Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 67)
WEDNESDAY 24 NOVEMBER 1999
MR PAUL
FORBES, MR
MICK BURROWS,
MR RICHARD
COHEN, MR
ERIC OSEI,
AND MR
PETER COPPIN.
Chairman
60. So for example, that in recent boundary changes
in Objective 2, where the most attractive industrial location
from everybody's point of view just falls on the wrong side of
the boundary it might actually be a disastrous decision to move
that out because the grants disappear and the people living within
that area can go a very short distance, but it can be moved out
through boundary changes?
(Mr Cohen) To briefly log that,
I think it is an issue about balancing needs and opportunities.
We as local authorities try to do that. Bristol is subject to
bidding for ESF Objective II at the moment. We are bidding for
Objective II for areas of deprivation close to the centre and
we would look for opportunities to make sure that people in those
areas would benefit from the opportunities in the centre using
Objective II and other funding programmes. All it is is another
issue of flexibility.
Chairman: Thank you. Mr Brady?
Mr Brady
61. I was interested in picking up on this point
on cultural attitudes to travel to work and also on how far they
are shared in the other areas represented. I was interested in
the comment that two or three miles can seem too much. Clearly
in terms of dealing with that attitudinal problem simply providing
a bus service may not go any way to solving the problem. What
can be done to counter the attitude and what are the other experiences
on the table?
(Mr Burrows) Some of the things
we are doing to counter that attitude is actually through intermediate
labour markets. There is one vehicle to actually take people away
from the community into a temporary position of employment, it
then enables them to step on. Because it is not just a transport
issue, it is the motivational aspect and confidence. Watching
what happens to people when they are locked in their society,
they have no money to go anywhere, they have no job, their position
on the street is diminished. It is very different in a rural village
coalfield area to the inner city. I call it the Smart thing. In
a city or a city area where you have access to things there is
a lot more fluidity around. When you are without in a rural area,
in a pocket of isolation, you become very isolated and it is about
giving people confidence to take the next step. That is just my
personal view of it.
(Mr Forbes) I have two things to
say on that. One is, I would mentioned again this afternoon the
1,086 lone parents that I referred to earlier. In the case of
the Tesco partnership, Tesco are providing a bus to collect people
in the area and take them to a learning centre for skills training
and then to some of the stores for work placements and work experience.
The other thing we have done in looking at that problem of where
people are, is we have started to map the bus routes to see exactly
where people can in reality get to, because although they may
be going in and doing everything they can to find work, if they
cannot access the transport then they have no hope of progressing.
So we see that as quite productive because the different companies
that deal with the transport issues are receptive at looking at
re-routing.
Ms Atherton
62. Would you like to see far more encouragement
from national government for looking in detail at a local authority
level at the routes that are used by buses and trains, the integration?
We were fascinated at Committee to learn that actually nobody
sits down and maps transport in some authorities. It just happens
through the local companies in an ad hoc manner. Do you feel this
sense of frustration or do you have responsibility yourself and
feel that you are having enough input? I was astonished to learn
that the local authority in Cornwall had no involvement whatsoever
in what routes went where.
(Mr Cohen) We take our transport
planning seriously. I could send you a copy of the new transport
plan which also focuses on issues around employment because travel-to-work
is important to us as well. So that is something we certainly
do.
63. But it is not universally done?
(Mr Cohen) I could not speak for
other local authorities on how they work.
(Mr Coppin) We are exploring bus
quality partnerships with bus companies and have contributed to
a number of rail improvement feasibility studies. We are obviously
clear where the routes are.
Mr Brady
64. Coming back to the point I was pursuing earlier,
do people for instance in Hackney have the same reticence about
travel into the West End to work as you might get in a Nottinghamshire
pit village? Is it a similar situation?
(Mr Osei) Certainly among the young,
very much so and although, as I said, we are less than 15 minutes
from the City and West End, in some parts of the Borough, yet
a lot of the young people lack confidence to go outside their
area. To deal with this problem, we have been running confidence
building schemes, for example, taking a group of unemployed people
on the scheme to the City of London to see how things are, to
see a different perspective to a deprived inner city area. I had
a provider tell me of an instance where this young person was
taken to a company in the City of London and this young person
actually fainted because the whole scenario was very intimidating
for her. So confidence is a major issue for us and we are developing
a lot of schemes which will raise the aspirations and the confidence
of the young people.
(Mr Cohen) I would agree that motivation
is an issue as well. When someone says that transport is a problem,
it can be indicative of their uncertainty about travelling that
distance or there are serious practicalities. As I said, in Bristol
we have jobs on the north fringe of the city, we have unemployment
in the south, in the inner city and never the twain shall meet
at an affordable rate. It can take a long time to travel that
distance as well. We are looking to introduce rapid transport
systems but they will not be the be all and end all either. So
there is a question of the distance people are prepared to travel
for the wages that they might earn at the end of that journey.
65. That is the end result in the context of
whether there is a jobs gap in particular areas, but ultimately
you get people into jobs but they go and live in the other areas
where the jobs are?
(Mr Cohen) Yes, if the job pays
well enough. Yes, that will happen. Not only because it is close
to work but because they will be getting out of the area that
they were living in.
Mr Brady: Post-code discrimination from the
point of view of the employee.
Chairman
66. There are some very interesting questions
which I have got at the end—my other colleagues do not have
any more questions now—and it is partly because I learned
a great deal in my economic development through the New Town movement
in Washington thirty years ago. Leeds has a relatively good record
we agreed in maintaining existing and attracting new manufacturing
jobs. It is claimed that your site development is an important
contributory factor so how important is property led economic
development to improving the labour market conditions faced by
people in deprived areas?
(Mr Forbes) I think that Leeds
has managed that extremely well over the last 10 to 15 years and
the projections of what we anticipate coming into the city are
also there and well documented. There is a very close working
relationship in Leeds and has been for many years between the
local authority and the private sector. The Planning Department
and our own Economic Development Department in the Council have
also played a very prominent role. One of the things that happens
in Leeds is that the Planning Department, Economic Development
and Education Training always work very closely together, so when
new business comes into Leeds—and the recent example I have
given you is the big company, Price Costco, which came to Leeds
and offered 160, 170 jobs in the first instance. Their normal
recruitment was that they would have put a large advertisement
in the paper and taken a hotel and done it over two or three days.
One year advance, because we were aware of that through the Planing
and Economic Development Departments, I met with the Price Costco
people down in Watford with their directorate and put an alternative
to them and that was to train local people for the jobs at Costco,
the kind of people that are now progressing through the New Deal.
Whilst they wanted to recruit some senior managers through the
open market, they agreed with that approach and when that was
put to them they said: "What will be the benefits?"
and I said: "You will have a low rate of turnover. If you
take local people they will stay with you, and not only will they
stay with you but their sons and daughters will come and get part
time jobs as well and you will create a network". One year
on I had a meeting with them and they said to me that of all their
stores it had the lowest turnover. So it is important that as
those new jobs do come in that we are mindful of the information
that we hold as a local authority and it is those people who are
not part of the network that I have described, we make sure are
connected into it because otherwise the jobs are filled by commuting.
(Mr Burrows) I think it is a mixture
of the whole lot coming together which hopefully new commitment
to regeneration, etcetera and RDAs will be supporting and it is
about the matching of all the introductory regional planing guidance,
etcetera. I know the LGAs have been doing some thinking on this.
It is also, I think, not just about new businesses coming in;
the biggest growth area for jobs is from existing businesses.
67. Anyone like to add anything?
(Mr Cohen) I think it is important
there should be an encouragement, possibly from Central Government,
that inward investment functions operating in local areas should
pay attention to skills and employment issues, not just the issue
of land and whatever grants are available. We are now getting
calls from potential inward investors and growth companies in
the area, asking not just about what premises are available, what
this particular site is like, but what is the skills base like
and we are finding that repeatedly. As with Mr Forbes, we
get into negotiations with companies—IKEA was a recent example
-to look at their local recruitment practices and to see whether
or not we can make sure they focus better on areas that we are
interested in and they can make a more significant impact on the
local economy and avoid the commuting issue.
Chairman: Well, gentlemen, thank you very much indeed.
There is a lot of expertise around the table, your side of the
table. We have a bit on our side of the table too; not so much.
Thank you for putting it at our disposal. I suspect we would have
liked to have kept you longer, but it has all been very interesting
and fascinating. Let us keep up the dialogue. Thank you.
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