth with the city as the economic ‘engine house’. • The city region Multi-Area Agreement prioritised transport and skills

23. Conclusions • The clarity of the boundaries of the sub-regional scale matters when it comes to identifying the frameworks for housing market intervention • Rescaling at the sub-regional level is not a neutral exercise in relation to housing markets • Are interventions about housing supply and the housing for economic growth (as in the case of the city region) or quality and decency in the context of renewal? • Where the multi-layered nature of the housing markets meets increased differentiation in institutional roles and responsibilities resulting from rescaling policy; management and policy implementation becomes more complex • The further away governance takes place it becomes less representative of local need • Compliance with new structures is instrumental – ‘Is it a way of getting our hands on the money?’ Housing Association Chief Executive • Top down perspectives suggest the world has changed when it comes to understanding housing markets and that new ways of working have been driven by rescaled structures • In practice local stakeholder are ‘satisficing’ on the basis of dealing with more immediate constraints, local priorities and agendas

24. Did new institutionalism work? • Although in its purest form it does not pay attention to power and how it flows through policy networks and governance • It can be viewed as a heuristic device; an abstract concept or model useful for thinking about the social phenomena that exist in institutional settings • Enabled the research to consider the gaps that exist between top down policy and everyday practice (Newman 2006) • Using NI meant that I could look at more informal aspects of institutional and political behaviour of stakeholder institutions • It does not assume ordered responses to top down policy and positivist approaches to understanding housing markets • The research was able to add considerable empirical weight to theoretical contributions regarding the role of the state (Clarke 2004 and Jessop 2000) – that it continues to dictate systems of understanding housing markets as well as continuing to reshape and remake institutions through rescaling.

25. Some Key References • Cole, I., Hickman, P. and Reeve, K. (2003) Leeds Housing Market:Perceptions of Change, Sheffield: CRESR, Sheffield Hallam University. • Clarke, J. (2004) Changing welfare changing states: new directions in social policy. London: Sage. • Kooiman, J (2004) Interactive Governance and Governability: An Introduction. The Journal of Transdisciplinary Environmental Studies. 7(1), pp 1-11 • Mullins, D and Murie, A. (2006) Housing Policy in the UK (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan). • ODPM (2003) Sustainable Communities: Building for the Future. London:ODPM. Jessop, B. (2000) ‘Governance Failure’. In G. Stoker (ed) The New Politics of British Local Government. Basingstoke: Macmillan. • Lowndes, V. (2001) Rescuing Aunt Sally: Taking Institutional Theory Seriously in Urban Politics, Urban Studies 38 (11) pp.1953-1971. • Newman, J. (2001) Modernising Governance: New Labour, Policy and Society. Sage: London. • Pierre, J. (1999) Models of Urban Governance: The Institutional Dimension of Urban Politics. Urban Affairs Review. 34, pp. 372 – 396. • Robson, B., Barr, R., Lymperopoulou, K and Rees, J. (2006) A framework for City Regions: Working Paper 1, Mapping City-Regions. London: ODPM. • Sprigings. N (2007) National Evaluation of Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders Thematic Paper. Buy-to-let Housing Market in the HMR pathfinders. The experience of pathfinders in the early stages of the programme. Norwich: Office of Public Sector Information.

26. Your comments and questions