Coastal areas and their duty to undertake an economic assessment

The development of the duty for local authorities to undertake an economic assessment – unveiled in the Sub-National Review of Economic Development and Regeneration – puts economic geography at the heart of local economic development.¹ This is not new, but it is a theme that had lain dormant for most of the 1980s and 90s. The modern origins of the debate go back to the Redcliffe Maud Commission instituted by Prime Minister Ted Heath in 1966.

Broadly, the report recommended the abolition of all the existing county, county borough, borough, urban district and rural district councils, which had been created at the end of the nineteenth century, and replacing them with new unitary authorities. These new authorities were largely based on major towns, which acted as regional employment, commercial, social and recreational centres and took into account local transport infrastructure and travel patterns.

The report triggered a debate which, in its watered down form, led to the introduction of the current system and more importantly boundaries of local authorities in 1972. Interestingly, Redcliffe Maud also proposed a regional tier of government based on boundaries similar to those on which Regional Assemblies and RDAs function today.

Unfortunately, somewhere between 1966 and 1972 the wiring got twisted and the pattern of local authorities that came into being lost its focus on functioning economic areas. Instead there came into being a patchwork of authorities based on local lobbying, compromise and tradition. No change there, then! This largely dysfunctional pattern has predominated for a generation, and now we have an ad hoc ‘pick and mix’ approach to boundaries based on incremental changes, with still relatively little focus on the actual functioning of places.

To be fair, in parallel with the evolution of administrative boundaries there has been a debate about how local authorities can be empowered to work across their boundaries to form alliances based on economic geography; and how, if all are willing, these arrangements can be put on a statutory footing through the implementation of the sub-national review referred to above. Perhaps it is the ability to be flexible in creating sense from complexity that is more important than creating simple structures themselves. There is a strong tradition in Britain of hanging on to strange and evolving systems rather than sweeping them away. Compare the rebuilding of London on almost the exact same street pattern after the Great Fire of 1666 to Hausmann’s complete remodelling of Paris in the 1860s. Or think about the evolution of our system of government without a written constitution.

If we therefore choose to ‘go with the flow’ in terms of seeking to make the best of the new powers local authorities have been given in recent years, starting with the Power of Well-Being in the 2000 Local Government Act, and building through Michael Lyons’ exhortation to us all to get on and shape our places, what does the requirement to undertake an economic assessment mean for coastal areas?

As evidenced elsewhere in this Handbook, coastal places are different. They have a number of generic features that make them different and we can also differentiate between them. Generically they are different for these reasons:

• They are liminal. That is, they exist between two planes – physically and in the mind – being on the cusp of the land and sea and having only an 180-degree hinterland (albeit the sea itself is a resource).
• They have a terminus feel, all being literally ‘at the end of the line’.
  
• They have a set of special environmental challenges around their relationship with the sea.
• In the context of an island nation they have a fascination for people. This creates sentimental and, in some senses, irrational approaches to investment in them. You only have to take a trip to the theme park at Lands End to get a sense of this.

It is important to begin to draw out some shades of grey – particularly in terms of functionality – when thinking about coastal settlements. We need to distinguish them into more distinct and individual categories based on their economic geographies.

In considering the intersection of economy and geography on our coastline I have come up with a four-fold categorisation of places based on deprivation and the ways in which it manifests itself. Of course this is not the only way of considering the matter, but it does drive out some interesting insights. Why is this important in the context of the duty to undertake an economic assessment? The answer is that the duty to undertake an economic assessment is not predicated on the basis of creating something that sits on a shelf. In fact the actual techniques used to prepare the assessment are largely irrelevant provided it is done technically well. There are any number of consultants offering a ‘stop me and buy one’ approach to this aspect of the task.

What the creation of the first statutory duty for local authorities in terms of economic development is about – and there are some of who have operated at the margins of local authority discretion for years who have mixed views about this new statutory status – is the challenge for local authorities to prove they understand what is happening ‘on their patch’.

Approaches to monitoring and performance management in the public sector are cyclical, and we seem to be coming to the end of one cycle of micro-recording and management. I foresee new approaches arising very soon that concentrate more on action than measurement. This will be partly driven by the need to respond to recession, and partly by the weight of the current regulatory regime collapsing in on itself. In my view that will be a good thing because there is a tendency in local government for measurement and process to become a proxy for actually doing. This is a feature also of other areas of the public sector. This is not to say that all measurement is bad – some approaches are underpinned by more reason than others.

The National Performance Indicators introduced for local government are a case in point: top-down; imposed by central government; some hard to measure in technical terms and others based on perception. The jury is still out in terms of their usefulness. They sit alongside school league tables, which recently led a London headteacher to reflect that we should concentrate more on fattening the pig than constantly weighing it. Continuing with this analogy, the economic assessment offers enlightenment – it is more about fattening the pig than weighing it. It provides the opportunity for local authorities, based on their own analyses, to explain and justify how they have used their discretion to tackle local economic challenges.

There has been a debate within the development of the guidance for the assessment itself about prescription. A number of voices have been arguing for a standard approach to assessment. Others, led by the Local Government Association, have argued for a light touch based on the fact that local authorities – and more specifically places – all have unique characteristics and narratives and should not be shoe-horned into some sort of standard template. Approaches to developing an economic assessment ought to use comparable statistical bases, but it is important that local authorities be allowed the discretion to prepare the assessments in a way that reflects their understanding and allows them to express it freely rather than requiring them to follow a prescriptive format. These economic assessments also have to find a place within the framework of plans and assessments that exist already in the context of local government – ranging from the regional evidence underpinning Spatial Strategies to the local analysis in development frameworks (LDFs).

The process of considering where the assessment fits in will inevitably cause some tension and debate, but that is a good thing if it challenges established approaches that put land use at the heart of economic thinking. The new proposals for Planning Policy Statement (PPS) 4 point to a positive and more integrated way forward in this context.² Matthew Taylor’s recent review of rural economies and housing has raised the level of debate around the need to consider things on a wider basis than the current housing/planning-led dialogue about what makes a settlement sustainable.³ Interestingly it is proposed that the economic assessment’s primary audience should be the Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) – this provides real opportunities to avoid it becoming the technical preserve of a few statisticians within councils.

So at the heart of the assessment is the need to bring out the distinctive nature of places and to demonstrate (notwithstanding some geographically flawed administrative boundaries) the basis on which local authorities use their discretion to work collectively or independently to ‘do’ economic development.

In rising to this challenge it is important to consider not just quantitative but also qualitative evidence that is based on tradition and informal activities. One key issue to surface in writing the narrative of place is ‘embeddedness’, a well-established concept based on describing how patterns and traditions of human interaction in places condition their development. Social and group norms often lead to economic behaviours that appear counter-intuitive but which are conditioned by the history and traditions of a place. For example, Mablethorpe – threatened by rapid inundation from the sea according to the Environment Agency – has a far more vibrant housing market than anyone would imagine. This is based on retirees who have ‘always holidayed there’ selling their homes in the Midlands and circumventing the normal constraints in the market by coming in as cash buyers.

With regard to the technical operation of the assessment, the Local Government Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) and the Planning Advisory Service (PAS) have commissioned some sector-led guidance. This has been developed by Globe Regeneration and Rocket Science, working with 17 local authorities, and it can be viewed on-line. The sparser and in many senses companion guidance from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), developed in parallel and with many a useful conversation between the two groups in the process, is also available.⁴

There are two key components that are relevant in terms of the sectoral guidance: a list of sources of data, and a cycle that describes how the assessment might be undertaken to squeeze the maximum insights and dynamism out of it. The planning cycle for the assessment is shown in Figure 10-1.

**INSERT Figure 10-1 **

This simple cycle is underpinned by ten key questions that need to be asked to ensure the assessment works effectively in terms of the collection of data. The questions are set out in Figure 10-2.

**INSERT Figure 10-2 **

Other challenges in undertaking the assessment involve building a consensus among partners about its content, and thinking through carefully how it will be used to plan and monitor the economic interventions in an area.

The key categories of data and their sources are set out in Figure 10-3 and Tables 10-1 and 10-2.

**INSERT Figure 10-3**

**INSERT Tables 10-1 and 10-2 **

Linkages and flows

Economic forces do not follow administrative boundaries. This dataset is really important in helping you to determine the economic geography of your area and to map how it relates to the areas surrounding it. The most robust data for this area of analysis is based on the Census and is therefore somewhat out of date. However, using Census data in conjunction with Travel to Work Area data and Housing Market Area Assessments is a good starting point for the process of mapping out where your residents live, work and play and how this affects the overall functioning of the sub-economies in your area. It is important to note that there are no formally agreed areas when using this approach.

Demography

This is particularly important for understanding the economic potential of your area. It should not be seen just as an indicator around the age profile of the workforce (and therefore the productive potential of your area). In addition, particularly in those areas with a high proportion of more elderly populations, the potential for the development of economic activities and approaches that maximise the volunteering, spending potential and adult social care opportunities should also be examined. This should also help to examine the role of the authority in supporting the economy as an employer.

Skills

This will set out, more clearly than any other element of the assessment, the supply-side strength of your economy. It is also very important for scoping out the speed with which your economy might make the transition out of recession. It will also put into clear perspective the real challenges facing your area in terms of responding to the worklessness agenda. The national Regeneration Framework5 and the Houghton Review6 have set out the importance of local authorities undertaking a worklessness assessment.

An important aspect of the development of your economic assessment is that it should provide all the key elements of analysis to ensure this can be effectively achieved. It should be integral to the assessment rather than a stand-alone exercise. According to the prevalence of worklessness issues in your area, the assessment itself should identify key areas of need to inform the Work and Skills Plan – a key outcome requirement from the worklessness assessment. Taking this a step further, this plan could also inform a ‘commissioning blueprint’ for your authority which you could use to ensure that skills and employment commissioning within the authority and with partners at local and regional level reflects local needs.

Economic inclusion

This category of information will again play an important role in helping to sketch out the worklessness issues facing your economy. It will also identify key issues and opportunities around how the social and economic cohesion of your area impacts on its sustainability and economic viability.

Employment

This will further build the profile of the supply side of your economy, informing the view of demand and indicate how your economy compares with the national picture in terms of its relative strengths and weaknesses as an employment environment. It is important in this area of analysis to draw out the sectoral nature of your employment base to get a sense of how diverse (and therefore relatively vulnerable or robust) your economy is. It is also important to look at employment structures and issues alongside the flows and linkages section.

It is useful in considering the sustainability of your economy in this context to consider how self-contained it is. How high is the proportion of those who live and work in the area compared with those who live in it and work elsewhere, or vice versa?

Enterprise and business

With enterprise we enter the demand side of the economy. It is important in developing a profile of enterprise in your area to take account of the fact that self-employment and businesses not VAT-registered are important alongside the more standard and easy to access data around VAT-registered businesses. Sectoral analysis is also important, as is a concentration on the distribution of knowledge-intensive businesses that many economists feel underpin the dynamism of local economies. Rather than just concentrating on data around companies, it is also very useful to consider the inferences that can be drawn from business premises and Valuation Office area data as a means of developing further information on the dynamics of the enterprise agenda in your area. This includes the percentage of self-employed in the workforce.

Housing, planning and connectivity

This is a crucial area of analysis. The data sources we have identified are a good starting point for considering how the requirements for the development of the economic development components of Local Development Frameworks in terms of Planning Policy Statement 4 (PPS4) can be brought together with the economic indicators that describe another key element of the supply side of economies. Bringing together an analysis of (a) the location and densities of non domestic properties (b) the relationship of the skills base which sits alongside, and (c) a consideration of its relative accessibility or remoteness is really important in scoping out its economic strengths and weaknesses.

There are a significant number of sources of data available. Many of them, such as the Valuation Office area database, are very current and up to date. Not enough use is made within economic analyses of this range of data, considering that it provides real insights that should not be missed. Housing completions, trajectories and targets are also very important in assessing the economic vibrancy and sustainability of key places within your area, particularly in terms of the relationship between housing and jobs. An analysis of these issues should form a key part of your local economic assessment.

Environment

There has been considerable debate about whether the issues in this category should be a cross-cutting or discrete theme within the local economic assessment. Ultimately it is up to you to decide how best to introduce these to draw out the most compelling and authentic narrative of your area. You should definitely be able to show that your assessment has covered the evidence sources set out in Table 10-2, as a minimum.

Spatial definitions

The rural and urban definitions set out effectively how rural or urban each component part of your area is. They provide real insights into the relationships between key service centres and their hinterlands. When used to underpin the analysis on linkages and flows, these provide a powerful means of understanding the interdependency of different smaller and larger settlements within and outside of your administrative boundaries. They help flesh out the challenges of achieving the same level of service delivery across rural and urban areas, and they provide an excellent context for the development of rural proofing approaches.

Productivity

This continues to sit at the heart of regional policy in terms of the RDA Tasking Framework. It is important to scope out the contribution your area makes to the productive capacity of the region. It is useful to bear in mind that the principal indicator of productivity, gross value-added (GVA), only really works at county levels of geography and above. There are now datasets which enable GVA to be measured at more local levels; however there are real challenges in being able to attribute productive capacity to specific work sites and plants. This is because productivity is measured at the workplace but takes no account of the home locations of the individuals who work in those plants.

There are also reporting distinctions between head and sub-office locations of companies and the actual places where the companies produce the goods concerned. This further affects the story arising from the evidence, particularly below the NUTS3 picture.7 In addition to mapping the productive capacity of your area by taking these issues into account, it is important to think about how the individual components of productivity, its five drivers, manifest themselves in your area. There is an ongoing debate about how best to manage each element, so no prescriptive approaches are suggested here. I have instead just raised the importance of seeking to measure these indicators and listed them Table 10-1.

Local government national performance indicators

In addition to the key areas of analysis set out above, a number of local authorities will have committed themselves to economic development, environmental and inclusion targets as part of the development of their assessment. It is clearly important to cross-reference these targets and the rationale for choosing them with the development of the economic assessment. It is also important to look at these in terms of how the assessment will be judged as part of the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) process. The economic assessment itself is unlikely to be checked and verified by a government agency; however the process by which the LEA is used to inform how your authority responds appropriately to the area will be judged through the CAA. Therefore making these distinct links will be very important.

Why are coasts special?

Returning to the theme of coasts, it is clear that they have a unique narrative that needs to be drawn out by the assessment. In a number of local authorities they are different from their surrounding hinterlands. They also do not always fit straightforwardly into the regional mindset for economic interventions. Skegness, for example, has more in common with Hunstanton and Bridlington – regionally removed to the south and north respectively – than it does with Mansfield or Corby or Glossop in its own region. We have to be careful in making simple statements like this, however, as with seasonal patterns of tourism it is possible to buy the Nottingham Evening Post and Leicester Mercury in the town, demonstrating deep seasonal links with other settlements in the East Midlands.

Nevertheless it is possible to begin thinking about patterns of how places work using some of the approaches relevant to both coasts and the economic assessment process. I shall seek to demonstrate this here with reference to the work I did recently on coasts and rural deprivation. This work was prepared for evidence I gave to an All Party Parliamentary Inquiry into rural coastal deprivation.8

The work was based on looking at the East of England coastline, which is very significant in size and scale. It comprises:

• 1.6 million people and a GVA of £24 billion (greater than Northern Ireland);
• significant ports from Haven Gateway southwards, influenced in terms of transport, migration and employment by Greater London;
• an internationally significant coast subject, in a number of areas, to significant coastal erosion and sea-flood risk challenging the viability of a number of settlements along with significant areas of grade 1 agricultural land;
• an underperforming economy on most measures of economic vitality when compared to the East of England as a whole;
• particular challenges around deprivation and worklessness in Yarmouth, Lowestoft and Tendring.

In thinking about how deprivation manifests itself in rural settlements on this coastline, and what drives it, I formed the following views.

• Everywhere is different, and it is difficult – perhaps even dangerous – to have a simple view of what a rural coastal area is. However, there is a way of homing in on the issues which is straightforward but which embraces some of the complexity.
• There are four stages of evidence to consider: (a) the depth to which places are urban or rural using the rural–urban definitions; (b) how places link to each other by looking at the flows of people, goods and services between them; (c) how environmental/climate change impacts upon them; and (d) how traditional patterns of economic activity, particularly tourism, have affected them.

This led me to an approach based on considering the distribution of disadvantage and the factors that condition it in terms of rural settlements, with respect to the space where they sit, how things move around within that space, how the environment is changing the context of that space, and how traditions and ways of doing business have and continue to condition the nature of that space.

The space where a place sits

It is now a straightforward process to determine the gradations of rurality in any given place using the rural–urban definitions developed by Professor John Shepherd for the 2004 Rural Strategy.9 This helps us to determine how sparsely populated places are, and to think about how their connectedness might impact both on their economic potential and the deprivation they experience.

In a recent study, Productivity, Peripherality and Place, John Bibby at the University of Sheffield argues that the vast majority of the variation of productivity in any place is determined by ‘economic mass’.10 In simple terms this means how densely populated and built up it is. This raises a really interesting connection between economic mass and connectedness which suggests that economic potential – or lack of it and consequent levels of deprivation – are strongly affected in rural coastal settlements by their density of population and their level of connectedness to other major settlements.

How things move around within the space

Looking in more detail at how things move around in terms of connectivity and patterns of commuting, based on linkages between settlements and flows of people, goods and services, it is possible to suggest that those places with poor connections and poor economic mass may well suffer deprivation driven principally by their location. This can be characterised by looking at the linkages and flows of rural places and their consequences on the basis of Figure 10-4.

**INSERT Figure 10-4 NEAR HERE**

The relationship between connectedness and economic mass is further affected by environmental and custom-and-practice issues unique to each place. In considering these issues in relation to rural coastal settlements, following the same ‘issues and consequences’ approach modelled above, I developed inferences by looking at the policy and data issues around each of these themes (see Figures 10-5 and 10-6).

**INSERT Figures 10-5 and 10-6 NEAR HERE**

The schematic in Figure 10-6 demonstrates how the post-Victorian evolution of coastal settlements has conditioned their role and function and has an impact on the issues underpinning their deprivation.

Looking at these four issues in combination, we are able to draw out the interrelations between connectedness and economic mass as a means of categorising rural coastal places in terms of their deprivation

To summarise: Bringing together the spatial context of rural coastal settlements and considering their wider context around linkages and flows, environment and customs/traditions enables us to make inferences about the factors underpinning deprivation in them, categorise them in groups, and then begin to think through the issues linked to how we might intervene in them.

In big-picture terms, the outcome in relation to this particular area of analysis is that policy interventions need to be based on a two-fold approach.

• For connected or larger rural settlements the solution lies in traditional approaches to tackling deprivation and focusing on the key settlements with which they interact.
• For less connected smaller settlements, focused policy interventions taking account of the market failure which sits at their heart arising from their low economic mass requires more innovative and individual settlement by settlement thinking.

In Figure 10-7 I have set out my thinking on how the four categories of settlement in terms of the relationship between economic mass and connectedness experience deprivation – referenced by real places. Figure 10-8 shows how deprivation in each of the four categories of rural coastal settlement manifests itself.

The duty to undertake an economic assessment provides local authorities with the opportunity to develop a unique narrative about how their coast works. This has the potential to provide a new impetus to joined-up thinking by the council and its partners, and could re-energise commitments to coastal regeneration from the national tier downwards. There are many ways of looking at coasts and I have provided just one example in this part of the Handbook. What is important is that local authorities seize the opportunity to renew and refocus their discretion and engage others in the coastal regeneration agenda, rather than letting their economic assessment sit on the shelf and gather dust.

The Margate of Ireland – Tramore by the Sea

From its metamorphosis from a pleasant retreat for those who assembled there for the benefit of the salt water in the mid-eighteenth century to its present incarnation as the leading holiday resort in the southeast of Ireland, Tramore has consistently re-invented itself to adapt to changing holiday patterns. Once the resort of the ‘dournawns’, the hob-nailed visitors from Kilkenny who stayed in local farmhouses and fishermen’s cottages, it has experienced innumerable reincarnations in its efforts to continue to exploit its beautiful beach and surroundings. The first amenities were provided in the eighteenth century by local landowners such as Lord Doneraile, who laid out private access for the gentry to its secluded coves, while resident entrepreneurs such as Bartholomew Rivers built hotels and houses for letting, assembly rooms and bathing lodges. Rivers also founded local industries, initiated horse races on the beach, obtained a charter for the holding of fairs and developed a spa outside the town in the 1780s. The most important event in the expansion of Tramore as a holiday resort was the opening of the railway line to Waterford in 1853 and a racecourse and golf links were established in the 1880s, by which time the town boasted seven hotels. A pier, sea wall and promenade were completed in 1915, and a cinema which also provided a stage for concerts and boxing tournaments was built in 1918. Thus was set the scene for almost a century of ups and downs as Tramore experienced the vicissitudes of the Irish seaside resort in the modern age. This paper will look at the reasons for its failures and successes during the twentieth century in the context of the history of Irish tourism.

Irene Furlong, Ireland