Regeneration policies and their impact on coastal areas

CLG Contribution on the SNR

The Government published its Review of the Sub-National Economic Development and Regeneration (SNR) in July 2007. This set out a framework that would enable central and local government and its partners, to work together more effectively to tackle future economic challenges.

The review stressed the need for local authorities to play a stronger role in economic development and regeneration. It argued that as different places face different economic challenges and opportunities, much economic development activity needs to be tailored locally or sub-regionally.

The ability of local authorities and partners to deliver sustainable economic growth and to respond to economic challenges in their area depends heavily on their ability to assemble a robust and well informed economic evidence base. The SNR proposed that a new duty be placed on county councils and unitary district councils to assess the economic conditions of their area. The proposed new duty is included within the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill, currently before Parliament.

The Government published draft statutory guidance on the new duty in August 2009 – http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/localgovernment/localeconomicassessments?view=Standard. This sets out the Government’s thinking on how local economic assessments should be carried out and the issues they need to address. This is complemented by more detailed guidance prepared by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) which was launched in October.

As the draft Government guidance explains, local economic assessments should equip local authorities and partners with a common understanding of local economic conditions. It should enable them to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of their local economy and the local constraints to economic growth and employment. Local authorities and partners already assemble a range of data and evidence to support their economic interventions. Local economic assessments should provide a mechanism for bringing this evidence together within a common evidence base that tells the story of a place.

Through their local economic assessments, coastal areas should specifically draw out the wider social, environmental and geographical factors, such as seasonality of attractions, connectivity and peripherality to other centres, that impact on their economic growth. They should also use their assessments to identify the economic linkages between their area and the wider economy – thereby establishing their functional economic area. Assessments also provide an opportunity for coastal areas to benchmark their economic performance against neighbouring coastal areas and regional averages and try and establish the reasons why their area has performed better or worse than other areas.

The SNR also stressed that sub-regions are in many respects the key spatial level around which economic growth is concentrated. It stated that increasing the extent to which economic development decision making is concentrated at sub-regional level is an important means of improving economic outcomes.

We have already seen the establishment of Multi Area Agreements (MAAs). These are voluntary agreements between groups of local authorities and partners to deliver economic development improvement targets.

The Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill further strengthens the ability of local authorities to work at a sub-regional level in the pursuit of economic development. The Bill enables the establishment of MAAs with duties, which brings MAAs onto the same statutory footing as LAAs. The Bill also enables the establishment of economic prosperity boards and combined authorities. These would provide a formal structure for sub-regional collaboration between relevant authorities on economic development and regeneration (and transport in the case of combined authorities). They would provide a stable mechanism for ling term, strategic decision making on economic issues across the whole functional economic sub-region.