Regenerating Burslem

Joan Walley MP talks about how the Housing Market Renewal programme has started transforming Burslem from a ghost town.

I represent a constituency, Stoke-on-Trent North, which is made up of two-thirds historic pottery towns of Tunstall and Burslem of Anna of the Five Towns fame - and one-third beautiful Staffordshire Moorlands rural parishes. William Morris came here to study design and left his mark on stained glass windows. Successful manufacturers like Wedgwood left their legacy and developed the local industry, transforming the local countryside as the local infrastructure mushroomed and transport networks developed to carry the locally produced ware to all corners of the world.

Wherever there was clay and coal, they were followed by potbanks, houses, roads, footpaths, canals, chapels and pubs to quench the thirst of hot, heavy labour. We grew organically. Unlike Sheffield and Birmingham - with their big municipal centres - the Potteries grew first as villages, then towns, and eventually the towns federated in 1906 to create the city of Stoke-on-Trent. Burslem was the 'mother' town. The other five grew and we became a city of six towns, and more recently and accurately seven if you count the 'edge City' garden festival development of superstores replacing the former steelworks at Etruria.

Sense of place

I know of nowhere else but Burslem where the sense of place is so deep rooted. Where the people who created the industry shaped their landscape as resolutely as they moulded the ware which literally was our reason for being.

So it has been heartbreaking to witness the closure of potbank after potbank as companies outsourced. Watching as traders shut up shop as factories closed and homes were cleared and the town was left to fend for itself.

That this has happened on my watch has meant that my work as an MP has had to be as focused on driving regeneration in Burslem as it has been on the Westminster agenda. I have made regeneration of Burslem my priority because someone had to. I am determined that our legacy today should be every bit as true to the needs of my constituents today as when the town first evolved.

We have had to work on all fronts to bring about economic and social regeneration consistent with sustainable development principles. But there is a stark difference between regenerating a town with a historical legacy that was born out of its sense of common purpose and simply imposing ad hoc groups of professionals, consultants and planners, none of whom are intrinsically connected to the town other than through their day job.

Not by accident but by design, we now have a set of objectives and delivery mechanisms to oversee the regeneration of Burslem. We have a lot going for us. We have housing market renewal status and priority for regeneration under the regional development agency's priority programme for North Staffordshire. We have a Burslem Regeneration Company set up to join up policy and investment decisions fully backed up by Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

The Burslem jigsaw

We have moved from the days of a ghost town to an acceptance that regeneration has taken off. Piece by piece we are putting the Burslem jigsaw back together again in a fashion that is true to its past but looking to the future. We no longer despair about the state of abandonment but we have the programmes in place to look to Burslem's future.

The bigger firms may have pulled out but we still have quality and design-renowned ceramics companies operating here - a cluster of 350 or so across Stoke-on-Trent as a whole. We still have tourists visiting because of the industry. We have small live/work units which we hope will attract young businesses and we have enterprise units springing up - the most recent is in the unfinished stand at Port Vale Football Club, itself an example of how if the dedication and commitment is there, a club can turn itself round from administration to a new role at the heart of the local community.

We are making this progress because we produced a Burslem masterplan and we got all the partners to subscribe to our vision for Burslem. The challenge for us now is how to recreate a sense of what is special about Burslem.

We have seen consultants brought in to aid regeneration with no shared sense of our history. Developers who came simply to impose their off the peg designs that would be alright for anywhere but nowhere near right for a town as special as ours.

And just as important we have seen professionals brought in to deliver an action plan beset by government targets and outturns but with little regard for the special designs that have to be a feature of regeneration in Burslem. Professionals with individual skills but initially lacking the sense of team spirit that makes Burslem so special.

Holding out for quality

To begin with there was a tendency to accept just about anything because we needed it irrespective of the quality of the design. It was as though anything was better than nothing - beggars can't be choosers. But through the Burslem Regeneration Company we have learnt to set down standards and hold out for quality.

At long last we have engineered a way of working that is worthy of Burslem. CABE has been central to this. To begin with, CABE was advising and on standby but somehow there was a disconnect between vision and action - quality design was the casualty. Individuals were just not sufficiently linking their contribution to the bigger picture so that everyone became a valued part of a recognised team.

Common purpose

I am grateful to CABE for facilitating an away day to do precisely that. The housing market renewal team is having to recreate Burslem from a standpoint of people coming together merely for professional reasons rather than on account of the industrial momentum that shaped the people and their landscape. That fervour and drive and interconnectedness has to be artificially recreated if Burslem is to re-emerge as a sustainable community, a hilltop town, offering prime location and the prospect of work, homes and leisure to the future generations who want a special place to live. All partners must rally round to this common purpose. Good design is possible - best practice is in all the guidance notes - but to be truly at the heart of Burslem's regeneration, good design now has to be at the forefront of everything that is done.

Joan Walley is the MP for Stoke-on-Trent North