The Local View

Thanet

In many ways the decline and rise of the Thanet towns is typical of the problems and opportunities experienced by many coastal communities. Nevertheless it is worth describing the story because it provides the clues that tell us how the problems can be tackled better in the future. In parallel to this story is a brief commentary on the effectiveness of the public service environment and how in the past this may have hindered delivery and hastened the economic decline of our area.

I joined the council as Chief Executive in 2002 and found an authority striving to deliver significant economic and regenerative change against a background of tight resources, inadequate partnerships, weak strategic positioning for investment, and poor corporate management. Undoubtedly the political will was present to effect change but the managerial capacity and quality of performance was poor. In due course this was to lead to a weak Corporate Performance Assessment rating in 2004. In summary, the council was not delivering for its community on its services, nor was it gaining the key support from key partners such as Kent County Council and the then recently formed regional development agency, SEEDA. There was also no area-based strategy to tackle the worst area within the district: the wards of Margate and Cliftonville. Here, as then, the wards stand at the top of the rankings of the indices of multiple deprivation in the South East region.

However, to return to the longer term economic history of the area. The Thanet area was originally an island cut off from the mainland of Kent by a marshy corridor through which the Wantsum and Stour Rivers passed. The channel was navigable and in Roman times was guarded by substantial forts at Richborough and Reculver. Access to Thanet was via a causeway and ferry. The land round the river route gradually became drained and eventually the Isle of Thanet became part of the mainland. It is helpful to repeat this history if for no other reason than to explain the island culture that still strongly exists in the local community.

Thanet thrived in the eighteenth century, particularly Ramsgate (a Napoleonic Wars port), Broadstairs (a delightful fishing village) and Margate (one of the first and finest seaside resorts). In Margate the fashion of ‘taking sea waters’ to benefit health flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Ramsgate became a Royal Harbour in 1821.

The holiday industry continued to grow to its peak in the 1930s but was still strong in the 1950s after the Second World War. The greater part of the local economy revolved around tourism with little need to diversify. Even in the 1960s the tourism industry for ‘bucket and spade’ holidays remained buoyant, but the storm clouds were gathering.

It all ended so quickly. Suddenly Freddie Laker’s Skytrain arrived and UK holidaymakers could experience the dubious delights of holidays in the sun. The tourism began to shrink and by 1980 the area was in terminal decline. Once fashionable hotels closed their doors to reopen as cheap rented accommodation, and by the early 1980s the area had been dubbed Costa del Dole.

At the same time the closure in the 1980s of the Kent coalfields, which employed many Ramsgate miners, and changes to agriculture and fishing meant suddenly a crisis had developed. By the early 1990s nearly one person in five was out of work across Thanet and in some wards unemployment was around 60 per cent. The lack of a diverse economy was a key factor in the inability of the area to absorb the changes.

Throughout the period of rapid economic decline there was little national focus on the problems experienced by this type of coastal area. Policy focus in the 1980s was very much on the big cities and the smaller coastal districts were largely left to fend for themselves.

The winds of economic change came in the end from Europe with the award of European regional assistance funding to the whole Thanet area in 1993, coinciding with the introduction of the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) programme.

The Regional Assistance programme in particular forced a more strategic approach to regeneration, although the generally low intervention rates requiring the raising of considerable matched funding could prove difficult to implement. The council embarked on a wide range of EU-funded initiatives, some aimed at stimulating the tourism industry, some at creating employment opportunities, some at celebrating the area’s heritage. The European programme finally ended in 2008 after 15 years of benefit.

One stunning early success at this time was the building of the first university centre in Thanet by Canterbury Christ Church University, funded through the EU/SRB programme and the HEFC. The Broadstairs campus seven years on is home to over 1000 students, mostly local, who could never have aspired to a higher education previously. Alongside the council built Kent’s first innovation centre.

At this point I arrived to work for the council, coming from a background of urban renewal in London and Bristol with housing as my career pathway. My early analysis was that a number of key changes needed to happen before the council could take its regenerative work to the next level.

• First, the emphasis needed to shift to achieving practical actual delivery of jobs on employment land. This could build on the innovative idea of the East Kent Spatial Development company that was a key part of Thanet’s 2000–2008 European programme.
• Second, an area-based approach was needed for the worst wards, in particular Margate Central and Cliftonville West.
• Third, partnerships and funding from Kent County Council and SEEDA needed to be developed more strongly and the strategic context within which those organisations operated needed to highlight Thanet. The support of the Government Office was also a key success factor.
• Fourth, the council needed to improve as an organisation, particularly in areas of basic services such as waste and street cleaning, and front-line customer services. This was as crucial to economic recovery as any regeneration project because it supported residents’ key concerns about the area. Good public services sit well with high-impact regeneration projects.

The remainder of this contribution to the Handbook develops these themes and examines how a chief executive can add value to their development.

I will start with the last point, the creating of capacity, managerial and financial, to enable the council to become an effective deliverer of services and become a change agent for economic regeneration. In 2002 the council was at rock bottom in terms of its effectiveness. Performance management was non-existent, financial management was abysmal, and the council lacked clear direction through the absence of well-set corporate plans and strategies. These problems were not due to lack of political direction, which was strong, but it was clear that translation of policy into delivery was weak and needed to change rapidly.

The Leader and I agreed that an external review was required urgently and we commissioned the IDeA to undertake a peer review. The review was a springboard to extensive corporate restructuring with the majority of the senior managers departing in 2003. The first round of CPA in 2004 came too early for the council. We were rated as weak but in all honesty we were lucky to even gain that result.

The CPA result was undoubtedly a strong stimulant to the council to improve, and by 2007/8 we were one of the fastest improving councils. Across the board services have improved – benefits processing moved from 49 to 18 days, planning processing from bottom to top quartile, street cleanliness to top quartile, as just a few examples.

At the same time we were entirely reconstructing the customer focus with the opening of a new one-stop call centre in 2005 and Thanet Gateway Plus – Kent’s first genuine one-stop shop – in 2008. Standards of quality had improved so dramatically that the council obtained a Charter Mark for its benefits and customer services provision in 2008. Alongside the front-facing improvements there has been a radical overhaul of IT infrastructure, providing the necessary resilience to deliver consistent levels of service.

Our programme of change also included taking the unusual step of returning services in-house for waste and street cleaning owing to the poor performance of the private contractor. Widespread changes to these services have been introduced, saving millions of pounds and having the added bonus of taking recycling rates from 3 per cent in 2002 to 27 per cent today.

I now turn to the impact of partnerships. In Thanet, four central relationships have grown with partners over the past decade. Each has made a different contribution to economic change.

I start with Kent County Council (KCC). As the UK’s largest local authority it was always essential to gain and develop KCC’s support for regeneration in Thanet. The council could bring considerable resources, skills and capacity to the table. In the 1990s, KCC had already made two highly crucial transport investment decisions benefiting the area. They constructed the Thanet Way – a dualled road extending the M2 to Thanet and thereby dramatically cutting travel times to London – and then constructed a new harbour approach road at Ramsgate. By the later 1990s under the leadership of the late Sandy Bruce-Lockhart a new approach was emerging from KCC.

The first round of pilot Public Service Agreements in 2002/3 set out convergence targets for key areas of public sector performance in Thanet, such as looked-after children, and other areas of welfare policy. Although targets were missed they provided a platform for the development of more sophisticated objectives in subsequent PSA and LAA rounds. More crucially they signalled the beginnings of an area-based approach within the county.

KCC also were embarking on the plans to build a new contemporary arts gallery on the seafront in Margate. The Turner Contemporary, as it will be known when it opens in 2011, will be a major new regional arts facility built to celebrate J. M. W. Turner who lived and worked in Margate in the eighteenth century. The first iteration of the gallery ended in considerable difficulties as the original cost of building a sea-based structure escalated from £20 million to £48 million. In 2006, new plans were developed and the construction of the gallery is now under way at considerably lower cost, designed by Stirling Prize winner David Chipperfield. The Turner Contemporary has undoubtedly acted as a springboard for a much more comprehensive approach to the regeneration of Margate. In this KCC have been major players in driving forward seafront development that will be complementary to the Turner.

Away from Margate, KCC and TDC formed a joint venture company to develop around 100 acres of employment land. The two councils have also worked together to maximise the educational benefits from the building of a new city academy – the Marlowe Academy – by the construction of a new athletics track and an innovative business centre adjoining the school where pupils can learn business skills in a real environment.

Finally, the two councils are currently co-operating on the delivery of a new employment programme under the Working Neighbourhoods Fund and have recently gained £750,000 to implement the Future Jobs Fund. Plans are also advanced to establish a multi-agency delivery team for Margate and new joint commissioning arrangements for Thanet as part of Kent’s Total Place submission.

Other partnership arrangements that have been crucial are those with SEEDA, the partners in the East Kent Partnership, and our Primary Care Trust – Eastern and Coastal PCT.

SEEDA has been instrumental in leading the Margate renewal work. Its chief executive, Pam Alexander, has chaired the Margate Renewal Board since its creation in 2005 and grant interventions by SEEDA for both the Turner project and the development of employment land have been crucial.

Other East Kent partners have assisted in providing central mass to wider East Kent regeneration, a key success being the lobby to persuade the government and the rail industry to extend High Speed I – the UK’s first fast rail service from Ashford to Ramsgate and Dover.

Eastern and Coastal PCT, with the council, is driving forward a new health improvement programme for Thanet called Triple Aim – an idea from America that seeks to tackle the causes of poor health rather than treat their symptoms. With a 17-year difference in life expectancy between Cliftonville and some west Kent wards, we can see why this is welcomed.

The key messages that emerge from these strands are that gaining personal commitment from decision-makers is crucial, and their commitment is greatly aided if it is then within a strategic context that their organisation can support. For KCC it has been the Vision for Kent, for SEEDA the Regional Economic Strategy, for the PCT the World Class Commissioning framework.

The role of the chief executive working with the political leadership can be crucial to securing these commitments, as often I have found good relations can lead to good investment on shared areas of interest.

As we look to the future, my council has just gained a good review with promising prospects for its regeneration activity from the Audit Commission. This would have been an inconceivable outcome a few years ago and reflects the strong base from which we now operate.

Although the current recession has hit our area hard with an almost doubling of unemployment in 18 months, our emerging LDF core strategy maps out a strong future of growth for our area which we are confident we will deliver and which will continue to drive our area towards regional averages of employment and income levels.

The Coastal MPs View

In developing the book we invited coastal MPs to offer their views on coastal regeneration. One MP answered all the questions with the same one word answer. What was that word?*  Below is a more comprehensive response from East Devon.

Hugo Swire MP for East Devon MP.

What coastal resort issues are raised by your constituents?

• Planning and development
• Coastal erosion and coastal flooding
• Furnished Holiday Lets budget change rules
• Fire Regulations in B and Bs
• Water charges (as a result of investment in clean bathing water and beaches)
• Poor infrastructure (rail links to London)
• Parking of mobile home provision
• Issues relating to Marine Bill: coastal access, marine protection

What are your priorities for coastal resort regeneration in your area?

• Maintaining and protecting the landscape, coastline and cultural heritage.
• Improving quality and competitiveness for East Devon’s tourism industry.
• Address coastal erosion and climate change issues.
• Address employment, housing and deprivation problems.

What do you consider to be the barriers to coastal regeneration in your area?

• Physical distance from main markets
• Pockets of deprivation, particularly in Exmouth (the town has two of the most deprived wards in Devon—Littleham and Town. They are in the upper quartile of social deprivation in the country, with 46.9 % of households on an annual income of less than £20,000.)
• Outflow of young adults
• Low average earnings
• Underemployment – due to seasonality
• Traditional image may deter investment
• Large numbers of pensioners
• Cheaper overseas travel and introduction of holiday packages

• What are required to reduce the barriers to coastal regeneration in your area?

• Improvement of transport infrastructure within the constituency and to and from it – both rail and road routes for commuters and tourists.
• Address the issue of seasonal employment – ensuring the area is seen as a year round destination.
• Improve the quality of the tourism offer and to make the industry more productive and more sustainable.
• Improve housing and housing conditions.
• Enhance employment prospects, education and skills.
• Address social exclusion and enhance opportunities for the disadvantaged.
• Enhance the quality of life and capacity of local people.
• Encourage local authorities to take a real interest in and ownership of the promotion of tourism for East Devon/Devon

Given a no/low growth future, how can we reduce deprivation in our resort areas?

• Channel any money (as opposed to more) that is allocated to coastal resorts in a more effective, co-ordinated way. Particularly prioritising and targeting areas that suffer the most deprivation.
• Increase opportunities for apprenticeships and other means of job employment for young people.
• Focus on environmental quality as this is a key driver for the economy.
• Focus on improving skills that will be valuable to the local area (eg. Tourism, fishing and agriculture) thus encouraging greater numbers of young people to stay.
• Promote and enhance the landscape, coastline and cultural heritage.
• Reduce the effect of seasonality with other attractions such as the conference industry.
• Clearer structure for marketing domestic tourism.
• Investment in training and keeping skills up to date to ensure continually high levels of service.