The Government is working away on two important documents which may well come to define the Prime Minister’s ‘social renewal’ legacy.
The Government’s landmark ‘life chances strategy’ and the initial findings of the Heseltine review into the re-generation of ‘Britain’s 100 worst estates’ are both expected to be published in the weeks following the referendum. These two agendas should not be delivered in isolation.
If the Government’s Life Chances Strategy is to mean anything to the people it seeks to help, it should flow through the rebuilding of these rundown and deprived ‘estates.
The Prime Minister’s ambitious plans to rebuild some of our poorest communities, should be about more than bricks and mortar. New buildings will mean nothing, if the lives of our poorest neighbours remain unchanged.
The Heseltine review should looks towards a life chances approach, rooted in support for individuals and families to demonstrate how these new estates will rebuild lives, not simply run down homes.
The Heseltine review and the Life Chances Strategy were announced together, in the same Prime Ministerial speech in January, they should be delivered together too.