Filling in the empty spaces

Nevertheless, it has taken the Government four years and a trip to Berlin for the Deputy Prime Minister to come up with proposals for bringing abandoned buildings back to life.

This is not to say, however, that Nick Clegg’s ideas are not welcome. There are vast areas of town and city centres across the North which have become blighted through years of neglect, providing an invitation for criminals to move in. And even in the smartest of city centres, one or two deserted premises can begin a downward spiral of neglect, as shoppers scurry to the comfort of the out-of-town retail park or the internet.

Indeed, the fact that the North has twice as many deserted buildings and abandoned patches of land as the South makes it imperative that, if the Government is truly serious about empowering the North, a successful strategy is introduced to bring these back into use.

As Mr Clegg points out, the way in which Berlin has been transformed in the 25 years since the fall of the Wall has owed much to a deliberate strategy of reusing its derelict land and property. And if the Deputy Prime Minister’s ideas can be half as successful in redeveloping areas of northern England, then this will be a policy well worth pursuing.

However, if the Government is so keen on bringing land back into use, why has it been so slow in encouraging developers to use brownfield sites to solve the nation’s housing crisis? In fact, as their failed housing policy has repeatedly shown, good intentions and fine words count for nothing unless Ministers are prepared to put the right incentives in place to make things happen.

A man with a plan

Osborne’s route to recovery

WHEN THE coalition Government came to power, George Osborne’s promise was to balance the current deficit by the time of next year’s General Election. Since then, however, things have changed.

Now the Chancellor’s plan is to be rid of the budget deficit by 2018-19, far later than initially envisaged. However, as if to acknowledge his past failures in this area, Mr Osborne plans to introduce a new law stipulating that the current deficit be eliminated by 2018.

In spite of the Chancellor’s broken promises and shifting timetable, however, the Conservatives are still heading into the General Election with an economic plan more convincing than anything Labour can offer.

The key aspect of Mr Osborne’s plan is that it would stop the Government adding further to the national debt, whereas Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls’s pledge to eliminate the deficit apart from all capital spending means that the debt will increase.

Mr Osborne, of course, is also promising to achieve his goals without increasing taxes. In contrast, Mr Balls plans big tax rises for wealth creators, thereby threatening the economic recovery, and half-baked schemes such as the mansion tax that would raise pitifully inadequate amounts of money.

Mr Osborne’s time at the Treasury has been far from flawless, but he has overseen a recovery that his opposite number said would never happen and has plans to sustain that recovery. Mr Balls, on the other hand, is offering little more than the same kind of economic mismanagement which helped to bring about Britain’s huge deficit in the first place.

Peace of mind

Looking after mental health

IN the workplace, as in all other areas of life, mental illness has for too long been the great unmentionable. Whereas most employers are prepared for staff being afflicted by terrible physical conditions, they will frequently have little idea how to respond to employees taking time off for psychological problems.

That is if those employees admit to suffering from such conditions in the first place. For far too many are still reluctant to admit to mental illness, wrongly believing that there is a stigma attached to it. And, according to mental-health charity Leeds Mind, this situation is made worse in Yorkshire by too many people believing that the renowned resilience of workers in this region, the “Yorkshire grit” of popular fable, stops many from acknowledging mental illness.

This is why it is crucial that the region’s employers answer the call today to pledge to achieve positive mental health at work and look after all aspects of their employees’ wellbeing.