Prestwich Regeneration Episode 3 How Many Jobs? How Many Houses?

A look inside the Prestwich precinct makeover in four episodes, based on an interview with Muse developer project lead…

For Episode One – The Prestwich Regeneration – Is It Any Good? click here

For Episode Two… From Travel Hub To Community Hub – click here

Episode Three…How many jobs? Seriously? How many houses? Oh, none!

Let’s talk numbers. In the Your Prestwich ‘community update’ consultation newsletter sent to local addresses in February, it was claimed that the ‘£100+million development creating a new beating heart for Prestwich Village’ would create 350 ‘new jobs once complete’. Seriously?

“These are a mix of supply chain during construction, block management, people who provide services, the retailers and the services that come into that” explains Hugh Taylor, the Muse developer lead on the project “Jobs will ramp up while we’re completing…”

Hold on a sec, the blurb says that these will be ‘new jobs once complete’. You can’t count construction, and, as far as retail goes, how many jobs were lost when the old shops and restaurants shut down? 350 new jobs? Seriously?

“The statistics are statistics from people who are experts in that particular field” he defends “Restaurants, market hall, retail…the management block…It will be in the planning” he decides.

The planning docs that aren’t available yet. So let’s talk about the most contentious bit of that planning; the ‘248 NEW HOMES’…

These are apartments for rent, yet the blurb in the Your Prestwich consultation document states quite clearly that they will ‘include a mix of affordable homes, as well as homes for first time buyers, growing families and downsizers…’

Yet they are all for rent. Which kind of excludes ‘first time buyers’…

For the first time, Hugh goes very quiet. Then he talks about the “pretty poor” rental stock in Prestwich for the “young professional market” who are currently flocking to Stockport, Trafford and Salford, but that once they’ve rented here, they might be future first time buyers etc, etc…before concluding that it’s “er, badly worded”.

So, there’s 248 flats all for rent, aimed at what people might call Yuppies, or hipsters? You can feel the pitchforks coming out on social media…‘Outsiders’…‘Not for local people’…

“…The delivery strategy on this has always been about attracting those economically active individuals who are looking to the medium term to come and establish themselves in Prestwich” he admits.

But if people are renting, that’s also a transient community that doesn’t give a toss about the area? The whole point of regen projects is not to have that? Isn’t it?

“I would disagree” he disagrees “You stay two years whilst you establish your network, while you understand what the neighbourhood offers. The BTR [Build To Rent] is a well established market for attracting people who then go on to buy homes and bring new communities through.”

So all this isn’t for the existing community, which is what people are arguing on social media?

“That’s correct to a point” he reflects “There is still an appetite within the existing community for those who would like to sell their property and move into a rental, and do away with the stress…”

It doesn’t seem like the trumpeted ‘Homes For All’ is going to materialise…While the blurb alludes to a proportion of ‘affordable homes’, these apartments are not for social rent, which is more affordable than ‘affordable rent’… ‘Affordable rent’ is usually something like 80% of market rent which is still unaffordable to lots of people.

Putting aside affordability, none of the flats are for sale and there aren’t any actual houses on offer either which some people wanted…

On the flats for sale, Hugh cites research that shows average rates of sales on a new development are around five per cent to begin with… “Even if I sold twenty five on the first surge it would take me so long to sell the rest of them somebody would have to pay for that…how do I deliver a regeneration project that has a huge amount of apartments empty for two or three years?”

And the lack of houses?

“The area is two and a half hectares and I needed to put up the retail and market hall, the square, and the community hub, so then I’m left with three quarters of a hectare; how many houses can I get on that? I couldn’t fit 250 houses on this plot…”

He adds that there’s millions of pounds in costs for remediation of the brownfield contamination on the site that would have to be covered in the price of the houses and the cost implications of that… “It has to be viable”…

‘Viable’ is the word used by developers usually to ensure their profits remain at a certain level. So is the residential 248 rental flats scheme more about ensuring a profit for the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, which is going to be running the place, and the profits of Muse itself?

The GMCA [Greater Manchester Combined Authority] has just given £40million towards the scheme, with a reported £35million of that going towards building Muse’s apartments which would mean subsidising its profits…

Hugh disputes the split… “I’m not sure where those figures have come from” he says “Seed funding was to support the regeneration as a whole to a milestone point, then the wider money is being invested because it favours residentially led regeneration projects…”

He is eager to point out that, with funding for the whole scheme coming from Muse, GMCA and Central Government, there will be no cost to Bury Council tax payers…although ‘Bury Council tax payers’ also pay towards GMCA and Central Government.

A ‘residentially led regeneration project’. Are ordinary, average wage working people going to be able to afford to live here?

“Muse wouldn’t have been a developer for so long if the average workers didn’t live in the developments we’ve delivered” he responds “We live in a world where viability is a word at the moment…but in a Joint Venture we are held to account…”

See Episode Four conclusion…Will the Regeneration ‘Ruin Prestwich Forever’?…Click here