New Ferry Regeneration — House of Commons, 2019-03-07
Topic: Housing
James Jacob Gilchrist Berry (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) has made an impassioned plea on behalf of her constituents, and I pay tribute to her for her tenacity and for the regularity with which she has brought this important issue to the House. Her constituents should be proud of the service that she offers as a constituency Member of Parliament who cares passionately about the community she represents As the hon. Lady said, I visited New Ferry a couple of months after the initial explosion, and nobody who has been there—the hon. Lady visits every week when she walks to her office—could be anything other than moved by the devastation caused by the explosion. She is right to say that today we should not get into the details of how that explosion may have happened. There will, I hope, be a day of reckoning regarding the cause of the explosion, but it will not be today Immediately after the event the Government, as with all such incidents, deployed one of our liaison teams—we call it a RED team, as it covers resilience, emergencies and disasters—to work with Wirral Council and consider how to support it. The hon. Lady mentioned a good meeting with the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, and residents and business owners from her area. She says that she will not ignore any dereliction of duty and that she will keep on fighting. I am sure that after that meeting she, like me, went away and reflected on the fact that in some areas Wirral Council had failed to react correctly and speedily enough on behalf of its constituents. It had a hardship fund at the time that could have been accessed, but it was not. I know a hardship fund has now been made available. At the time of the explosion, despite what the hon. Lady says about local authorities up and down the country being hard pushed in terms of public finances—and I accept that Wirral Council is one of them—the council did have some £68 million in unallocated reserves As well as pushing me on the Government’s response, I hope that the hon. Lady will continue to push Wirral Council. In the very moving meeting we held with the Secretary of State, it was absolutely clear that people felt that the initial response—what people often talk about immediately after such disasters—had simply not been good enough from Wirral Council, despite the support from the Government and the resilience and emergency division. There may be lessons for the Government to learn—I will come on to some of the ways in which we will continue to support the people of New Ferry—but there are also lessons for the local authority to learn. I will leave my remarks there, but if the hon. Lady would like to talk to me about that after this debate, I will happily do so privately The hon. Lady is absolutely correct to say that the regeneration of the site has been slower than any of us would have hoped for. Following my visit in June 2017, I immediately asked Homes England to make £100,000 available to work jointly with the local authority on a regeneration plan. Those plans, by their very nature, are complicated and take some time to work up. There was, however, a significant delay on that plan coming back to Government with any request for support I welcome the work that has been undertaken. There has been an opportunity for local residents to ensure that their views are heard. The council, in conjunction with Homes England, is now evaluating the comments from the feedback sessions that were held in New Ferry. Work is ongoing to find a preferred residential mix-use development for New Ferry. I recognise what the hon. Lady says about the challenge facing high streets up and down the country. She makes the point extremely well that any regeneration in New Ferry must be of that mixed residential and commercial use for it to continue to be sustainable. In parallel to that, Wirral Council is planning to invest £1.3 million to start the land assembly of the New Ferry site, which will enable that exciting regeneration to take place On Government support, the hon. Lady has campaigned tirelessly to support the residents and businesses affected. She talks about the Salisbury nerve agent attack, an appalling national and international incident that saw the murder and attempted murder of people by foreign actors on British soil, and the support the Government made available to the people of the city of Salisbury. Such support is normally dealt with through a Bellwin scheme. The hon. Lady correctly says that the Bellwin scheme is for expenditure by Wirral Council, which is currently in excess of £495,000. At the time the discussions were taking place, Wirral Council estimated that it had spent only £400,000 I would point out that following the explosion—the hon. Lady is absolutely correct—the site was in the hands of Merseyside police, who were, quite correctly, gathering evidence about any criminal acts that may or may not have happened on that site as part of the explosion. It was handed back over to Wirral Council on 6 April. Although there was some delay in the council gaining control of the site, there was ample time and it was well within the Bellwin scheme qualifying period. It may have been apparent to the local authority at the time that it would not be successful in putting forward a claim, but it is simply not correct to say that it did not get control of the site within the claim period. I understand that Wirral Council has agreed to set aside funding for individual residents and business owners who have suffered considerable financial hardship in the period following the explosion, and I welcome that I shall now turn to what help the Government can, and I hope will, provide to the residents of New Ferry. I understand that a bid of some £5 million has been made to the Mayor of Liverpool City Region’s town centre fund. That is, of course, Government money that is part of the gain share that gets paid to the city. I hope that Steve Rotheram, former Member of this House and Mayor of Liverpool City Region, will look with favour upon the application along the lines of the plan that has jointly been worked up with the Homes and Communities Agency.