Birmingham City Council is planning a big housing regeneration programme in the inner city district of Ladywood.

It has identified an area, mostly within the Middle Ring Road, which contains about 1,000 dwellings: a mixture of houses, two- and three-storey flats, deck-access maisonettes and tower blocks, built between the 1950s and 1970s.

About two thirds of them are in council ownership and the rest privately owned. The programme for the Ladywood Housing Regeneration Initiative (LHRI) was in a report which went to cabinet in February.

Its vision was summarised as: "A family focused neighbourhood delivering the next generation in city centre living set within a high-quality environment, connected by a well-designed network of streets and public spaces and supported by local amenities and facilities."

This sounds ambitious and expensive - it will need hundreds of millions of pounds to achieve. The Government has no money to spend on public housing.

The city council has very little - the only council spending the report proposes is £400,000 on professional services.

So where will the money come from? The answer is from the private sector.

The council will select a private developer with whom it will go into partnership and the developer will pay the costs of the development.

Why would a commercial developer spend hundreds of millions of pounds in an area of predominantly council housing?

The only possible reason is if it can build a large quantity of housing for sale to make a profit on its investment.

There is some land in Ladywood on which this could be done.

Wells Tower and maisonettes in Ladywood
Wells Tower and maisonettes in Ladywood

There is an unbuilt area next to the West Coast mainline railway and other smaller pieces of land on Ladywood Middleway, Ryland Street and elsewhere.

The 1960s planners believed in leaving lots of green space around new housing.

But it is improbable the existing housing, both that in council ownership and that which has been bought by its tenants, will remain intact.

The report promises "high-quality, sustainable new homes as part of a well-designed neighbourhood" but also "high-quality social housing, replacing the existing obsolete typologies".

So demolition, redevelopment and displacement of residents is on the agenda.

Which housing types are considered obsolete is not specified but I would guess the seven tower blocks are probably top of the list.

I would also imagine the complicated flats and maisonettes on Kilby and Lighthorne Avenues, next to the railway, might be vulnerable.

Who will decide?

The report states a key objective will be to ensure the existing community is fully engaged in the regeneration of the area. Here, I must declare a personal interest.

I was part of the previous regeneration programme in Ladywood, called Ladywood Regeneration Framework (LRF), between 1990 and 1996.

It covered a similar area to LHRI. I was consultant to Ladywood Community Forum, representing the residents.

In 1989, I was invited to meet the committee of the forum.

They told me a recent meeting of the Forum had been addressed by Councillor Albert Bore, then, as now, ward councillor for Ladywood.

He told residents: "The planners got it all wrong in Ladywood in the 50s and 60s. We're going to do it again and this time we're going to get it right."

By getting it wrong, he meant the council had believed it knew best and residents had to accept what it decided - total clearance and redevelopment.

By getting it right, he meant the council and residents would work together in partnership.

In six years, we spent £35 million (about £80 million today) on improving the council housing, in a programme based on extensive and detailed consultation with residents.

The work was funded by the Government's Estate Action programme. It didn't transform Ladywood, it couldn't.

The Estate Action money was limited to improving existing housing. It couldn't provide new housing or facilities, or new jobs, or improve public health.

Although we did sneak in 12 new flats and, with other money, we improved the shopping centre and built a new health and community centre.

The LRF was a success within the limits of what it was able to do.

That success was founded on the residents' participation, on their being able to shape decisions on what the priorities were, and how the money should be spent.

Could that happen again, in the forthcoming LHRI? In principle, it could.

The cabinet report says: "The first thing the partners will need to do is work with the local community to develop a plan for the area."

There are two major obstacles to this. The first is that Ladywood Community Forum no longer exists.

There is no well-organised democratic body in Ladywood that can represent residents' interests.

The report says local councillors have formed a focus group.

Salisbury Tower in Ladywood
Salisbury Tower in Ladywood

But who chose them, how representative are they and how much clout will they have when it comes to making big spending decisions?

In the LRF, regeneration was done in a partnership between the council and the residents.

Next time, it will be in a partnership between the council and a commercial developer. I fear the residents will be in a minor role.

The second major obstacle is the developer's profit motive. This will determine what can and cannot happen.

In the LRF it was not present.

The spending was determined by good housing design principles and by the residents' agreed priorities.

I support the building of modern family housing in the city centre, at densities greater than were achieved in the 1960s, on well-designed streets, mixed with other non-residential uses.

But I think it is inevitable that, in the LHRI, there will be a displacement of existing housing and its residents in order to make way for a greater number of new dwellings for sale.

I would feel more confident about the outcome if there were an effective residents' voice in the process and if the commercial profit motive were to have a less dominant role.

Joe Holyoak is a Birmingham-based architect and urban designer