The Growth Areas identified within the Sustainable Communities Plan (ODPM, 2003) represent the most ambitious housing growth policy since the 1960s. Achieving sustainable and economically successful communities on this scale is a significant challenge. The Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) is looking at how the Growth Areas can meet their social and economic objectives and seeking to answer the questions of who is going to live in the Growth Areas and what types of new communities are they trying to create? This paper, the second from this project, reports on qualitative research that we have conducted with prospective and existing residents of the Thames Gateway.

In order to create sustainable communities in the Growth Areas one needs to understand the housing aspirations of prospective residents, and the needs and concerns of existing residents. A failure to take into account the views of prospective and existing residents risks creating divided communities and unpopular neighbourhoods, which will undermine the long-term social and economic sustainability of the Growth Areas.

The research focused on three segments of prospective residents, and one segment of existing residents. In total, 56 people were interviewed through six focus groups and eight in-depth semi-structured interviews. This sample is adequate to draw fairly robust conclusions about the sample as a whole and some more tentative conclusions about the sub-segments within the overall sample.

The study found that the housing growth in the Thames Gateway may attract people on moderate incomes, and also people needing social housing (if policy on choice in the social sector develops to enable more inter-regional mobility). The parts of the Thames Gateway outside of London are likely to be attractive to young families. This is consistent with existing patterns of migration out of London. The key trade-offs that the people we spoke to described as part of their decision making process were between proximity to family and social networks (particularly significant for people giving or receiving care), wages, housing costs and travel costs.

The higher-income groups were less willing to consider the Thames Gateway. Their reluctance stemmed from negative associations with large-scale development, new-build housing and mixed tenure communities. Their responses may have been more favourable if they had been asked to consider specific locations rather than the Thames Gateway as a whole.

Existing residents living in relatively deprived areas of the Thames Gateway had little or no knowledge that they were living in an area which had been identified as being suitable for housing growth. When they were made aware of this, their initial reactions were overwhelmingly negative.

Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr)
Phone: +44 20 7470 6100
Jim Bennett (Senior Research Fellow, Social Policy)

04/01/2006

Jim Bennett and James Morris

research

Urban Policy > Housing > Housing policy

Housing market, Housing need