Predictions 2012: Chris Brown, chief executive of Igloo

Chris Brown said: “The regeneration landscape will change substantially in 2012. In England the Core Cities will take on more powers including budgets and land from Homes and Communities Agency (HCA).

“The need to make physical regeneration happen will see local authorities using their balance sheets to underwrite market rental housing in order to attract in the wall of private investment seeking low risk RPI linked long term investments. Financial innovation through JESSICA, TIF, EZs, new Lottery funds and many others will be utilised to structure deals that are attractive to private institutional finance.

“The government will respond to the select committee report with a comprehensive regeneration strategy closer to the regeneration strategy in Scotland than its first, widely criticised attempt. It will bring together the Core Cities initiative with the troubled families’ initiative and give local authorities control over the entire public funding budget for designated deprived neighbourhoods.

“Design will be seen to have fallen off the public procurement agenda and the community backlash over the poor design quality of Kickstart and other publicly led schemes and the need to mitigate NIMBYism to get the home building market moving again will see design returning to the forefront of policy with Design Council, Core Cities and HCA making built environment design central to their respective missions.”