ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the widening of the urban regeneration policy agenda under the various initiatives. While there was progress in widening the agenda there was also increasing fragmentation and difficulties in co-ordinating the many players that were involved with the regeneration process. Renewal Areas were introduced in 1989 to encourage co-ordinated action to improve housing, environmental, social and economic conditions in rundown neighbourhoods. The idea of Housing Action Trusts emerged in the 1988 Housing Act as a mechanism for renovating run-down council estates and removing them from local authority ownership and control. By 1990 there was growing criticism that the government's urban regeneration policies were too many and too complex with too little coordination and too little recognition of the potential contribution of local authorities. Liverpool City Council's response to the Single Regeneration Budget was substantially informed by the fact that it already had Objective One status from the European Union.
