Regeneration policies and their impact on coastal areas

CLG responses to questions raised in Chapter 4.

National regeneration policy needs to be examined in all its dimensions and at all levels. Who should we identify as the players? What are, and should be, the relationships between government departments, RDAs, local authorities and entities such as HLF and English Heritage?

The ‘players’ are those organisations that can contribute to three success measures – against which all regeneration should be judged in future. They are:

• improving economic performance and tackling worklessness, particularly in the most deprived areas;
  
• creating the right conditions for business growth which could include investment in infrastructure, land use, and a better public realm; and,
  
• creating places where people want to live and can work and businesses want to invest.

The relationships between the various organisations at different spatial levels should be predicated on desire to devolve responsibility to the right spatial level and as close to the communities as possible.

How do, and how should, relationships between the public, the private, the hybrid and the voluntary sector play out in regeneration programmes? How far should they be prescriptive, how far enabling, and what should the balance be under given sets of circumstances?

What’s important is not the issue of the relationships between various sectors (which inevitably will vary from area to area) but whether the success measures are achieved

That said, there is a vital role for better coordination of public sector work at the regional and local level, working in partnership with the private sector. And the chances of success are greatly enhanced where the public sector and its partners agree on and work together with the private sector and third sector towards a shared strategy, rather than in narrow remits or silos.

How do we make national regeneration policies agile, flexible and interactive at the local level? And what, for these purposes, is special about regeneration policy at the coast?

By following the Regeneration Framework!

At local level, LAAs led by local authorities, offer the key mechanism to deliver a targeted and strategic approach. MAAs, and the new regional strategy provide similar opportunities at sub-regional and regional level. These will complement the establishment of employer-led Employment and Skills Boards, usually at city-region level, bringing much greater powers for local partners to direct public funds to achieve local employment and skills priorities.

How can national policies be encouraged to take account of the difference and distinctiveness of coastal settlements and of each coastal settlement within a common framework, and how can we overcome the obstacles to recognising this distinctiveness, which still meets with resistance and even rejection at national and RDA level, as evidenced by the first response to the Coastal Towns report?

The Regeneration Framework allows for flexibility to adapt to local need and opportunity. A key plank of the Framework is that regeneration activity needs to be driven at the right spatial level – and as close to communities as is practicable, making the most of opportunities that already exist.

The proposed Local Economic Assessment duty would help ensure that all local authorities have a clear understanding of the conditions required for business to flourish in their area and for people to take advantage of economic opportunities.

What can we learn from the successes and failures of the past, perhaps especially the recent past, and how can we feed these understandings into current and future policy? And what can we learn, in positive and negative terms, from national regeneration policies (or the lack of them) in other countries?

Despite successes, targeted regeneration programmes in the past have been less successful in bringing about a significant reduction in the number of people without work in some places and deprivation remained intense in some areas.

The review of sub-national economic development and regeneration (SNR) identified failings in past regeneration activity and has proposals at the local, sub-regional, regional and national levels:

• strengthen the local authority role in economic development – including the proposed statutory economic assessment duty
  
• support effective collaboration by local authorities across functioning economic areas – for example by establishing MAAs
  
• sharpen the focus of central government – with regional Ministers; and clearer central Government objectives and responsibilities