MPs warning on regeneration plan

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Britain's biggest regeneration project could become a "public spending calamity" if management is not "vastly" improved, an MPs' committee has warned.

It said the department in charge of the Thames Gateway scheme was "not up to the job" and its management "weak".

Basic arrangements, including a budget, are not yet in place to run the scheme to build 160,000 homes east of London.

But the Department for Communities and Local Government said "major progress" had been made and plans were on track.

The aim is to build 160,000 homes - alongside infrastructure such as roads, health centres, schools, offices, stations and shops - and create 180,000 new jobs by 2016 in 40-mile long stretch of land from London's Lower Lea Valley east along the Thames into Essex and Kent.

'Disjointed projects'

Most of the money for the housing and infrastructure will come from the private sector, but the public account committee's report concluded that the DCLG "does not know how much the regeneration of the Thames Gateway will cost the taxpayer".

The DCLG has already spent £673m and has sponsored projects to help local groups begin the regeneration of the region, the committee said.

Action must be taken now to prevent the enterprise ending in another public spending calamity Edward LeighCommittee chairman

But the report said its management so far had been "weak" and "has not demonstrably added value to the programme".

It said: "Without significant improvement in the overall management of the programme it will remain a series of disjointed projects and is unlikely to achieve its potential."

The report said "many stakeholders" had questioned whether the DCLG had enough clout within Whitehall to persuade other departments to prioritise the project.

'Unclear delivery'

Other problems included a lack of "robust systems" to measure progress and an "unclear" delivery chain - owing to the fact that more than 100 organisations are involved in the Thames Gateway project.

We simply do not recognise many of the suggestions in the report DCLG spokesman

It is estimated that the development will bring in 350,000 people, swelling the area's population by 22%.

But there were also some concerns that the existing 1.45 million residents in the area would not feel the benefit of new jobs and public services in the area.

The committee's chairman, Conservative MP Edward Leigh said: "The Department for Communities and Local Government is at present manifestly not up to the job of managing the enormously ambitious enterprise of regenerating the Thames Gateway region.

'Major progress'

"Action must be taken now to prevent the enterprise ending in another public spending calamity."

But a spokesman for the DCLG said: "We simply do not recognise many of the suggestions in the report."

He said the government had made "major progress" in the past year alone - including reaching agreements on Crossrail and progress on Olympic developments at Stratford which, along with a £1.5bn container port and business park, would be "major drivers for regeneration and investment".

Fully-costed plans for the area would be published shortly, he said, and the project was "on course" to meet its 2016 targets.

And he added a "top-down centralised structure" was not right for an area which would be the size of Yorkshire, containing dozens of individual towns and communities.

But Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay, whose Thurrock constituency lies within the Thames Gateway region, said ministers were "in denial" over the lack of progress and said the prime minister needed to personally "get a grip" of the project.