Lord Heseltine wants to bring back City Challenge Funds to regenerate several of the UK’s most deprived areas.
Speaking at the inaugural Estates Gazette Peter Wilson Lecture series at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, Heseltine said there are still a lot of impoverished communities that need to be addressed and that City Challenges were the perfect way to do this.
Helestine initiated City Challenge Funds in 1991. The challenge required 30 councils to compete for a pot of money by submitting detailed plans for how it would be spent. Only 10 would be able to access the funds.
In this way, the challenges build “ladders of aspiration” to raise whole communities and inspire much-needed leadership within councils, according to Heseltine.
Leadership was a central theme of Heseltine’s lecture, which traced his journey into politics and went over the impact he has had on regeneration across the country.
Heseltine described how in all the deprived communities he visited during his time in government, a driving figure was the common missing component.
He said providing a focus point for communities, such as the competition of the City Challenges fund, was a way of ending the compartmentalisation of local authorities and drawing out leadership from councils.
Furthering the theme of leadership, Heseltine welcomed the current push towards a mayoral system, which he said Cameron had done on his advice.
He added that the Scottish referendum had created “an unstoppable determination for devolution” which would eventually lead to the much-needed decentralisation of governance.
The Estates Gazette Peter Wilson Lecture was supported by Savills and Wragge Lawrence Graham & Co.
More detailed coverage on Heseltine’s lecture will feature in Estates Gazette next week.
Read the transcript of Heseltine’s lecture >>
