Coastal issues and the Select Committee Inquiry into coastal towns

Impacts of four major coastal issues

• Tourism and business

Tourism is the raison d’être of resorts – it is their history, but is it their future? The dominant position of the low-wage tourism industry in most resorts maintains a lower standard of living for many coastal residents and undynamic economies that are unattractive to other business sectors.

There are many tourism quality initiatives under way and these will need to be maintained to increase the value of the tourism offer and raise the income of the sector. However, there are formidable barriers to tourism quality development, particularly the fragmented nature of the industry, with large national companies at one extreme, some SMEs, and a vast volume of individual and family businesses, making quality improvement initiatives costly.

A further barrier is the lack of high-quality, policy-oriented tourism research. National information is required on the size, economic value, employment levels and importance of the tourism industry in national coastal resorts. Such intelligence could inform policy and local actions.

Matching efforts to developing the existing resort sectors is the need to attract new business sectors that offer skilled and well-paid employment. Diversifying the local economy in order to create quality year-round employment and increase the vitality of the local economy remains a priority for most resorts.

• Affordable housing, HMOs and caravans

The demand for retirement and second homes in many resorts raises the price of property and reduces the availability of houses to buy for low-paid local people. This situation can force people into cheap rental accommodation which also provides flexible and affordable accommodation for seasonal employees and for the increasing number of people who are attracted to resorts out-of-season.

As with many coastal issues, this varies in intensity by location. Affordable housing is a major concern in many resorts in the South East and South West of England. HMOs are a major issue in Blackpool, while the Lincolnshire coast contains the largest number of holiday, rental and residential caravans in Europe

Purchasing a caravan home can provide an attractive capital gain for people wishing to retire to the coast who sell an inland property, and high-quality caravan parks are proving popular with new residential markets and for their employment creation. However, the sheer volume of caravans in some east coast areas, and the confusions about residential status, raise concerns about the number of ‘residents’ in an area, their health and service needs, and the additional demands they can make on public services providers.

There are a range of national initiatives on affordable housing that could assist resorts, but the financial and housing market situation is currently diluting activity. HMOs are a major concern in coastal deprivation, and the reduction or the upgrading of current cheap rental accommodation could dramatically change the levels of transience, the resulting costs on public services, and the quality of resort environments. In the case of caravans, there is a national need to understand their role in the housing market, and the recently announced Coastal Pathfinders funding should help clarify and inform on the role of coastal caravans and holiday homes in resort economies, and also the needs and characteristics of coastal caravan residents. Chapter 11 reviews caravan health issues.

Blackpool HMOs: Improve or sell up

To address housing market failure in Blackpool, the council has embarked on a selective licensing strategy, which demands that HMOs meet higher standards. ‘What we hope is that if we say to a landlord that your property needs £50,000 worth of work to make it fit for occupancy, then they will decide to sell it and move on so that we can then intervene,’ says Ian Hassall, director of land and property at urban regeneration company ReBlackpool.

Hassall says that more regulation can ease the problem and only radical intervention will bring the change needed. ‘We estimate that there are around 13,000 surplus beds in Blackpool’s hotel industry, which are all potential HMOs, so just tinkering around the edges is not going to work,’ he says. ‘We need to be bold and that will involve demolition, clearance and the creation of the family housing, gardens and community facilities necessary for a sustainable community.’

Former national regeneration agency English Partnerships has allocated the council £35 million to begin the process of tackling the problem, and ReBlackpool is developing plans to create housing pilots in the north and south of the town. ‘We will be creating neighbourhoods of the highest possible quality, with a balanced mix of tenure, and hope in that way to catalyse further development,’ Hassall says.

Hassall adds that these pilots will build on an ongoing flagship project developed by Lancaster City Council and English Partnerships to fundamentally improve the quality of the housing stock in Morecambe’s West End, which suffers similar problems to Blackpool in the form of high concentrations of HMOs, benefit dependency, high levels of transience and rising crime. One pilot, at Chatsworth Gardens, involves removing around 70 poor-quality and inappropriate properties and replacing them by constructing 172 residential units and 101 family homes. ‘We will aim for a similar impact,’ Hassall says. ‘We will do this by taking out inappropriate housing supply that is driving decline and replacing it with modern high-quality homes which will help to provide stability for the local community and encourage further investment.’

But Hassall acknowledges that, while radical housing market interventions are crucial, more will be required to solve Blackpool’s problems. ‘What we need is a year-round sustainable economy. That has to be the goal.’

• Higher numbers of sickness and disability benefit claimantsa

One irony about coastal resorts is that they began life as therapeutic venues for the upper and middle classes, but now contain above-average numbers of unhealthy people. In the poorer resort areas of the East, North East and parts of the North West of England, the availability of cheap retirement homes and caravans attracts retirees who often have health issues. Also, the availability of cheap rental accommodation is attractive to many benefit claimants, and these families and individuals can place an additional burden on health, social and educational services.

The inflow of summer visitors (lost medication, sunburn!) and hedonistic young binge drinkers (lost youth, lost night!) also can make extra demands on seasonally stretched coastal health and police services.