Trojan Horse or White Elephant? The Contested ...

Trojan Horse or White Elephant? The Contested Biography of the Life and Times of the Leeds Development Corporation Author(s): Graham Haughton Reviewed work(s): Source: The Town Planning Review, Vol. 70, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 173-190 Published by: Liverpool University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40111756 . Accessed: 26/04/2012 14:09 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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TPR, 70 (2) 1999

GRAHAM HAUGHTON

Trojan

horse

or

white

elephant?

The contestedbiography of the life and times of the Leeds Development Corporation This paper examines some of the issues surrounding the Leeds Development Corporation's work, in particular some of the claims made about improving the local planning process. The paper looks at the difficulties the Corporation encountered in getting its plans past vociferous resident opposition in one area, and its claims for improving the speed of determining planning applications in its main area of commercial potential. The emphasis within the analysis is on the discourses of failure and success used by those seeking to influence local and national debates around the efficacy of the Urban Development Corporation approach.

It is a delight for us all to see the end of the Leeds development corporation. Quangoland is going . . . We never wanted it; it has not worked; it is good to see it going. (Derek Fatchett, MP for Leeds Central) Ultimately it must be accepted- and at least some Labour members of the Committee have accepted this- that the Leeds Development Corporation has brought new development and economic vitality to the area and improved its attractiveness. (Sir Paul Beresford MP, Under- Secretary of State for the Environment) Both comments were reported in the Standing Committee debate on the winding up orders for the Leeds Development Corporation (Secretary of State for the Environment, 1995). Graham Haughton is Professor and Head of the Centre for Urban Development and Environmental Management (CUDEM), School of Built Environment, Leeds Metropolitan University, Calverley Street, Leeds LSI 3HE. Paper submitted January 1998; revised paper received October 1998 and accepted November 1998.

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Winding up in Leeds: the political life of an urban development corporation As the Urban Development Corporations (UDCs) have begun to be wound up and closed down, it is time to reflect on what their achievements have been, since they were regarded by those responsible for national urban policy as being the central feature of British experiments in urban regeneration during the 1980s and early 1990s (Cabinet Office, 1988). This paper looks specifically at one of the smaller provincial UDCs, the Leeds Development Corporation (LDC), established in June 1988, and wound up in March 1995. According to one of the LDC's final publications (Leeds Development Corporation, 1995), these achievements included: completion of 3.9 million square feet of non-housing floorspace, 561 houses, £317 million of private-sector investment, 8218 jobs created, 144 acres of land reclaimed, 7 miles of highway and footways completed, 141 environmental improvement projects completed, and 118 community sponsorship grants awarded. Further promised investments of £40 million are also noted, together with planning consents for substantial additional housing and non-housing developments. In this paper the concern is less with the claimed physical achievements, more with the underlying political processes of change which the LDC variously intervened in, initiated, and influenced. The intention is not to replicate the formal evaluations already commissioned by central government of the LDC experience, whose terms of reference preclude the kind of approach to political economy pursued here. Instead the aim is to explore a series of issues which related to the Corporation's role in the dynamic governance structures of Leeds during its relatively short life span, including issues such as local accountability and the quango state and the value of dedicated, single-purpose organisations in achieving rapid regeneration. At a theoretical level, the paper examines the different 'scriptings' of the UDC story, from being a useful and laudable regeneration tool, to being an unacceptable form of non-locally accountable interventionism. The title of this paper is intended to reflect something of the contrasting views of the LDC held by key players in the city and beyond. For Keith Vaz MP, responsible at that time for Labour Party urban policy, the LDC was a failed 'white elephant' (Secretary of State for the Environment, 1995, 18), while for local Member of Parliament (MP) Derek Fatchett it was simply a convenient political vehicle which had 'enabled some Conservative placemen to have a role in public life ... a sop to the Conservatives in Leeds and gives them something to run' (Secretary of State for the Environment, 1995, 6). In Fatchett's version the LDC represents a veritable trojan horse, making its way into the Labour stronghold of Leeds. Alternatively, for its supporters, the LDC managed to bring about development which would not otherwise have occurred; setting about its task much more quickly and effectively than the local authority would have. In the words of Sir Paul Beresford MP, 'if the city council were as competent as suggested, there would have been no need to have the development corporation in Leeds' (Secretary of State for the Environment, 1995, 21). The

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political agendas underpinning such diverse interpretations of the LDC experience highlight the need to set the context of the broader political economy of the city and national urban policy as part of the present analysis. In evaluating the activities of the LDC, the approach taken here is to chart how it evolved in a charged local political environment, the tensions surrounding its initial activities and how these were addressed, and the lessons which can be learnt from the styles of implementation which it pursued during its lifetime.1

The political rationality of the UDCs: challenging the status quo The changingaimsof centralgovernmenturbanpolicy over the 1970sand 1980s have been well documented (Stewart, 1987; Lawless, 1989; 1991; Parkinson, 1989; Pacione 1992). In summary, the key themes which emerge from such critiques are: the gradual introductionof a pro-business, anti-local authority agenda,the need for improvedlocal coordinationof policy and local partnership building, and an emphasis on physical development, in particular the developmentof large, flagshipprojects. Underlying such shifts were fundamental critiques of the role of local authorities in regeneration, as they were accused by some politicians and industriallobbyistsof being excessivelybureaucraticand slow, not least in their planningprocedures,of land hoardingand of being too often anti-businessin orientation(Healey, 1994). Alternatively, the private sector was seen by Conservativeministers and lobbyists to possess the appropriateskills and attitudes to help revitalise declining city areas, rhetorically associated with a no-nonsense, can-do approach. Sir Nigel Mobbs of Aims of Industry for instance applaudedthe UDCs and called for their wider use, arguingthat: Grand Planning has resulted in planning blight, and a disregard for commercial viability has caused the closure and transfer of businesses. RegrettablyBritishtown plannersarenot concernedwith results,only policy; bureaucratsareperfectionists,not achievers. . . bureaucraticinertiaandover regulation. . . delays, indecisionand frustration.(Mobbs, c. 1987, 11) The private-sectororientationof the UDCs would, it was hoped, overcome the perceivedproblemsassociatedwith previous generationsof town planning. In Actionfor Cities, the government of the day lauded the UDCs for their abilities to 'cut through red tape and press on with action' (Cabinet Office, 1988, 4). 1 The research draws on interviews with 37 key local regeneration activists during 1995-96, involving board directors and staff, supporters, opponents and interested local activists. Interviewees included politicians, business leaders, local authority officers and voluntary sector representatives. The interviews involved a semi-structured questionnaire, which also looked at wider issues of leadership in economic regeneration in the city. Six of the interviewees had served on the LDC board. All interviews were taped, with a confidentiality agreement meaning that all quotes are anonymised here.

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It is worth recalling the only 'Inner Cities' White Paper ever produced in the UK (Secretary of State for the Environment, 1977), introduced under a Labour Government. This, now often neglected, White Paper actually made much of the role of the private sector in urban policy, but tended to see it as operating relatively separately from the state and local communities. Local authorities were exhorted to set out to stimulate private-sector investment, particularly from small and medium-sized businesses. The White Paper argued that 'Local authorities are the natural agencies to tackle inner area problems. They have wide powers and substantial resources. They are democratically accountable bodies.' The next paragraph then goes on to discuss why the Government had considered, then rejected the idea of using 'new town style development corporations'. These might 'bring to bear single-minded management, industrial promotion experience and experience in carrying out development'. However, regeneration was held to require close integration with local authority services and working with residents to improve housing, the environment and community infrastructure: therefore 'In the circumstances it is important to preserve accountability to the local electorate' (all from: Secretary of State for the Environment, 1977, 8). Just three years later the new Conservative administration executed a major policy reversal, deciding that in fact, what regeneration required was precisely such non-locally accountable, singleminded, regeneration agencies not held back by the problem of local authority procedures. The UDCs were born. For an initiative which was to become viewed officially as 'the most important attack ever made on urban decay' (Cabinet Office, 1988, 12), the UDCs were set up with surprisingly little by way of specific rationale or guidance in the legislative process. The first two UDCs, for London Docklands and Merseyside, were established in 1981, following legislation introduced in the Local Government Planning and Land Act 1980. This allowed the Secretary of State to designate any area of land as an urban development area, if he or she regarded it as 'expedient in the national interest to do so' (paragraph 134). The UDCs are particularly important as one of the earliest experiments in handing 'special executive powers' to centrally appointed bodies to run local regeneration activities, with UDC boards appointed by the Secretary of State to ensure that private-sector viewpoints were in the majority. While selected local political representatives were invited on to the boards, in the early days many local authorities refused to collaborate with the UDCs, in protest at the powers which they assumed from the local authorities. Not surprisingly, given the views of lobbyists such as Mobbs (see above), the UDCs were all handed planning powers for their areas, including powers for land assembly and compulsory purchase orders, in the expectation that they would be able to proceed much more quickly than local authorities had. Alternatively, to their critics UDCs represented not simply an attack on the status quo of regeneration activities, but an expensive experiment in blinkered, land and property-centred urban regeneration which by-passed deprived local communities, privileging external development interests over indigenous small firms, and was led by locally non-accountable bodies (CLES, 1990; 1992;


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Robinson and Shaw, 1991; Secretary of State for the Environment, 1995). While over time, the UDCs did begin to change their styles of operation in response to such criticisms, with some beginning to attach more importance to engaging with local communities in preparing and implementing their plans, they remained easy targets for those wishing to point to waste and insensitivity in the Government's regeneration programme. With the UDCs, therefore, it is possible to identify the parallel construction of both 'success myths' and 'crisis myths' battling against each other for the moral high ground (Hay, 1995). Each discourse sets its own parameters in deciding how to gauge both the nature of the pre-existing set of problems and whether the UDCs represented an appropriate and effective means of addressing the problems of cities, in particular whether a business-led or a community-centred approach is desirable. Analysis of local political and local governance struggles provides a potentially useful entry point into understanding how local areas are responding to the combination of such global economic changes and changing national political pressures. The temptation is to link global trade liberalisation agendas, attacks on the national welfare state and the fragmentation and weakening of local government into a clear shift towards a neo-liberal agenda centred on new national and local modes of social regulation. However, there is a potential theoretical problem of falling into the trap of economic determinism, asserting that global economic trends are requiring the emergence of local institutional forms such as UDCs to support them, rather than looking at the more complex articulations of local political-social economic processes (Hay, 1995). So while UDCs may have represented an integral part of a political agenda to facilitate global capitalist expansion, they also very much represented a more parochial attempt to re-order domestic politics in ways which privileged private-sector engagement and down-graded local authorities as part of political battles between a Conservative central government and the domination of inner-city areas by elected Labour local authorities. Linked into this, there was a concern to make grand political gestures on behalf of the inner cities, blaming past failures not on global economic restructuring in the productive sector but on local politics and bureaucratic ineptitude, while attaching the best prospects for success to linking into global economic systems more effectively, in particular building on higher-order service activities rather than the past emphasis on manufacturing. Central to the UDC experiment was an attempt to depoliticise local planning powers, taking them away from local authorities and handing them to the UDCs as privatesector-led quangos. Having constructed a political discourse which demonised local authorities and planning in general as excessively bureaucratic and antibusiness in nature, it was hoped that the UDCs would show how it was possible to grant planning permissions more quickly and with greater sensitivity to private-sector development needs. The UDCs, then, were as much about facilitating a particular party political agenda as they were about facilitating global economic capitalism, although the two were of course considerably interconnected.

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In the remainder of this paper, the analysis focuses on how some of the assumptions underlying the UDC experiment worked against their effectiveness, drawing on the specific experiences of the Leeds Development Corporation. Each UDC will have encountered different local resistances, while individual UDCs varied to some extent in both how they set out their main tasks and how they responded to local pressures, not least the demands for greater community engagement (CLES, 1990; Lawless, 1988; Imrie and Thomas, 1993). This is important since the initial UDCs, in particular the one for London Docklands, encountered problems with local community opposition. However, rather than leading to a fundamental re-think of the approach for later UDCs, the tactic adopted by central goverment appears to have been to designate areas with very few people actually living in them. In effect, by seeking to designate and present UDC areas as a blank canvas it was hoped that community battles could be preempted. In similar vein, the annexing of local authorities' planning powers was seen as likely to reduce their ability to interfere negatively with the work of the UDCs. In practice, however, both communities and local authorities found ways of contesting UDC behaviour, forms of contestation which severely limited the ability of the UDCs to pursue their preferred approaches, as the Leeds experience charted below helps demonstrate.

Making waves: the Leeds Development Corporation and processes of urban regeneration In analysing the ways in which the LDC sought to bring about a distinctive approach to urban regeneration in Leeds, two interrelated themes are examined here: the politics of 'partnership', focusing on local authority and community antagonisms, and the politics of the local planning process. By way of background, Leeds is a city of 717 000 people in West Yorkshire, formerly the heart of the wool textiles industry. Although Leeds suffered considerably during the 1960s and 1970s from industrial restructuring in its manufacturing sector, by the mid-1980s the city began to experience a resurgence in its fortunes, with a vibrant financial services sector and growing role as a regional service centre (Haughton and Whitney, 1994). Poverty and unemployment remained as considerable problems within the city, whch was eligible for Urban Programme funding and also hosted an Inner Cities Task Force and City Action Team during the 1980s (Haughton, 1996). Unemployment for the city as a whole has hovered around the national average in recent years, but has been considerably higher in certain areas of the city. The intention to create a Leeds Development Corporation was announced in late 1987, encompassing the South Central area, a rundown commercial and industrial district on the southern edge of the city centre, plus the Kirkstall Valley, a separate strip of land a mile to the north of the city centre, with a mixture of urban open space, industrial dereliction, and some remaining industry. Neither area had substantial resident populations at that time. It is important to emphasise the very different commercial potential of the two parts of the UDC. The South Central area was adjacent to an already thriving city


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centre, so that one rapidly realised effect of the area's designation within the LDC was to allow policies to be put in place that in effect extended the city centre southwards. This was a policy which the LDC pursued vigorously and successfully, contributing to considerable development activity immediately to the south of the city centre. There was substantial conversion and new-build activity along the banks of the River Aire, at least in part as a result of the LDC's programme of environmental improvements, the creation of a new footbridge over the River Aire, land purchase and assembly, and design guidance. The overall result was a commercial resurgence in this area, bringing in considerable new investment in housing, commercial offices, hotels, restaurants in this area, plus two new museums, the Royal Armouries and Tetley's Brewery Wharf. Alternatively, the land in Kirkstall Valley was well away from the city centre, attracting much lower rental values and also suffering from the unclear residue of its former main occupant, an electricity plant which had been largely cleard by the time of the LDC's desgination. In addition there was a scattering of largely rundown industrial and commercial premises. Most importantly, the area served as an informal green space for the residents of Kirkstall, an adjacent area dominated by high-density Victorian terraced housing. Low land values meant that it was difficult to justify huge remedial programmes for some of the areas of derelict land. This was one reason why, despite many ambitious plans being floated for commercial development in the area, with the property market downturn for much of the early 1990s, it became difficult to see where such investment would come from. Instead the LDC increasingly began to see the value of residents' claims for improving large parts of the area for recreational usage, so that the main legacy in this area is a small amount of new commercial development, in particular a supermarket, a considerable amount of refurbishment of older premises, and a considerable amount of work on local environmental improvements including the creation of a new golf course. As such, although initially the LDC appeared to be wanting to pursue property-led regeneration strategies in both areas, in practice it achieved very different things in its two operational areas: contributing to commercial development being realised more quickly than would otherwise have been possible in the South Central area, and to a more thorough-going programme of environmental improvements than had previously been envisaged for the Kirkstall Valley area. As the analysis presented below highlights, this in part reflects the different commercial potentials of the two areas, and in part the different politics of development which emerged in each area. The LDC assumed planning powers for these areas, totaling 1300 acres, on 5 October 1988, and was wound down at the end of March 1995. In total, the LDC attracted £52.5 million of public monies during its lifespan (Secretary of State for the Environment, 1995), spent mainly on land assembly, infrastructure works, grants and its own administration costs. The achievements in terms of attracting private-sector investment, creating jobs and so on, have already been noted in the opening paragraph of this paper, though it should be added that there is some dispute over the validity of these claims (Blackhurst, 1995). From the start the LDC's 23 aims make clear that its focus was to be on land

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and property development, to be achieved as far as possible with the assistance of the private sector, the local authority and central government (Leeds Development Corporation, 1988). Just one of the aims centred on making environmental improvements in the area, a policy which, as has already been noted, turned out to be one of the key successes of the LDC. There is no mention of community consultation in this initial strategy, possibly reflecting the expectation that since so few people lived in the area, this could be dealt with fairly simply. This was an area which did not prove to be one of the successes of the LDC. THE POLITICS OF WORKING WITH THE LOCAL AUTHORITY

While nationally at least one local authority lobbied for and welcomed their UDC, on the basis of the extra government resources it would bring into the area (Shields, 1988), many more argued strongly against the imposition of UDCs. Certainly the LDC was one of those which experienced a problematic early period, with the local authority, Leeds City Council, making considerable efforts to impede its designation and later its ability to work effectively. The local political parties divided on the issue. The leadership of the local Labour group, initially held by George Mudie, later by Jon Trickett (both now MPs), tended to find the imposition of a UDC as politically unpalatable, though both in time came to varying degrees of acceptance. Alternatively, for the Conservative opposition group in Leeds, there was considerable support for the UDC concept: We, the Conservative group, were extremely supportive of setting up a UDC in Leeds . . . The political machine here was operating in a more sophisticated way than in Sheffield, Liverpool and Manchester. None the less, opportunities were clearly going missing, (interview, local Conservative politician) The political sensitivities of establishing a UDC in Leeds were not helped by some of the overt political gestures made when central government initially established the composition of the LDC board. Particularly contentious was the designation of a business-sector chairman (Peter Hartley) who had been an active local Conservative politician on the former county council. The other members of the board included a vice chairman from the business sector, the leader of the local Conservative association (local businessman Andrew Carter), and three businessmen (Edward Holroyd, John Jackson and David Richardson) closely involved with the local chamber of commerce. Reflecting some bitterness about his initial opposition and tactics, the Labour leader of Leeds City Council (George Mudie) was not on the board, though three Labour Party figures were (Brian Walker, John Gunnell and Baroness Lockwood). John Gunnell left the board when he was elected to Parliament, while the leader of the local authority, Jon Trickett, was appointed to the board in July 1992, some time after his rise to power, as another business-sector member left. In effect, Labour Party figures were always in the minority on the LDC board and business-sector leaders in a clear majority.


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Although the local authority, including George Mudie, had begun to reconcile itself to working pragmatically with the LDC by the time of its formal launch (Leeds Other Paper, 1988), the legacy of some earlier decisions taken by the local authority to thwart the LDC was to curtail dramatically the LDC's ability to make significant progress on certain fronts. Perhaps the most significant decision was to revitalise during 1988 an earlier public-private partnership vehicle, the Leeds City Development Corporation (LCDC), as a means of at first seeking to argue that a UDC for Leeds was unnecessary and later, when this failed, to make life difficult for the new development corporation once it was in existence. The political logic of this process is telling. One senior figure in the local Labour Party tells the tale from the perspective of someone closely involved: I think we did something naive . . . We went and showed him [a senior civil servant] a number of sites which we thought were ripe for development in Leeds. We told him we were prepared to take actions to try to make sure that those sites were developed and we were wanting to intervene in the local economy. We told him we had an instrument which could do it [the LCDC]. Those sites we identified were then . . . put into the UDC in one of the most remarkable acts of political malice I've ever seen . . . But it was trumped. The trump card was that we transferred the land into the LCDC. (interview, senior local Labour politician) The importance of this manouevre for local politicians was that while UDCs had been given powers to take land from public bodies, they could not do this with private bodies. Therefore, constituting the LCDC as a private limited company, with a majority of private-sector board members in a public-private partnership, was seen as a solution to a critical problem of having large amounts of land holdings taken away from the local authority. In essence, the city council was able to work through the LCDC with certain prominent local business leaders who were keen to promote a particular type of public-private partnership, which would embrace private-sector attributes but remain rooted in the local democratic system, in contrast to the LDC. This battle for control over local authority land holdings played a central role in defining some of the problems later encountered by the LDC, and it also meant that 'a lot of the history of the relationship between the Council, Government and the UDC . . . was particularly bitter at the beginning' (interview, senior local Labour politician). Having highlighted such tensions, it is also worth emphasising that the LDC and the local authority did come to work more closely together over time. The politics of this particular partnership were very much the politics of pragmatism, since the LDC had both planning powers and access to funds which made it difficult to ignore as a local-regeneration player, even though its remit extended to just one per cent of the land in the city. In 1990 the city council was central in establishing the Leeds Initiative as a formal mechanism for multi-sectoral partnership, part of an attempt to establish a form of local 'hegemony, trying to establish our intellectual domination if you like' (interview, senior Labour councillor) over the battle for ideas about how

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the city should develop. The LDC was formally invited to be a part of this forum from the start, as part of a process of trying to engage it within a widely agreed strategy for the city as a whole. This was important since a key area of concern for some local leaders was that the LDC, in pursuing development within its small area, might undermine strategies for the city overall. Seen from another perspective, the growing accommodation between the LDC and the city council can be linked to the change in local authority leadership in 1989, as Jon Trickett assumed power. As exemplified by the creation of the Leeds Initiative and the successful attempt to attract the Royal Armouries museum to Leeds, the new administration placed considerable emphasis on building stronger publicprivate partnerships in the city and promoting the kind of large-scale, citycentre flagship projects which the LDC was able to help attract. In a sense, the LDC appeared to come to accept the need to work more closely with the local authority, while the local authority recognised that the legitimacy of its own leadership in regeneration required getting all the major partners to work with it towards a unified strategy, leading to a growing mutual accommodation. This said, asking a prominent board member and senior officer of the LDC what they might have done differently yielded the telling response from both that they would have been less trusting of the local authority's promises to work with them. Tensions remained rife to the end. THE POLITICS OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

The main impacts of the decision to vest large amounts of city council land in the LCDC were felt in the Kirkstall Valley area. The Kirkstall Valley Development Plan (People of the Valley, 1990) and an article in the Leeds Green Umbrella (Wright, 1990) set out the main sequence of events, as seen by local community activists. In November 1987 the national government announced its intention to include the Kirkstall Valley within the proposed Leeds Development Corporation's area of responsibility. On 28 January 1988, six companies were invited to submit plans for the Kirkstall Valley by the City Council and Leeds City Development Company. Bidders were given just 28 days: the winning submission came from the now defunct Mountleigh Northern Developments, with plans for massive commercial developments which would have involved the loss of seven sports fields and the possibility of covering remaining agricultural land with contaminated fly ash. This proposal led to the formation of the Kirkstall Valley Campaign (KVC), which was to become a major player in subsequent events, vociferously opposing major commercial developments and lobbying in favour of environmental schemes to preserve and improve open space in the area. In the event, the Mountleigh proposal came to nothing, with the company finally going bankrupt with none of its Kirkstall Valley plans under way. However, by this time, though there were very few people indeed living in the LDC's designated area in the Kirkstall Valley, people from the densely populated surrounding areas, who saw the area as one of enormous recreational and environmental value, were up and running, providing a strong lobbying focus. In effect, the city council handed the LDC a fairly unpleasant legacy, in the


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shape of a publicly unacceptable scheme which was to lead to long-running difficulties in coming up with some form of development acceptable to a newly invigorated community. As a consequence, for the next six years the LDC spent considerable time and effort engaging in largely abortive community consultations, producing a sequence of proposals of ever diminishing size to a still resistant community. For supporters of the LDC, the failure to achieve major development in the Kirkstall Valley was seen to be very much linked to the initial actions of the then city council leadership: [O]f course George Mudie left a minefield ... it soured the whole thing really ... It stymied anything else . . . It was a nonsense . . . they were doing it to try to make life difficult for the development corporation. And they did. (interview, LDC board member A) The KVC's very active lobbying and use of the local media also played a key role in making the LDC open up its decision-making processes a little, with meetings open to the public after the first year, except where issues were being considered in commercial confidence. The initial decision to hold meetings behind closed doors was opposed by all the local politicians on the Board, but it took a media campaign and the vocal opposition of the KVC to reverse the decision. In hindsight, this decision appears to have been a wise one, accepted even by those who had prefered Board meetings to be held in private I think it was just as well that there was the democracy of open debate . . . because there were accusations flying about all over the place, up the [Kirkstall] Valley about how the decisions were eventually reached. Had it been behind closed doors, I think it would have been intolerable. The people in Kirkstall would have been rioting now. At least they saw a decision making process and they listened to the comments of the members of the Development Corporation Board, (interview, LDC board member B) As the LDC was wound up, the City Council came to resume planning powers and itself inherited some of the many still unresolved and still highly politicised planning application issues for the area, leading one leading player to argue that 'it's a matter of some pleasure that having contributed to the problem quite considerably, they have now got it back in their lap to sort out' (interview, LDC board member A). The Kirkstall Valley issue is valuable in highlighting the way in which the unpopularity of the LDC meant that in spite of its 'single-minded' approach to local regeneration, it found it difficult to progress development rapidly in this particular area in the face of local opposition, both from the local authority and from local community groups. It should be stressed that the local authority and the KVC were very far from working hand-in-hand on such issues, with considerable ill will existing from the KVC towards the local authority, and a certain unease on the part of local Labour Party leaders. But it is important to remember that the reason why these conflicts worked out in the way they did may well be in large part due to the weak commercial potential of the Kirkstall Valley area: had there been the prospect of high development demand within the

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area, it is possible that the LDC would have found itself pushed much harder into pursuing a more commercial development strategy for the area. Similarly, had the LDC not been so sensitive to the external perception of an accountability deficit, maybe it would have attempted a firmer approach to pushing its earlier plans through. As it was, it was really the residents' voice which was making itself heard in the Kirkstall Valley debate and in the absence of a strong counter lobby the LDC perhaps inevitably sought to develop a middle path by seeking some commercial development while also improving the recreational potential of the area. In summary, the politics of partnership in Leeds, in relation to the LDC at least, meant that relationships were considerably fraught, between local communities, the local authority, and the private-sector-led LDC. In the case of Leeds this was not just a simple ideological battle between a local Labour council and a Conservative central government and its so-called 'placemen' (see Derek Fatchett MP, in Secretary of State for the Environment, 1995, 6), since both also became embroilled in dsputes with the local community, with neither ultimately managing to bring community activists around to their way of thinking. The key lesson is that top-down regeneration initiatives imposed on unwilling communities will encounter major political problems which will impede their effectiveness to act as single-minded regeneration bodies. Even in the absence of local accountability structures, or possibly because of this absence, establishing local credibility with all sectors of the community is central to achieving rapid and sustainable forms of regeneration. THE POLITICS OF WORKING WITH THE PRIVATE SECTOR

Given that one of the key goals of the UDCs was to improve the local climate for business investment by tackling planning issues in a more business-sensitive way, it is particularly appropriate to focus on this area of the LDC's work. Reflecting the fact that the bulk of the private investment generated by the LDC went to the South Central area, this section focuses primarily on this part of the city. The important contextual issues here are the commercial potential of those parts of the area closest to Leeds city centre, particularly along the River Aire waterfront, and the fact that when the LDC was designated there were relatively few people living in the area. As such the main stakeholders in this part of the city were commercial property interests, who were most interested in improving their land and rental values, seeing the LDC as a means of improving the overall development potential of the area and of reducing land use planning-related constraints. It became one of the proudest boasts of the LDC that it was able to improve the speed with which planning applications were dealt with in its area, a fact which the approval rates certainly back up. In the year ending 31 March 1993, the LDC managed to process 81.2 per cent of its applications within 8 weeks, while Leeds City Council processed just 42.6 per cent in the same time period. However, it is important to note that the LDC dealt with just 181 decisions, while the local authority had to deal with 4614. Moreover, the LDC planning applications tended to be for relatively uncontentious commercial developments


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in commercial areas, while the local authority had to cater for the usually more contentious applications found in any residential area (see below). In a similar vein, there is a strong view among many local Labour politicians that the LDC's record on planning permissions was achieved largely because the LDC did not have to account to a local electorate and had to deal mainly with less controversial proposals. As one local politician expressed it: [Democracy takes time . . . Now I always felt they were putting their finger to a degree on a tender spot whenever they raised the issue of the length of time that it took us to determine applications, which was obviously longer than it took them. The argument back was well you're not a democratic body, you're not accountable, (interview, local Labour councillor A) Alternatively, viewed from the perspective of the business members of the LDC Board, speed was of the essence, a central aspect of their mission and distinctive approach as a private-sector-led regeneration body: We've had a different attitude: we've had a job, we're totally focused on what we are doing. We are only here for a short time, we know we have got to get on with the job. (interview, LDC board director B) This 'can do' attitude also pervades the views of LDC staff, who argue that their control over planning powers provided them with the freedom to 'get on with the job', and specifically to focus more on 'planning' than 'political' issues: [I]t's been refreshingly different. That each project has been looked upon for its particular merits and contribution which it can make. There's been no hidden agenda, a different dimension to what happens with local authorities. Is a ward member coming up for election? Is it going to offend certain people? . . . It's been refreshingly different. We've got on with the job. (interview, LDC officer A) A particularly interesting feature of discussions with those running the LDC was the candour with which planning mistakes were admitted. These were effectively rationalised as being products of an imperfect system, but acceptable in light of some of the counter-balancing benefits of speed of dealing with planning applications: [Rather than defer at board meetings] generally we make decisions. Not always right, I'm sure, but who does always make right decisions. If you make a decision quickly, you're just as likely I think to make a correct decision, as if you take three years to make it. (interview, LDC board member B) . . . [T]here were better used for those sites for the longer term strategy for the city, but as the city doesn't have long term strategy, it's not a criticism, (interview, LDC officer B) In other words, mistakes were made, but this was not perceived to be a problem as the alternative mechanisms would also have generated mistakes. This splendid win-win vision has its down side of course, namely that the local

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authority could justify any of its past mistakes using very similar rationales, with the exception that with local government, if unacceptable mistakes are made the local electorate has the power to remove those deemed responsible from power. So while the LDC did speed up planning processes, it did this in the context of serving only 1 per cent of the city's land area, catering mainly for commercial planning applications. As we saw in the preceding section, in the case of Kirkstall Valley where there was significant local opposition to development, even the 'fast-track' planning powers of the LDC and its limited local accountability structures were insufficient to bring about rapid development. What the specific planning powers of the LDC brought to light was in some respects the ways in which the local authority planning system had previously tended to underplay city-centre planning applications, as a result of the low residential population of voters, and perhaps most importantly, lack of potential objectors. One member of the LDC board with experience in local authority planning matters argued that in consequence major developments often received only limited attention in committee, compared to quite minor proposals in residential neighbourhoods: . . . [T]he city centre stuff, because there's no electors, didn't raise the issues in the minds of the members . . . It was a different debate at the development corporation. They were more conscious of land values, they were more conscious of the issues brought to them by the private sector developers, so, I think the decisions reflected that, (interview, LDC board member C) In a similar vein, some of the factors which weighed most heavily in the minds of local councillors, such as social equity and conforming with the council's overall strategic goals for the city, were different from those of the LDC with its narrower spatial remit and concern to ensure that private-sector considerations were taken into account. This led to particular concerns for some of the local authority members on the LDC board about the accountability issues of having two planning systems operating side-by-side in the city, using different criteria to assess planning applications. In general, the private sector appears to have felt more comfortable with applications being processed by the LDC rather than by the city council. This said, while the LDC was eventually able to garner private-sector support for its activities, this was tempered by some disillusionment with the way in which the LDC sought to bring about speed by use of Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs), a form of intervention which the local planning authority had largely stopped using in previous years, not least as its ability to provide compensatory funding was reduced. So while, in general, the LDC was able to engage in a more pro-active, business-friendly interventionist form of planning than the local authority, its exercise of CPO powers did lead to considerable local criticism from existing small firms (Leeds Other Paper, 1990; Secretary of State for the Environment, 1995). In summary, even some of its main critics are willing to concede that the LDC managed to gain more trust from the private sector than the local authority could


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ever hope to. This was particularly evident in terms of the LDC being able to focus on the commercial aspects of granting planning permissions and its record on moving quickly to giving planning permission. The relationship with the private sector was, however, uneven, with the strongest relationships being with larger developers and incoming firms, while a number of pre-existing small firms protested that the LDC rode rough shod over them in its efforts to attract new development. In many respects the specific-area focus of the LDC was also seen by some key players to bring greater scrutiny to city-centre developments, albeit scrutiny within a framework more rooted in making development happen quickly and meeting developers' commercial needs, rather than a framework based on a city-wide vision with strong systems of local democratic accountability.

'Made things happen9: the highly contested record of the achievements of the Leeds Development Corporation Yes they did make an impact. They ruffleda few feathers.I think that was inevitable:they wouldn'thave achievedas much as they did, if they hadn't. We will never know whether Leeds City Council would have achieved exactlythe same,or even more, had we been given £55 million and told 'that moneyis ring-fenced,you can only spendit on that 1 per cent of the city'. I'd like to think we could have done at least as much, (interview,local authority officer) To be perfectly realistic, the council would never have created the mechanismnot only to deliver, but to give the privatesector the confidence to do what they have done ... I honestly believe that it is the unique focus, the powers, the determination,bringing all those things together, that has really driven it forward.(LDC officerA) Having adopted the slogan 'Making things happen' during its lifetime, the LDC provocativelytitled its farewellpublic documentchartingits achievements Made ThingsHappen1988-1995 (Leeds Development Corporation,1995). But even over two years after its demise, the legacy of the Leeds Development Corporation remains contested and unclear, with two distinctive counter narratives in operation, one of rapid action and business friendliness, the other of steam rolling over local opinion and acting without a local democratic mandate. While the physicaldevelopmentcreatedin the south of the city is there for all to see as a reminderof what the LDC achieved,there is still some local debate about how much of this would have happened without its unique style of intervention.The prevailingview within the local authorityremainsthat it had alreadyset the seeds of the South Centralarea'srevitalisationpriorto the LDC's arrival,while handlingevents in the KirkstallValley in ways more acceptableto the local community.This is very much part of constructingthe narrativeof LDC 'failure'by counterpointingit with notions of local authorityeffectiveness

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and legitimacy. Taking a different tack, in order to highlight the 'success' of the LDC its supporters constructed counter narratives of altering planning processes to replace bureaucratic obstructiveness on the part of the local authority while creating an investment climate supportive of business interests. Each interpretation makes sense, using its own internal logic, while both rely on the tensions between the two sets of narrative to establish their own legitimacy. In terms of the much-trumpeted process achievements of the Leeds Development Corporation, even accepting the advances made in terms of turning round planning applications by the LDC, the desirability of such an outcome is in fact contested by those who would argue for the inherent desirability of slower but more democratic forms of decision making. In addition, the claims of fast-track planning can begin to look shaky under closer scrutiny. When the LDC did meet with substantial local opposition, in the Kirkstall Valley area, it found itself as unable to progress rapidly as any local authority. There are difficulties then in validating the claimed improved responsiveness of the planning system. This said, the LDC did help set an agenda and expectations for a quicker turnaround on planning applications which the council has inherited. What comes out of this analysis is that many of the things which cause planning delay are insuperable in an open and participative democracy, leading the LDC itself, in time, to experience these constraints as it became more enmeshed in local detail and attempts to obtain local legitimacy for its activities. Key lessons which emerge appear to be the need to work on building good relationships with other key actors from the start, including local community groups. To do this in the contemporary British political climate requires building up strong trust relationships centred on an openness of process and exchange of information. Particularly in its early period, the LDC failed in this respect. Both locally and nationally the UDC experiment has to be perceived as being one with mixed fortunes. In the case of the LDC this entailed the positive aspects of attracting private-sector investment to parts of the city and improving parts of the inner-city environment. On the downside, the whole model of UDCs can be seen to be so fundamentally flawed in concept that it was not durable in areas such as Leeds where external imposition inevitably led to major local skirmishes, in which other local players made occasional use of their remaining powers to stymie the work of the in-coming organisation. Such opposition in turn reflects the fact that the single-minded vision of the UDCs, with their emphasis on economic regeneration, was itself flawed. If no other lesson emerges from the UDC experiment, it should be that economic regeneration always needs to be consensual, involving mechanisms which should aim to be inclusive rather than exclusive. This is something which began to be addressed with subsequent regeneration initiatives such as City Challenge and the Single Regeneration Budget, with their increased emphasis on the role of local authorities and local community groups. This is also emerging as a central concern of the Labour Government which was elected in May 1997 (Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1997a; 1997b).


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Aidan While of CUDEM and Town Planning Review referees for comments on an early draft of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.