Families still facing poverty as regeneration cash isn't helping

Dec 17 2009 by Adrian Pearson, The Journal

The investment list includes sites such as Felling pit in Gateshead and Seaham and covers a former mining population of over 650,000, more than a quarter of the entire region.

Jeff Reid, Liberal Democrat leader of Northumberland Council, said more than just money would be needed to solve the problems facing deprived North East families.

He added: “I don’t think it is necessarily a failing of the Government, at least not in how much they have spent. We have seen here that you can’t just throw money at the problem and hope it solves itself.

“We need to offer people in these areas the chance to find work, and in some places there are not those opportunities.

“This just goes to show you have to commit more than just money. People who were miners needed re-skilling, and the Government needs to provide the conditions for those jobs to appear, because all to often there just aren’t the opportunities for those people at the moment.”

Edward Leigh, the Tory chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts said: “It is hardly surprising that many coalfield communities remain severely deprived when we hear the Department for Communities and Local Government has had no strategy to co-ordinate its spending.”

But housing minister Ian Austin said: “Some of these sites were amongst the most contaminated in Europe and it has taken time, but we are cleaning up the environmental legacy of the coal industry and 4,500 football pitches’ worth of previously derelict contaminated land has been put back into use.

“But we recognise there is still more to do.”