Design process

From 1999, inclusion in a Single Regeneration Budget Round 5 (SRB5) funding programme gave the opportunity in Seedley and Langworthy to address a number of issues in the area, ranging from the quality of the housing stock to poor community cohesion and low economic performance. Although far from all problems related to the physical fabric, neglect, litter, crime and other anti-social behaviour tended to be exacerbated by the open back alleys to the houses and by the deteriorating physical condition of the building stock. The properties were predominantly in private sector ownership but absentee landlords and irresponsible tenants contributed to the sense of decline: those who were able to leave gradually moved away and abandonment was a common problem. This left not only an area where there was little or no demand for the properties and without the population to support basic local facilities, but also a group of owner occupiers who were becoming increasingly vulnerable as the numbers of occupied properties reduced. Although many had looked after their properties, the deteriorating situation around them meant that drastic action was needed.

An area-wide neighbourhood renewal assessment confirmed that many of the properties in Seedley and Langworthy were unfit and likely to be uneconomic to bring up to a habitable standard. As part of the SRB5 programme, the Seedley and Langworthy Partnership had been established, consisting of three groups of partners: Salford City Council, the community (represented by the Seedley and Langworthy Trust) and a third set of independent stakeholders, including representatives from Greater Manchester Police, Salford Primary Care Trust, Manchester Methodist Housing Association (now known as Great Places Housing Group), Manchester Enterprises and Buile Hill High School.

In 2001, the Partnership Board approved a development framework for the whole regeneration area that identified the streets of the Chimney Pot Park area for clearance and recommended further areas for new development and improvement. It was recognised that dealing with the extent of unfit property would involve 'creating' development sites and bringing forward a more mixed and diverse housing offer. The council began the process of assisting remaining residents with 'Homeswap' packages in order to prepare for implementation of the proposals. Full site assembly was eventually achieved through use of compulsory purchase orders in September 2004.

A public/private partnership was required to deliver the scheme: following informal negotiations with a number of parties, Urban Splash was the only developer who were willing to engage. Their approach was to challenge the area-wide masterplan, and resulted in a convincing, and hopefully viable, set of proposals including retention of the properties. Public funding had meanwhile been secured through the involvement of English Partnerships, the North West Development Agency (NWDA), Salford City Council and Manchester-Salford Pathfinder (MSP). Once Urban Splash was brought on board, there was a delay while a robust financial appraisal took place. English Partnerships also needed time to finalise arrangements for their new private sector housing gap-funding programme: the Seedley-Langworthy project was one of a collection of individual schemes agreed with the EU Commission as a part-replacement for the Partnership Investment Programme.

The partnership was formalised in 2003 through a development agreement structured on Joint Venture principles between Urban Splash and English Partnerships, Salford City Council and NWDA. By this time, the regeneration context had also changed, with the establishment of the pathfinder (MSP) and the inclusion of Seedley-Langworthy, already designated by Salford City Council as a high priority area in need of major change, in Central Salford URC's Vision for Salford.

Community support was a vital part of the process and the project team had to work hard to overcome perceptions that low-value housing had been bought up cheaply and sold on for a profit. Local people, however, were involved in the process and were willing to accept that change was vital and that improvement required substantial intervention. Conscious steps are being taken to ensure that the new development remains integrated with the wider area. The marketing material produced by Urban Splash, for example, draws on imagery from several local 'Britain In Bloom' successes.

A pre-launch was also offered by Urban Splash to the local community, resulting in 12 sales at open market value. Between the first release sales launch in April 2006 and January 2007, prior to the completion of the development, all 227 units released at open market sale had been sold, for between £99,000 and £145,000 each. Although the development agreement included a requirement for at least 50 units for low-cost home ownership, the final scheme will include 91. These will be released in June 2007 as part of a pilot low-cost home ownership scheme, English Partnerships' First Time Buyers' Initiative, and administered by HomeBuy agents Plumlife, part of Great Places Housing Group. Initially, Urban Splash will provide a management maintenance service for the development, but it is intended that this will eventually be taken over by the residents.

Total development costs were around £34m, including nearly £11m public sector investment. Of this, £7.3m is provided through the Housing Market Renewal Fund (via Salford City Council), with a further £3.5m from English Partnerships.

The form of development has been strongly influenced by current VAT legislation on residential to residential refurbishments. The original proposals (15) put forward by Urban Splash and shedkm were quite different from the eventual scheme. They prioritised retaining much of the existing structure of the houses, removing outriggers, and replacing other elements such as rear walls and roofs. Each house was to have a generous, part-private, part-communal rear yard at ground floor level with balconies at the rear on the first floor. This simpler scheme would, however, have incurred VAT at the full rate and added £2.8m to the development costs.

In conjunction with the other partners, Urban Splash and shedkm therefore revisited the proposals and altered them so that more of the existing structure was demolished, enabling the scheme to qualify as new-build, with zero-rating VAT status. Urban Splash did this reluctantly: changing the scheme to new-build has still increased development costs, while also diluting one of the environmental sustainability credentials of the project (maintaining embedded energy in the existing structure). The vision of the project, that the character and nature of the existing streetscape should be retained, was considered to be vital to preserve and so the decision to retain and temporarily support the fragile façades, together with the delays caused by re-design and agreement over funding structures, added to the unit costs.