Audit Commission visit to Tranmere

The Audit Commission recently visited the area to look at the Housing Market Renewal Initiative and have now produced a draft report. It runs to 28 pages and is still in draft form but if you wanted to have a look - email James Kay on jameslkay@ntlworld.com and he will send you copy. A couple of items caught the eye.

One was in the introduction and describes the area's economics. There have been reports in the past health trusts and from the local authority which have looked at the local economics and demographics of Tranmere.Multiple but this is fairly stark.

1 Tranmere exhibits a number of the classic characteristics of multiple deprivation. In the 2004 Index of Multiple Deprivation the super output area within which Church Road is located was ranked 101 out of 32,482 most deprived. In other words it was in the top 1% most deprived in the country. Nearly 60% of households do not own a car.

2 The population is mainly white with 96% of local people classing themselves as such. Household sizes are around the national average at 2.3 people. Rented housing accounts for over half of all housing with 20% being privately rented. Average household incomes are 68% of the overall figure for Wirral although it should be noted that Wirral as a whole contains some significantly affluent communities which will distort this comparison. Long term housing vacancies at less than 4% are low.

Another item from the draft report was the note on how much has already been spent in the area (which includes also the Fiveways development). Here is what it said.

1 Cumulative achievements on the ground in Tranmere since the start of the HMR programme in 2003-4 have been good. Since that time there has been a substantial public and private sector investment of over £30m in Tranmere. During the period up to June 2006 there had been £10.6m of HMR spent in the area. This had been matched with an estimated £11m of other public sector investment with the two largest individual contributions having been from Wirral Borough Council's housing capital programme and the Housing Corporation at £5m and £3.5m respectively. It had also been matched by an estimated £9.6m of private sector investment of which nearly 90% or £8.6m was housing association private finance.

2 Put simply, for every £1 of HMR invested in the area a further £1.03 of other public and 90 pence of private investment had been secured.

3 This investment had resulted in significant levels of housing market renewal activity over the same period since 2003-4. Nearly 160 properties had been acquired. Approximately 400 properties had been improved to Decent Homes Standard with a further 140 having been demolished. Just over 120 new properties had been built although only 10% of those are private sector, the vast bulk, approximately 110, being housing association properties.

4 The balance of activity contradicts a commonly held view of HMR as primarily being about demolition since in the case of Tranmere for every ten properties which have been demolished eight have been replaced and nearly thirty other properties improved to Decent Homes Standard.

5 On the ground there are a number of new housing developments either completed or underway. These include 12 flats for older people on Well Lane, 57 shared ownership properties on Green Lane and local private sector developer Roberts Estates' development of 70 units on Old Chester Road.

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