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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1023-iv House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE
Tuesday 17 October 2006 MR PETER KEGG MS SOPHIE LIVINGSTONE and MR PETER SHIMWELL MR BILL WELLS and MR JEREMY GROOMBRIDGE DR DAVID KING and MR PHIL ROTHWELL MR PETER MARSH Evidence heard in Public Questions 289 - 428
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Communities and Local Government Committee on Tuesday 17 October 2006 Members present Dr Phyllis Starkey, in the Chair Lyn Brown Mr Greg Hands Martin Horwood Anne Main Dr John Pugh ________________ Witness: Mr Peter Kegg, CIH member and CE of Bournemouth Churches Housing Association, Chartered Institute of Housing, gave evidence. Q289 Chair: Good morning and welcome to this Committee, Mr Kegg. I see, although I note that you are particularly involved in a housing association in Bournemouth, that you are going to be talking in general about housing issues and coastal towns, not simply from your own experience. Is that right? Mr Kegg: I will aim to cover both. Q290 Chair: We have a number of submissions about housing issues relating to coastal towns, but it would be very helpful to have your indication of what you think are the particular housing problems in coastal towns and what you believe to be the root causes of them. Mr Kegg: I think a significant issue in many coastal towns is affordability, particularly in the south-east, south-west, but generally the cause of that: low-wage economy, very attractive environment, buyers from other areas wanting to move in, say, from London being able to pay high prices; another general issue with coastal towns, I think, is the rehousing of people needing support and quite a number of issues around rough sleeping and related issues such as drugs and crime; and the last point I particularly wanted to raise was the issue of larger, older buildings that were built for a previous era for hotels or bed and breakfast which now are re-used for other purposes, particularly things like houses in multiple occupation, drug treatment centres, et cetera. Q291 Chair: Is there a bit of a contradiction between saying that, on the one hand, people coming into the area are driving up house prices and, on the other hand, citing the use of these larger housing for hostel accommodation or essentially people on benefits coming in? Presumably those sorts of people are actually looking at cheap housing. Is it that there are two different sets of housing or what? Mr Kegg: I think it is a complex situation. You can have very expensive housing - sea views, and river views are becoming increasingly popular - but there is also a stock of older housing which is quite difficult to use and people do not want to go to voluntarily, therefore it provides quite low-cost housing, but it does not exist in every area, so what that will do is tend to attract relatively poor people in from surrounding areas, or other areas, simply because it exists. Q292 Chair: Do you feel that the problems in coastal towns need to be addressed by targeted interventions. If so, should they be from the Regional Housing Board or should there be national policies targeted at coastal towns as a class? Mr Kegg: I think there is an issue around regeneration of problem areas in larger properties, I think probably mostly at a regeneration level, probably targeted at a regional level, but there also may be a case for some kind of legislation, although the latest legislation in relation to HMOs and registration, et cetera, will help, but we will wait to see the impact of that. Q293 Anne Main: Can I take you back to a comment you just made about the issues surrounding the root cause. Shelter has said that 50 per cent of those in poverty were home owners and many of them were elderly. Is it anything to do with the demographics of the population that you have got? Are the older saying they cannot afford to maintain the older style houses? Mr Kegg: Clearly there is an issue of poverty with the elderly which will be associated with income poverty whilst being asset rich, but there is also absolute poverty as well, people living on benefits. Again, looking at the Bournemouth situation, which I do not think will be very atypical, we have two wards where child poverty exceeds 60 per cent; so with a low-wage economy there are quite serious poverty issues, but I think that they are quite different in kind for younger families and single people than they would be for the elderly. Q294 Dr Pugh: Clearly local authorities will acknowledge the kind of problem and the kind of analysis that you are presenting, but rather than just acknowledge or identify it, do you think they are really making any positive steps to actually address it? Are there examples of good practice where local authorities have been very proactive in both recognising the problem and dealing with it? Mr Kegg: Yes, there are a number of authorities, including Bournemouth, that have run accreditation schemes in relation to the private and rented sector. Problems of affordability or access to accommodation have been addressed by working with private landlords to build new properties to let to people on the housing waiting list. There are also public sector leasing arrangements. Q295 Dr Pugh: But if a private landlord has an opportunity to build accommodation, he will build, obviously, at the best price he can and probably for the market of people coming into the resort who actually want high value property. A local authority cannot force a developer to build affordable housing, can it? Mr Kegg: A developer building for sale will go for the highest price he can get. A private landlord building for rent will go for the market-place that is available. We do have some evidence of landlords providing accommodation to meet local homelessness needs. Q296 Dr Pugh: In terms of the local authority's role, they do not have a free hand, do they? They cannot build houses, they are dependent on funding, like the Housing Corporation, they are dependent on what may be planning guidance and factors like that. In terms of the external restraints upon them, how easy is it for them to deal with the problem? Mr Kegg: I think it is very difficult. Section 106 opportunities are being worked out, but it is relatively limited. With high priced areas, and coastal areas can be quite high priced compared with other areas, it is difficult to get properties to stack up financially using Housing Corporation criteria and just the sheer level or the lack of investment in social housing generally. There is a low supply of housing, and what the Joseph Rowntree study has shown is that in areas, in Bournemouth in particular, but actually a lot of coastal resorts, something like 80 per cent of people with households from 20 to 39 cannot buy the cheapest houses, and we believe in the Bournemouth area that has now risen to 90 per cent that cannot buy, so there is a very serious problem of affordability leading to homelessness and having to look for creative solutions. Q297 Dr Pugh: Can you pass any comment on the role of the Housing Corporation in helping to solve the problem? Mr Kegg: I think the Housing Corporation is, quite rightly, very keen to see the maximum number of units for the amount of money available, but it does make it very challenging in high cost areas to meet their targets. I suppose what they would like to see is more flexibility in relation to high cost areas so that it is possible to meet needs in those areas. Q298 Dr Pugh: Have you had a chance to survey regional spatial strategies to see whether they provide any kind of answer or whether they complicate the problem? Mr Kegg: I have not surveyed the strategies, but there is an intention to increase the supply of housing through the planning process. Q299 Dr Pugh: But not specifically in coastal towns, do you think? Mr Kegg: Not specifically, no, but they are focused on market areas. Q300 Dr Pugh: Can I take you to an issue that has been raised by a number of witnesses, and that is the strong demand for second homes in coastal areas. It may well be that the second-home purchaser is an elderly person, wants a flat and is not in the market for affordable family housing really. To what extent is the problem of second homes really complicating the issue or is it a minor factor and not a major problem? Mr Kegg: In Bournemouth there are 6,000 second homes, with a housing stock of about 80,000. Q301 Dr Pugh: Are we talking about detached, semi-detached dwellings or flats here? Mr Kegg: I do not know the kinds of property. There is some evidence, reading the local papers and so on, of relatively wealthy people using city bonuses to buy places at Sandbanks and so on. So, there is evidence that people are buying quite large properties (they may also be flats) as second homes. I think also the tendency to buy second homes will depend on accessibility, whether you go there for a holiday or whether you go there at weekends, but I think the important thing is it is a single market place. If there is a significant take-up of second homes, it will be another factor that will help drive up prices. Q302 Dr Pugh: I was questioning whether, in fact, it was a single market place. It strikes me that if people retire, they are probably elderly, they probably do not want a property with stairs, they probably do not want some of the complications that come with a family house, garden, and so on. I was wondering whether you have been able to tell whether there was a distinct, niche market here which did not affect much the affordable housing. Mr Kegg: I do not think there is a niche market. Again, from observation (I was in Eastbourne for 30 years), people will buy the biggest and the best property they can get, so someone retiring at, say, sixty--- Q303 Dr Pugh: Will buy a detached family house? Mr Kegg: ---will sell their small house in London and buy a detached house on the coast. Q304 Dr Pugh: What measures, if any, would you advocate to mitigate that problem? Mr Kegg: In terms of second homes? Q305 Dr Pugh: In terms of local people trying to buy housing? Mr Kegg: I think there needs to be more assistance to what I think has been called the intermediate market, the locally employed person. I met a person the other day who was a qualified central heating fitter who works for the Gas Board, and he said, "I cannot afford to pay a rent of £800 a month and save up for a deposit", and yet, if he could have a deposit, he would then be able to pay a mortgage. He is in a real catch twenty-two situation. So, maybe some more help with people on the margins. Q306 Dr Pugh: What sort of help? Financial help? Mr Kegg: Yes - there is the Home Buy initiative that is coming in, but it is quite limited - whether it is worthwhile helping people into the market place and also maybe taking a stake in the property as well. Actually building social housing is an economic intervention and it may be possible to intervene in other ways economically that would help, I was going to say, low-earning people, but, in fact, some of these people will be earning 25-30,000 a year, but to buy a house in a lot of places now--- Q307 Dr Pugh: What other ways? You said it may be possible to intervene in other ways. Mr Kegg: I think it could be desirable to intervene financially to help the family so that they can achieve what they want, which is to buy a house. The problem with that is that, by intervening in that way, it can drive up the market place. Q308 Anne Main: Following on from that, given that high numbers of old people are retiring to, or purchasing, second homes - you have dealt with the second home side of it - many people are just moving into the area and bringing in a different economy because they have perhaps moved from a wealthier area. You have suggested one way, which is perhaps assisting people financially. Do you believe there is anything to be said for a limit in who can purchase locally? Would you be looking to deter these people who are driving up prices? Mr Kegg: I think that would be an unacceptable way forward. I know it happens in the Channel Islands, but I cannot see a way in which that would work. I also think to some degree that the elderly market is a replacing market, so that people are moving out as they die and other people are coming in to take their place, but there is certainly a very difficult issue of low local earnings and relatively high prices and, therefore, it seems better to target the help at those that would benefit most from it. Q309 Anne Main: If that is in a generating market, as you said, they do not stay very long or they die, or whatever, they do not stay in the area as long as perhaps a family would. Professor Fothergill stated to the Committee that there is undoubtedly an inflow of people over retirement age, surely they cannot be the major source of the problem then? Mr Kegg: They help replace the market so that the market does not diminish, despite the fact that people are leaving it, because others are coming to replace them. Q310 Mr Hands: I am slightly confused by all this. I was wondering whether I could go back to the beginning and ask you a very general question, which is how far do you think housing as an issue determines the success or otherwise of a coastal town in the current environment? My impression is that Bournemouth is relatively successful as a coastal town at the moment. How much of that is down to issues of housing and, if so, what is there in Bournemouth in terms of housing that particularly makes it a success whereas in other coastal towns that is lacking and is making it not a success? Mr Kegg: I do not think the success or otherwise is down to housing, I think the success is about economic regeneration. What has happened in Bournemouth is that it has been very fortunate to attract a significant financial services industry into the area and, consequently, significant retail, et cetera, so that, in fact, it has been very successful economically. I think perhaps it may be worthwhile the Committee visiting Bournemouth as an example of a coastal town about which, when I spoke your Committee specialist, I said it may be atypical and we should attract the Committee's interested in that. I lived in Eastbourne and I knew Hastings quite well, and clearly there are issues around the need to maintain economic success which then feeds into the housing market. Q311 Mr Hands: Would you be suggesting it might be a red herring for us to consider housing as one of the key factors? Mr Kegg: No, I think there are special issues around housing. I think the very large privately rented sector in many seaside towns (properties that were built in the Edwardian period or later) is housing people who struggle to survive: they get converted to other uses - we have got some as drug treatment centres - and that is feeding quite a lot of people into the area, perhaps 400 people a year, with quite serious drug issues or having recovered from drug issues, but the rate of success is not necessarily very high. Q312 Chair: Can I ask you about the level of houses in multiple occupation? Are they a significant problem within some of the coastal towns and what are the issues that are associated with them? Mr Kegg: They are significant, in my experience, and the problems associated with them are low standards, insecurity of tenure, relatively poor landlords, poor standards in terms of shared facilities, and also, with the single room rent restriction, it is the only place where young people can go to, so they are mixing with challenging people. It does provide a service, but it also presents a problem, and the general standards of properties need to rise, both internally and externally, because the general appearance of them is quite poor and that in itself can help drive down the perception of an area. Q313 Chair: Is there a view within some of the coastal towns that it would be advantageous to reduce the numbers of HMOs and, if so, how would they propose to do it? Mr Kegg: It may be the market place will help determine that. There is some evidence, I think, of private landlords deciding it is better to be in one-bedroom self-contained flats or in studio contained flats rather than having shared facilities, but a way forward on those would be to self-contain them. It would reduce the numbers somewhat, but at least it would improve the quality of life for the people using them. Q314 Mr Hands: Still talking of private rented accommodation, obviously coastal towns have a reputation - I am a Member of Parliament in Central Inner London - as being places that attract a large number of benefit claimants, sometimes because of the policies of Central Inner London Boroughs and other cities, but do we see that as a very significant problem? Mr Kegg: I think it is an issue. If there is not an economic base for an area to be successful, then landlords will attract customers from where they can and so they will work with London authorities and so on. The other issue is that the public subsidies in the private rental sector in this way may be better diverted to helping to achieve some assistance for home ownership. Q315 Chair: Do you mean public subsidies through housing benefit? Mr Kegg: I think there are two elements of public subsidy, arguably. One is that when someone buys a property the whole of the interest payable is allowable against tax. There is also the housing benefit, so that the combined revenue subsidy, either by income foregone by the Government or paid out through housing benefit, is actually quite high, and I think it would be worth looking and comparing the financial input into home ownership, the private rental sector, the RSL sector, with a view to seeing how more assistance might be given to potential buyers and encouraging people to work: because if people are paying high rent there is a very significant work disincentive, and that is very challenging to overcome. I think that maybe the growth of the private rental sector is an unintended consequence of a number of different government policies. Q316 Anne Main: Given that a large number of people in these houses in multiple occupancy are transient population, how would you propose this money is targeted because, by their very nature, they are not going to stay there very long? Mr Kegg: It is a separate problem. I think there is an issue of HMOs and transients, there is an issue of local families that will stay in the area that actually are forced to rent at quite high rents because they cannot afford to buy. Q317 Anne Main: We are effectively looking at HMOs and transient populations here with regard to benefit claims. I struggle to see how what you have proposed could help those people? Mr Kegg: That is a separate issue. I think the financial cost of maintaining that kind of accommodation is high to the Government. What do you do about a solution? I suppose they are actually reducing numbers. Increase standards, reduce numbers and divert the funding that was otherwise--- Q318 Anne Main: When you say "reduce numbers", do you mean reduce numbers of units or reduce numbers of people? Mr Kegg: Reduce the number of units. Q319 Anne Main: So you would like to see, in some of these coastal towns, less HMOs? Mr Kegg: Yes. Q320 Anne Main: What happens to the displaced people that would normally occupy those low-rate units? Mr Kegg: They are transient, so there would be a turnover. Q321 Anne Main: But you would be shifting the problem elsewhere, because they might be transient but their place is usually filled by another set of transient people coming in, are they not. They are not transient and then, obviously, you have got a load of unoccupied houses, or are you saying you have? Mr Kegg: Yes. I cannot answer that question fully, but I think what happens is that, if you have got accommodation available, people will fill it. If it is not there, they will not come. What landlords will do in Eastbourne is advertise in Liverpool saying, "Would you like to live rent-free in Bournemouth?" Q322 Anne Main: Surely that would drive the unit cost up. If you have got fewer units than people who want to come, surely it will be more expensive to live there? Mr Kegg: No, but I think there is a market place in HMO properties, and so if you actually had fewer of them there would be less people coming in that needed support. Q323 Chair: Are most of the people in HMOs in coastal towns not originally from those coastal towns? Mr Kegg: Yes. Q324 Chair: So they could as easily be somewhere else? Mr Kegg: There is quite a lot of movement of single people in particular, because the HMO people are mainly single people, there is quite a lot of movement from around the country, but very little is known about the scale of that movement or the reasons for that movement. Q325 Chair: Have those people moved to the coastal towns because of the housing or because there are jobs available in coastal towns? Mr Kegg: I think it is complex. I think the availability of transport, the attractiveness of an area. Why live in Liverpool on benefit when you could live in Bournemouth? There is also the prospect of jobs in the tourism trade. So, there are quite a lot of factors. Chair: Thank you very much indeed. We will have to adjourn the Committee for ten minutes. Committee suspended from 4.50 p.m. to 5.00 p.m. for a division in the House Memorandum submitted by Foyer Federation Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Ms Sophie Livingstone, Head of Policy and Communications, Foyer Federation, and Mr Peter Shimwell, Manager of the Redruth Foyer, gave evidence.
Chair: Thank you for installing yourselves in our absence. Anne is going to start the questioning. Q326 Anne Main: In its memorandum, the Foyer Federation suggested that the high number of older people that there tend to be in coastal towns has led to service providers focusing on their needs, which you could argue is only right since there are lots of them, but the result of this might be that there might not be enough facilities for young people. To what extent does this make you any worse off than any other area which happens to have a high proportion of elderly people? Ms Livingstone: I think that is the overarching theme of our evidence and certainly the work we have done since being called to give oral evidence. We have spoken to 14 out of the 18 coastal foyers, and there are 134 foyers at the moment around the UK, and certainly the issues that are coming up are ones that I think we both agree are not specific to coastal areas, they actually cut across the issues that most foyers are facing. So, yes, there are (and this is all anecdotal) instances of foyers facing problems with young people having problems accessing services due to the focus on older people, but, as you rightly say, that is not specific to coastal areas at all. Q327 Anne Main: When you say it is anecdotal, you have no facts and figures to back-up the fact that young people have not been able to access services? Ms Livingstone: Unfortunately not. We are a very small organisation and what we have had to do is literally phone our foyers and ask them for examples, and in busy projects they cannot, unfortunately, give us data. However, this is what they are telling us, that it is very difficult. For example, I spoke to Cromer Foyer, and they have had problems with accessing dentists because of the high proportion of retired people in the local community who have got more money to go and pay for dentistry. Therefore, there is a lack of NHS dentists. Q328 Anne Main: This the great pound again. This is someone with money coming into an area and disadvantaging younger people or families? Ms Livingstone: Yes, but then you can argue that access to NHS dentistry is a nationwide problem. Q329 Chair: Mr Shimwell, you are in the Redruth Foyer. Is that right? Mr Shimwell: That is correct, yes. Q330 Chair: You obviously would be able to speak for the experience of that particular foyer? Mr Shimwell: Yes, certainly. I would not describe Redbridge particularly as a coastal town, although I speak for the other foyers within our group, Devon and Cornwall Housing, which include Padstow, Plymouth and Torbay, and I have certainly got an understanding of coastal towns around the UK and foyers. In answer to the question that you ask - "Why are coastal towns any different?" - I think you have to see it in the context that coastal towns have basically got two seasons. They have got summer seasons where there is an influx tourists and people around and then a winter season where literally lots of things close up. Those services (cafes) actually close down for six months, eight months of the year, leaving lots of young people who are living in foyers absolutely nothing to do. Walking through Padstow last week I must have seen half a dozen cafes, boarded up places, closed, and with so many holiday lets in the centre of the town, it really is a dead town, it is a community really with no heart, and I think the knock-on effect on our young people is that, without anything to do, young people can get involved in negative behaviour - drug and alcohol misuse is quite common - and I think that is particular of lots of coastal towns. Q331 Anne Main: How do you address these things? As you say, these things are open at other times, obviously when the demand is there and the business is worth running, and then shuts down when there is not enough business to sustain them. So, what is it that you are suggesting? How would you suggest that access to these facilities could be provided? Mr Shimwell: I certainly think services for young people, both in the voluntary sector and in the statutory sector, run on shoestrings, and the various bits of money that they can obtain get spent on things which cost a lot of money in coastal areas. If I can give an example, in the centre of Torbay there is no meeting place for young people at all and a lot of the money has been spent on services for housing and shelter for older people and community centres. Q332 Anne Main: This is council money? Mr Shimwell: Yes. Q333 Anne Main: Is that because the voters are elderly voters and they are voting for the services they want? Mr Shimwell: I guess so. Young people do not turn up in numbers to vote, unfortunately, quite a lot of them - obviously those of 16 and under do not get a chance in any case - but it does seems to me that in coastal towns there is an intergenerational gap in that they see people on the street, they have got nothing to do, "Let us get them off the street and get them doing something", without actually consulting the young people on this. What I would like to see is more young people, like the young people in our foyers, being consulted on the services that are provided for them, because I think they are very much demonised in the press and by a lot of communities. They are seen as a problem rather than an opportunity or a solution. Q334 Anne Main: Is that a government or a local government problem though? Where do you think the fault lies? Is it local government not listening or assessing the real needs in its areas? Mr Shimwell: I think it possibly is a local issue, because I think some areas certainly manage to engage their young people better than others. I cannot really comment on the national picture. Q335 Anne Main: You do not think there is a national policy implication then, that there should be some sort of national policy for this? Mr Shimwell: I do not think so. I think regionally local authorities need to look at the contributions that they are making and consider where their money is being spent and, if there is a need to provide services for young people in these coastal towns, where is the money going and are young people consulted on those issues? Q336 Lyn Brown: You touched a little on intergenerational issues, and in your memorandum you talk about intergenerational conflict. Could you explain that a little for us? Ms Livingstone: Certainly it is, again, something that is raised by foyers generally, but, obviously, it is exacerbated in areas with a higher proportion of older people. Eastbourne Foyer talked about older people fearing younger people in the town. They see groups of young people as a problem, and that is obviously linked to the lack of facilities and places to go. Going back to the previous question, Eastbourne Foyer did also say that the council there had tried to be quite forward-thinking with regard to young people. They initiated setting up the foyer as a flagship of the borough and also in partnership with the local college, and they put it out to tender and they identified that about ten or 11 years ago, and so they were quite forward-thinking. They also host the annual skate-boarding championships in Eastbourne, and so they are actually trying to do things to cater for young people in the town. Q337 Lyn Brown: Can I take you on from that. That is terrific, Eastbourne Council is obviously doing its job, but can you tell us how this intergenerational conflict manifests itself? Does it manifest itself by walking into a town hall and voting for all things that are for those over 55 to do, or does it manifest itself in any other way? Ms Livingstone: Certainly complaints about the foyer. Young people certainly report to us that if they apply for jobs with the foyer as their address they will not get a look in at an interview because of perceptions about what the foyer does. Cromer Foyer highlighted that to me and said they have had quite a lot of issues with a negative perception of their young people, and what their foyers are trying to do, and in fact they are holding an open evening tonight to invite people from their local neighbourhood (and that is predominantly older people in the surrounding area) into the foyer to try and demystify what they do and what the young people are trying to do. So, the foyers are proactively trying to change that perception, but I think it is in the context of a wider issue about young people not having places to go, there not being necessarily facilities for people for young people to go to, and also the media is also whipping that up as well. Again, that is a broader issue. Q338 Lyn Brown: There is a foyer in my constituency which does not have a "bad rep", so do you think that this particular difficulty that the foyer has with the perception about what it does and who it is catering for is particularly in coastal towns, or do you think it is simply an issue that is perhaps outside the cities? Ms Livingstone: I think you are probably right that it is more likely to be outside the cities. It depends on where the foyer is physically situated as well. Taking the example of Cromer, they have got a lot of older people as their neighbours. Bath Foyer has the same thing. They are situated in a cul-de-sac which has got sheltered housing in it. They did have a number of issues with intergenerational conflict there and the foyer undertook a project with the young people and the older people, and the problems of milk bottles being taken from doorsteps and things like that have actually dissipated because they took that action. So, it is not specific to coastal towns, but, obviously, with the population being older in coastal towns, that does exacerbate it. Mr Shimwell: Could I echo what Sophie is saying there. I do not think it is just a coastal town issue, I think the issue is of isolation, because lots of rural areas face similar issues that the coastal towns face, but I do think the disparity between rural, coastal and more urban areas and young people comes back to young people being seen as a problem: "We must find something for them to do." I think we definitely need some more resources there. We cannot have young people growing up in communities that are dying, literally. Q339 Lyn Brown: I would like to take you back to the question that Anne was asking. Given the problems that you have described, what government action do you think needs to be taken in order to help? Ms Livingstone: We are trying to talk to government at the moment in the run up to the Comprehensive Spending Review. They are doing a review of the Children and Young People's Policy with a view to coming out with a ten-year strategy, and we have been feeding into that and highlighting the lack of facilities issue with the hope that that will be recognised and that there will be guidance to local authorities about that and that funding will be directed in that way. There are obviously other issues that young people in foyers face. Mental health issues are a big issue for young people. Foyers across the board are reporting to us that the young people who are coming to them are younger, they have more acute needs, so there are a whole lot of complex issues round that that government needs to be looking at at a national policy level as well as on a local level. That needs to be done in partnership. Q340 Lyn Brown: Can I take you on to employment. A Government submission to this Committee stated that nationally there are no higher than average levels of temporary employment in coastal towns. Is this your experience? Mr Shimwell: Not at all. I think it is quite clear from the evidence that has been given before that the seasonality of work is really destructive, especially if you consider young people. Young people born in coastal towns are paid very low wages, often much less than the national minimum wage. They are not employed on contracts; they are not employed on the way they look; they are not employed on where they live. I think it is very difficult for a young person to enter the employment market in a coastal and isolated town. I can think of a specific example which is linked to transport. I attended an interview in the summer with a young person from one of our projects who had got great experience working in restaurants and pubs, and he was not taken on at a holiday camp purely because he did not have his own transport. That was the only reason that the employer gave him. That is a terrible disadvantage, that you cannot even grasp the opportunities because the public transport is not reliable and, therefore, it is seen that the young person will be unreliable themselves. So, I would not agree with what the Government is saying there. Q341 Lyn Brown: Can you talk to me about training? Is it easy for young people in coastal towns to access training? You have touched on the issue of transport. Ms Livingstone: It depends a lot on where their local college is situated. I spoke to a young person who lives in Torbay Foyer who is attending the college in Paignton, the next town, which is eight miles away, and it costs her £20.00 a week to travel to college, which, when you are on benefits, leaves £26.00 to cover everything else. She is still doing it because she is incredibly determined to go to college, but, obviously, for young people who have got self-esteem issues or motivation issues, that can seem like an insurmountable barrier. Again, in Eastbourne, £2.60 a day for a young person to get to college from the foyer, and they cannot get a free pass because they are 1.95 miles away from the college and you have to be two miles away according to the bus company rules. Again, young people are hit by these sorts of issues time and again. Foyers work actively with the Learning and Skills Council to provide life skills training programmes, but we see that very much as a gateway into further training and education and young people are hit by transport and benefit issues when they get to the point that they are ready to go to college. Q342 Chair: You say you work actively with the Learning and Skills Council. Have they proposed any solution to the problems that you are describing which are essentially affecting access to the training courses? Ms Livingstone: Not in terms of where colleges are situated. What we have done with the Learning and Skills Council is develop a national qualification called the Learning Power Award, which is a life skills qualification which will help young people develop life skills, budgeting, self-esteem, all the things you need to help live independently and then move yourself on. For some young people even walking through the doors of the college can be a huge issue, so the Learning Power Award that we have developed with the Learning and Skills Council is to help them get to that point, but then we have not come to any conclusions or solutions with the Learning and Skills Council about then getting them to college where that is difficult to access. Q343 Lyn Brown: You have mentioned transport and transport costs as a barrier to training and employment. Are there any other barriers that you think we should know about for young people in coastal towns as to training and employment? Mr Shimwell: Certainly housing in general and having the move on access, especially to social housing, for foyer residents. Foyer residents are in foyers either because they are homeless or they are unemployed, for whatever reason, and it is not easy for young people of 16 to 25 to enter the private rented sector. In fact, private landlords do not want to touch under 25s because it is high risk, and in these small coastal towns, rural towns, where there is very little accommodation that is appropriate for young people, it is very difficult. At the end of, say, a two-year stay in Foyer the next step of moving that young person on into independence, that transition, is the key. Again, on a local level, perhaps various foyers around the UK have made agreements with their local authorities to move on, but it is just not enough because in most of the areas that we are discussing there is a chronic shortage of social housing. The move on in Cornwall is particularly pertinent because of the high prices of rents, especially in the summer - there are lots of summer lets, and then winter lets the local people back in - but it is very difficult for young people to enter the housing market, the rented housing market. Q344 Dr Pugh: The association between drugs and coastal towns goes back to the Second World War if not before. It is not specifically a young person's issue, is it, particularly Class A drug use? Mr Shimwell: No, I do not think it is. I am not really sure whether there is an abundance of evidence that says that the drug or alcohol issues in coastal towns are worse than any other areas of the UK. What I would say from my own experience is that I think there is a bit of backdoor peddling in through the ports, where there is less security and less monitoring of drugs coming into the country. Certainly in Cornwall and the south-west, where we did not believe we had a significant problem with drug issues around the ports, around seaside areas, and especially during the summer months, there seems to be an availability of Class A and Class B drugs. Whether or not that is any different--- Q345 Dr Pugh: How would you characterise, amongst the young people that you know of, the pattern of use? Is there a heavy use of Class A drugs or is it largely recreational drugs? Mr Shimwell: It is unlikely that most of the young people that we work directly with in foyers would be on a drugs programme because of the support that is available to them. Most of our support is around education and training, so a young person who has got a drug or alcohol dependency would be unlikely to be living in a foyer, but certainly of the young people that we come across and that we deliver advice and guidance to, there is certainly a significant number, I would say. Again, I do not think this is purely a coastal problem, I think it may be exacerbated in some coastal towns, but I think it is a national picture, and rural areas are the same. As to drugs coming into rural areas, I would say, it is just as severe a problem as it is in some of the inner cities. Q346 Dr Pugh: In terms of the problems across your desk, which is the bigger problem: alcohol abuse or drug abuse, or hard drug abuse? Mr Shimwell: I am sorry, would you repeat that? Q347 Dr Pugh: In terms of the problems across your desk, is alcohol the major problem? Mr Shimwell: I think alcohol is the major problem, to be fair, that we are dealing with on a day-to-day level - I think drugs are probably secondary - because alcohol is so widely accepted, cheap and available everywhere. Q348 Dr Pugh: In terms of interventions, are you familiar with any very successful interventions? Do you think the Government should do more specifically for the kind of areas we are talking about here? Mr Shimwell: In Cornwall we have got a very good drug and alcohol service and we are supported very well, and I certainly feel I would be able to signpost a young person to a number of good services. Nationally, I am not sure if that is the case. Ms Livingstone: To echo your points, foyers do not work with high support needs for young people on the whole. Therefore foyers would not generally take young people with a drug dependency. Having said that, foyers are all independent. In Aberdeen they have something called the Life Shaper Programme which is for young people who have been on Class A drugs, and it has been very successful. To come back to the issue about the prevalence of drugs, HEART Foyers, who operate a foyer in Felixstow, said the foyer does not suffer disproportionately from higher drug use despite their situation, their location. However, we did run a homelessness prevention programme called Safe Moves in Felixstow and they did have a very high number of people referred to that programme with drug issues. They probably do not then end up in the foyer, because the foyer has not got the capacity to support them, it is not set up to do that; so the picture you will get from us about drug use in these areas is slightly distorted because of the nature of the programmes that we run, the projects that we run. Q349 Dr Pugh: In terms of serious alcohol abuse, are you picking up the national trend of it occurring earlier, in much younger children? Mr Shimwell: Certainly, yes. Q350 Anne Main: Mr Shimwell, can I take you back to what you said about the seasonal problem with drugs coming in through the ports, which is a particular coastal issue? Mr Shimwell: Yes. Q351 Anne Main: Do you think there is some sort of role for government intervention to make the ports less accessible for drugs? You have not suggested that, but that is the correlation I would draw from what you have said. If you believe that is a problem, is it borne out statistically in any other coastal areas that there is a significant drugs problem at certain times of the year coming through the ports? Mr Shimwell: It is a reasonable suggestion, is it not, to put resources where the problem lies? Q352 Anne Main: I am going on what you have just told the Committee? Mr Shimwell: My experience is in the south-west and in Cornwall. Certainly more interventions into stopping drugs coming into the UK would be an advantage. I cannot really comment on the national picture, whether nationally there is a problem around ports. I think there certainly is around the south-west, Cornwall, Torbay, Penzance, in particular, and I would say that the knock-on effect of drugs coming into those areas is waiting times on drug and alcohol rehab, programme support and key work, so an early intervention would be a reasonable suggestion. Chair: Thank you very much indeed. Memorandum submitted by Department of Work and Pensions Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Bill Wells, Economy and Labour Market Divisional Manager, DWP, and Mr Jeremy Groombridge, Director Business Design, JobCentre Plus, gave evidence. Q353 Chair: Can I start off with the question which I think is puzzling all of us. We have been told in most of the submissions from most other groups that one of the issues about coastal towns is a great deal of low-paid employment and high seasonality, and yet the jobcentre figures that you have given us for the coastal towns that you have cited appears to suggest that temporary employment is not higher in coastal towns in other areas. Is temporary employment different from seasonal employment, or is everybody else wrong? Mr Wells: Seasonal employment is included in temporary employment in these figures. These figures are taken from the Labour Force Survey, which is a household survey, in the individual areas that it is carried out. It is nationally representative. I think one of the issues may be around difference in scale rather than anything else. I think it may have been true more in the past that coastal towns were more dependent on seasonal and tourism work than they are at the moment, but there are many other forms of employment (for example retailing, construction, schools), and although in some coastal towns there are issues about seasonality, it still remains the case that the vast bulk of employment tends not to be associated with tourism; so there may be obvious examples but there are many other forms of employment. Q354 Chair: I think I am having further difficulties with your grasp. I realise you have given us the number of jobs in tourism in these different places. Mr Wells: Yes. Q355 Chair: You have not given us the proportion of the jobs in those areas which are related to tourism. Mr Wells: But they are quite low. We can provide you with those numbers. Chair: I think that would be helpful as a corollary of that. Q356 Lyn Brown: Is it not the definition of what you define to be a tourism-related job that might be at issue here? For instance, I presume there is more laundry during the times of high season in a tourist place, but you would not necessarily equate the higher volume of work or workers within the laundry sector as tourist-related employment, would you? Mr Wells: Not necessarily, no. You are quite right, in the sense that--- Q357 Lyn Brown: So a job could be seasonal and attached to the tourism industry without necessarily being called a job which is created because of tourism? Mr Wells: Yes, but I think it remains true that, as there has been a movement away from tourism, in the sense of two-week holidays in Clacton, or whatever, the reliance on seasonal industries has actually diminished, both because that industry has declined but also because other forms of employment have grown. Q358 Lyn Brown: The two-week holiday has declined but the day-trippers and the week-enders are still there. Mr Wells: Yes. Q359 Lyn Brown: One still sees a significant increase in visitor numbers at seaside resorts during the traditional holiday periods? Mr Wells: Yes, but part of the diversification in some, but by no mean all, coastal towns is that the day-trippers and the week-enders come not just during the seasonal period. There are different forms of tourism: business tourism or pop concerts or whatever. I should also say (which I think is a theme of our memorandum) that actually it differs from town to down and there are big differences between the different coastal towns. I would not want to say that there is no problem with seasonality in every town. I suspect I am saying that seasonality and temporary jobs are relatively smaller now than they used to be in the past and there also tend to be vacancies coming up because of the natural turnover in the labour market. Q360 Lyn Brown: If there was an influx of people during the times that traditionally are the holiday period which is greater than the numbers for the rest of the year, despite the fact that there has been a diversification in tourism and some people go to walk in the autumn or by the sea in the winter, or whatever it is that people choose to do, presumably you would have greater pressure on the services that they use, whether it be restaurants or pubs, whether it be laundry services or clubs. Presumably, therefore, one needs a higher level of staffing during that time than one would need during the rest of the year, despite the fact that one might not decline or decrease one's workforce as significantly as one did in the past. Presumably, therefore, there are still jobs that are seasonal, that are attached to tourism, which you are not actually classifying as seasonal tourism? Mr Wells: I think there is a difference between temporary jobs and tourism jobs. There are more tourist jobs during the high season but some of those jobs would be filled by people who actually leave the towns as well. Also, there is a difference between the jobs and the people taking the employment. If someone works in the high season, they may work somewhere else during the rest of the year. As I said, I do not want to overstate this, but I do think that--- Q361 Lyn Brown: What you are telling me is that, although there are more jobs there, the unemployment that one sees as an underlying factor is not actually caused by casual or seasonal employment? Mr Wells: I think that is right. Actually the levels of unemployment as opposed to the levels of inactivity are actually relatively low compared to the past and not particularly different from other parts of the country. Q362 Martin Horwood: I was almost with you until you said that. I was beginning to think that perhaps the explanation for this is that when you are talking about temporary employment in other towns you are talking about permanent temporary employment, in other words jobs that are continuing but that are always on temporary contracts, whereas in coastal towns we were seeing peak season temporary contracts that did not exist off-peak, but you have just said that seasonal unemployment is no worse. It sounds as though you just said that seasonal unemployment was no worse in coastal towns either. Mr Wells: It is higher, but it is lower than it has been in the past. The degree of seasonality in employment and unemployment is higher in most coastal towns. I think there is an issue about the scale and how it has changed over time. Q363 Chair: The evidence that your department has given is different to the evidence that has been given by the DCLG, which appears to be that temporary employment is higher in coastal towns than elsewhere, but also to the evidence that was given earlier this afternoon by the foyers. Is the issue that many temporary jobs in coastal towns are not included within your statistics because they are grey market jobs paying less than the national minimum wage? Mr Wells: This is a survey of individuals rather than the jobs themselves. The tourism jobs are surveys of jobs, but the temporary work is from the Labour Force Survey, which is actually a survey of individuals in those areas. Q364 Chair: At what time of year? Mr Wells: Throughout the year. There is a continuous survey of 60,000 households across the country, about 120,000 people, and you ask the individual what their labour market status is, including their employment status, in terms of its permanency or temporary nature. Q365 Chair: But if they are being employed at less than the national minimum wage, they are not likely to declare themselves, are they? Mr Wells: In these figures there are a lot of people who seem to tell the truth, even though it looks like they are doing things illegally. Q366 Anne Main: In your memorandum, you said there was a slight rise in the proportion of sick and disabled people claiming out of work benefits. I would like to explore that on two levels: (1) are we sure that your figures are not reflecting maybe people being classified in a different way, so that they are falling into a different category now, so that is why your figures look lower, and (2) do you think that this rise in the proportion of people claiming incapacity benefits is anything to do with it being coastal towns, or the age demographic, or is it acceptable, is it predictable? Mr Wells: The figures we presented in the memorandum tend to be the numbers receiving the different types of benefits, and so, therefore, the unemployment benefits - Job Seekers Allowance - have declined over time. Q367 Anne Main: Is that because they are now on incapacity benefits? Mr Wells: No, because the numbers going onto incapacity benefits have actually been declining across the country for a number of years. However, for a while - they are now going down - the numbers on incapacity benefit actually increased because the average duration on the benefit went up. It was not that more people were going on to the benefit; it was that the people on the benefit were staying on the benefit for longer. Q368 Chair: Are they starting to claim incapacity benefits somewhere else and then moving to coastal towns, or is there something about living in a coastal town that affects your health so that you are more likely to claim incapacity benefit? Mr Wells: I think it is true overall in our figures that the level of overall benefits are higher in coastal towns than in other parts of the country, and actually in some cases higher than the level of employment, and we identified two or three towns where the employment rate was higher than the national average. But they also had a higher level of total numbers on benefits than the national average. So, of the people who are without work in the coastal towns it does look as though for a lot of them a bigger proportion of them are on benefits. Q369 Chair: Which are largely incapacity benefits? Mr Wells: Which are largely incapacity benefits. Q370 Chair: That is my question. Do you know whether they were claiming it before and they moved to a coastal town as a claimant, or whether they got ill when they were there? Mr Wells: I do not know; I suspect that most of them will have joined the incapacity benefit in the area where they live. Q371 Dr Pugh: I am trying to get it clear about what you are saying, so if you would help me on this, as we do need to get this very clear. If we had a pie-chart that had all the jobs of all the coastal towns and you had to shade in a section of the pie-chart that indicated the measure by which some of them were part-time or seasonal, or whatever you want to call them, what would it look like and how would it differ from a pie-chart filled in for the whole country? Mr Wells: I might get the numbers wrong but the tourism/seasonal jobs will be somewhere around ten to 15 per cent in the coastal towns and they may be ten to 15 per cent in other parts of the country. So there is likely to be over the year a greater proportion of the jobs that are filled and covered that are tourism/seasonal temporary jobs, but they are not a particularly large portion of the pie-chart, and although they may be bigger than in other areas the difference is not enormous. Q372 Dr Pugh: So 80 per cent of people in coastal towns are on full contracts, annual contracts of one kind or another, who are employed? Mr Wells: In terms of jobs I think it is important to realise that roughly 20 per cent of all people move into and out of a job in any one year and most of those movements are voluntary - the vast majority of them are voluntary. Q373 Dr Pugh: Imagine another pie chart that has all the jobs again but this time they are shaded in depending whether they are low paid or not; how would we define low paid? How would the pie chart for coastal towns look when compared with the pie chart for the country as a whole? Mr Wells: I know less about the earnings in the area but I suspect that it would have a similar set of characteristics to the pie chart you have just asked me to describe. Q374 Dr Pugh: Can you factor into it - let us get these figures accurate - a lot of people in seaside towns who work for their own little businesses, they have a sweet shop, a small down by the front, whatever, and they are essentially self-employed people and they will carry on, no matter how low their earnings are, for quite a long time. Do you have any measure for that? Mr Wells: In the memorandum we put in on information on self-employment, which is again from the Labour Force Survey, again the story is one of differences across the coastal towns, but with perhaps a slightly higher proportion overall in coastal towns who are self-employed. Q375 Dr Pugh: On the demographic features, if you take into
account that every town has so many people in employment, be it part-time, be
it high paid, be it whatever, and so many people who are not, who are either
unemployed or elderly or whatever, how does the profile of coastal towns look
different from the profile of the country as a whole? Q376 Dr Pugh: So there is more economic activity, in other words? Mr Wells: Yes. Q377 Dr Pugh: What actions are JobCentre Plus taking to monitor the impact of migrant workers on employment in coastal towns? Mr Wells: I will pass over to Jeremy in a moment. Within the department we are monitoring the labour market for migrants, both by considering all the various different statistics that there are available, including national insurance numbers, and they tend to be issued by JobCentre Plus in those offices, and the conclusion on that - which has been published - is that we can find no discernible statistical effect of migrants on the claimant unemployment. Maybe Jeremy would like to add something? Mr Groombridge: That is certainly our view of local labour markets, as very much informed by the national picture that we have available to us, but of course it is augmented as well by what we see happening in the local labour market, largely anecdotally. But we look, for example, at the way that traditional entry level jobs are filled and we are noticing changes over time, but the critical factor, as Bill has said, is that there is no clear unequivocal statistical connection that the department has been able to identify. Q378 Dr Pugh: So the assumption is normally that a lot of low skilled jobs in coastal towns, tourism and seasonal jobs of one kind of another - obviously there are Polish plumbers and so on - quite a lot of the migrant workforce is a relatively low skilled base. You would assume that they would disproportionately migrate, as it were, to coastal towns, and you are saying that the evidence does not stand that up so far? Mr Groombridge: There certainly is not any proven statistical link, so all we can really do is to look at the kind of entry level jobs that we would normally put people into, and we noticed a change over time, but that is not a proven statistical link of the kind that Bill was referring to. Mr Wells: There is also some information on national insurance numbers and the workers' registration scheme, and there are some areas of coastal towns - Bournemouth, Brighton and Great Yarmouth - where a higher proportion of the population have asked for national insurance numbers, who are migrants, relative to the national average. But in general, for all migrants asking for national insurance numbers the coastal towns that we have looked at tend to be less, partly because places like London and other places dominate migration still, even though with the accession countries they have spread across the country more than in the past. Q379 Lyn Brown: You have made reference to the Labour Force Survey as the source for your evidence this afternoon, and given that that survey is national do you think that you have robust enough evidence to confidently supply us with the evidence that we have required this afternoon, or do you think that you might have evidence of a data gap in reference to coastal towns? Mr Wells: The Labour Force Survey is run by the Office for National Statistics and their objective is to make it nationally representative and nationally representative in the sense that all areas of the country can be represented fairly. There are a couple of areas where the Labour Force Survey is a little reliant on population estimates and so therefore there may be issues about some migration. It also a household survey and so therefore communal establishments tend not to be represented as much in it and, as you heard earlier, there may be particular types of communal establishments, what they call housing multiple-occupancy, which are more prevalent in coastal towns. Q380 Lyn Brown: I understand the need for national statistics and I think the Labour Force Survey is a good one, so I am not trying to undermine the evidence that you have given us, but what I am trying to understand is whether or not you feel that you have been able to give us the answers as correctly as possible, given that it is only the Labour Force Survey upon which you have been able to rely, and that there is nothing you have been able to give us that enables us to dig deeper underneath the statistics that you have provided us with from the Labour Force Survey. Mr Wells: I think the answer to that is yes, because although we have used the Labour Force Survey for a particular set of descriptions on this we have also used the surveys of employers for the tourism jobs and the benefits information for benefits, and the information on the national insurance. It makes it a little fuzzy at the edges but I think that the overall picture is consistent, using all of those sources. Q381 Anne Main: On the point of migrant workers, from which we have moved from, I would like to know what your definition of a migrant worker is, particularly to make sure we are all talking about the same thing, and it says that you believe 400 jobs have disappeared from their books because directors are now directly hiring migrant workers. What evidence do you have of that? Mr Wells: Again, these were in different sources. In terms of national insurance numbers the definition of people from abroad, and the information that I gave you in terms of some of the areas had more people born abroad, who asked for a national insurance number, is one source. In terms of the local evidence, again JobCentre Plus - and I will let Jeremy speak - is literally that they deal with employers and the employers are getting in touch with other agencies and setting up different recruitment terms. Q382 Anne Main: Are you saying then that the employers who work with JobCentre Plus are removing themselves off their books because you believe they are going elsewhere for their workers; is that what you are saying? Mr Wells: We would rather that they stayed with JobCentre Plus so that more of the clients of JobCentre Plus would use them and reduce the numbers on benefits, but there are examples which JobCentre Plus has of employers who used to recruit through JobCentre Plus but who now recruit elsewhere. Anne Main: That is what I said, but I just wondered where you got your figures from of 400 jobs disappearing. Chair: Southport JobCentre Plus, who have said that. Anne Main: That is what I am saying. I just wondered if there is anything to support this, if it is nationally rolled out? Q383 Chair: I think you have to take it that it is Southport who said those figures and presumably you might have anecdotes from elsewhere? Mr Groombridge: I am not familiar with the specific figures around Southport, but certainly in the world in which we operate there are obviously other agencies that can help move people into jobs, and indeed we have a shared objective in that sense. But there are certainly instances where employers will use the services of other agencies in preference to JobCentre Plus, and that is the world we work in. Chair: Thank you very much indeed. We now move on to the Environment Agency.
Memoranda submitted by the Environment Agency Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Dr David King, Director of Water Management, and Mr Phil Rothwell, Head of Flood Risk Management Policy, the Environment Agency, gave evidence. Chair: Good afternoon, gentleman. Anne Main, sea defences. Q384 Anne Main: Obviously some areas would specifically welcome sea defences and others may say they are not good things particularly if they are further down the coast and may feel that they are being impacted on, but how do you feel that sea defences could possibly lead to any form of overall regeneration of an area? Dr King: Firstly, in terms of us progressing our capital programme we have a guiding principle, which is about trying to derive multiple benefits for the investment that is made, and quite often that is regeneration - regeneration is not the prime purpose, it is clearly about protecting people and property, but there are numerous examples around the coast, in Hull, in Harwich, where regeneration comes on the back of the infrastructure investment that the agency has put in. I think the issue is not that people think sea defences or managing flood risk is a bad thing, the opinion really is what is the appropriate intervention, whether that is a hard engineering structure or whether it is a soft engineering solution, such as managed re-alignment. Q385 Anne Main: To pick you up on the point you just said, you actually said that the principal reason is for the defence of people's homes, and regeneration may well follow from that. Dr King: That is correct because our principal mandate is about protecting people, property and the environment, but clearly where there is an opportunity to bring funding streams together, to derive multiple benefits such as regeneration, then we would do so. Q386 Anne Main: Would you agree that the Environment Agency should be thinking more creatively about ways in which investment in sea defences could benefit local communities economically as well as environmentally? Dr King: We do that already because our investment is very much done on the basis of a cost benefit analysis, and built into that are both social and environmental benefits as well. So it is part of the evaluation of whether we put in investment or not. Q387 Anne Main: Could you give a little more explanation of how you do your cost benefit analysis? Dr King: Clearly the situation with sea defences, or indeed coastal erosion, is that there is a limited pot of money, and therefore we need to put in the investment where we get the maximum benefit in terms of reducing risk, so there is a cost benefit equation that would apply to any particular scheme, and in general the benefit cost for defence schemes is very, very good. So even at the margins we are getting six to one benefits, so many of our schemes are much better than that. Q388 Martin Horwood: In your evidence you have provided some specific examples of towns, for example Happisburgh, where there is an issue about long-term sustainability and viability, and you have lots of national tools, flood risk maps, coastal erosion maps, shoreline management plans, and so on. But do you have a picture overall for the country how many towns or which towns do have issues of long term viability and sustainability, like Happisburgh? Dr King: We do not have a complete picture but the overriding message in terms of climate change is that the risk on the coast will increase, and we are going through a process of strategic planning which is built into the shoreline management plan, where basically the coast in England and Wales is divided up into about 30 different coastal cells, and that will give much more precise information. But clearly we would know, for example, in the Humber or at Happisburgh or around the Essex coast, that there are areas there that will be in the frontline of the changes. Q389 Martin Horwood: So do you have any sense, for instance, of how many people are likely to be affected by 2050 or by 2080? Dr King: Currently in coastal communities that are exposed to risk there is in excess of one million people, and probably in the order of 120 billion in terms of infrastructure, but obviously the amount of risk varies in different parts of the coast. For example, if you take somewhere like London and, indeed, part of the tide where you have defences there which provide a very high standard of defence, one in a 1000 years, while other parts of the coast might be as low as one in 50. So the risk exposure is different. Q390 Martin Horwood: This is both a risk of coast erosion and of
repeated flood events. You talk about
once in 100 year flood event happening once every three years? Q391 Martin Horwood: So those communities that are going to be at risk of erosion, of repeated flood events and where there are issues of long term viability, do you think that government is doing enough - or let us put it collectively, politicians are doing enough - to identify ways in which alternatives like relocation should be pursued? Dr King: I think there is certainly room for more innovative thinking because clearly if you take the example of Happisburgh, which has lost something like 25 properties in as many years, and the coastal erosion is quite aggressive - it can be a metre or two metres in a storm event - what preys heavily on people is compensation for their property, and I think that government and indeed local government need to think creatively about how they can help communities to adapt to changes. Q392 Martin Horwood: Do you have a specific proposal? Do you think that compensation is the right route? Dr King: Clearly there are opportunities for purchase of properties, leaseback, as we pointed out in our evidence, which would certainly ease it. Government is very nervous in talking about compensation, but my colleague is part of a government working group on adaptation tools and might be able to comment on that. Mr Rothwell: Under the strategy for southern coastal risk, Making Space for Water is a programme of work looking at adaptation and how we can help communities that are risk, and it is likely to be uneconomic to continue defence or even to put any defence in. We are looking at a number of different options, including working with Regional Development Agencies and local authorities to move the planning envelope back so that over a period of time - and we are talking, tens, 20, 50, 100 years - there is an opportunity to move the envelope of the town to the settlement back. We are looking at buy-out of property and then lease back; we are looking at insurance and assurance as a possible route. So there are a number of different options and we are due to report back by the end of the year. Q393 Chair: Which department are you reporting back to? Mr Rothwell: To Defra. Q394 Martin Horwood: When you are talking about compensation or even schemes like lease back or buy-out you are still talking about somebody locally taking the burden of cost, whether it is the district council or whatever, but are you advocating to government that there should be some more national scheme to effectively compensate people for the consequences of climate change and not place all the burden on particular local communities? Mr Rothwell: That is one of the options we are looking at; we are also looking at existing powers like local government well-being powers that can be used to channel the money into community development to ensure community coherence, which is another option. So there is a range of different options being looked at. Q395 Anne Main: On the buy-out and lease back, I would like to explore that a little further. That is a massively costly proposal, I would have thought. Are you suggesting that there is any time limitation so that people would have a particular period of time, given that you have said that this erosion has speeded up significantly, possibly more than anybody could have forecast? Would you say that people five or six years ago would not be eligible because they should have seen it coming? Is there some sort of time scheme limit on this? Mr Rothwell: This is very early days and it is too early to put flesh on the bones. If you look at the number of properties that have suffered from erosion and fallen off cliffs or are about to, it is actually a relatively small number, but the ongoing risk will mean that number will grow. At present we are looking into exactly how big a problem it is and we are unclear as yet as to exactly how big a problem it will be. Q396 Chair: Can we move on to the planning changes that might be required? Reading your submission, basically you have told certain settlements to call it a day and go, basically, and accept the inevitable, and others to shift themselves geographically, essentially, over time in order to move themselves away from the threat, really. Are the current planning arrangements adequate to achieve that, or do you need an increase in powers to insist that the local development frameworks, for example, take account of your guidance and the shoreline management plans, for example? Dr King: As you might expect, the planning framework around both coastal erosion and indeed coast and flood defence is quite complex and operates under different bits of legislation. For example, the primary legislation that the agency would work under is the Land Drainage Act that dates back to 1974; coastal erosion goes back to 1949. So clearly there are opportunities to combine both of those and in combining them to recognise the increasing knowledge and to gain knowledge over that period of time. But we have certainly seen in the last three to four years significant improvement in the planning around flood risk management through PPG25 and its replacement, which is due later this year, PPS25, but in terms of coastal erosion and coastal planning it is mostly about PPG20, which is again about 14 or 15 years old, and certainly again our knowledge of climate change has significantly moved on, indeed as has our understanding of what sustainable development is and what are sustainable communities, and we think that that could be updated. Q397 Martin Horwood: You also at various stages in your submissions talk about the potential of the greater role for the Environment Agency for more flexible powers. Do you want to expand on that at all? Dr King: The government produced its strategy for coastal erosion and flood management a number of years ago, called Making Space for Water. In giving that direction of travel they indicated that there should be a greater role for the agency in terms of all things flood management and coastal erosion. They are currently consulting on that with the objective of having one body that would have the overall strategic view. The prime mechanism is through shoreline management plans, and shoreline management plans are drawn up both by ourselves or indeed local authorities, but plans, as you well recognise, are only as good as how well they are picked up, and that is clearly an issue at the moment. While the planning process and shoreline management plan is good and takes the right time horizon, it is how you embed those and make them relevant to regional development strategies, local development frameworks, et cetera, and we believe that if they were statutory, similar to the river basin plans that are required under the framework directive, it would greatly help. Q398 Chair: Can you clarify, the river basin plans, are they statutory at the
moment? Mr Rothwell: They have to be fully in place by 2015. Q399 Chair: 2015? Mr Rothwell: Yes. The first phase is now being worked on with a view to finalising the first phase by 2009, but they have to be fully in place by 2015. Q400 Chair: But the shoreline plans will not become statutory? Mr Rothwell: Shoreline management plans are currently not statutory. There has been one phase of shoreline management plans and we are now writing phase 2, which is the second iteration five years on; but they are currently not statutory. Q401 Martin Horwood: The other question I have is about spending on current sea defences because your submissions do talk about the need to inject realism long term, but is your impression that spending on sea defences at the moment is being maintained year on year? The second question is what do you think is the future of that? Are we going to be a series of Canutes waving at increasingly large tides which will eventually overpower us? Dr King: The current level of expenditure in flood and coastal erosion includes inland - it is £550m a year, and that certainly took an uplift in the last spending review when government put in an additional £150m on to the baseline. Our evidence, indeed independent evidence and, probably, the most authoritative of this, the Foresight Study, their recommendation is that the level of investment over time should rise to in the order of £1b a year, and certainly we believe that there should be an upward trajectory in investment. Q402 Martin Horwood: But the thrust of a lot of your submission is that we should in some ways be moving - and this is the first policy area, perhaps - from mitigation to adaptation, but that seems to fly in the face of it? Dr King: No, I do not think so because clearly in terms of mitigation there is a need to grab hold of emissions nationally and globally, but our point would be that locked into the system now are changes that will manifest themselves in greater risk on the coast, and in order to manage that risk there is a need for further investment. Martin Horwood: Scary stuff. Chair: Indeed, yes. Thank you very much and thank you for your written evidence, which was extremely interesting.
Memorandum submitted by the Learning and Skills Council Examination of Witness Witness: Mr Peter Marsh, Regional Director of Skills, Learning and Skills Council, South East Region, gave evidence. Q403 Chair: I am sorry you are the last in a long line of witnesses, Mr Marsh. I am not sure if you were sitting in on any of the earlier evidence sessions? Mr Marsh: Yes, I sat in on the last two. Q404 Chair: So not the Foyer? Mr Marsh: Not the Foyer but the JobCentre Plus and the last one. Q405 Chair: If I may start, one of the key issues that the Foyer Federation raised was that coastal towns often have very poor transportation links with long journey times to FE Colleges, for example. Is it your experience from the Learning and Skills Council that that is a factor in discouraging young people in coastal towns from accessing education opportunities? Mr Marsh: Yes. In any periphery area or rural area there is always an issue of access to education and learning and the choice that you may get in any particular area, and the LSC nationally two years ago undertook a thorough review of all of its learning provision and that was one of the issues certainly which came out in coastal areas and rural areas. There has been a considerable amount of discussion with transport operators about how that might be mediated in some way and more areas would have better access in terms of transport, but I think the key area for the Learning and Skills Council is to establish a pattern of provision which enables the maximum number of learners to access the maximum number of appropriate learning opportunities, and so part of that review looked at how we might achieve that, and that certainly also covered coastal areas as well. Q406 Chair: What was the suggestion to deal with it in coastal towns? Mr Marsh: Certainly a degree of reorganisation of provision and collaboration so that the individual institutions were not just delivering their courses for their students but they were actually cooperating with other institutions to make provision more accessible, and so there was not a duplication and, if you like, inefficient provision being made. Q407 Chair: Are you saying that the provision would be moved to the coastal
towns? Q408 Anne Main: Just on the point of transport, to go back to something that the Foyer said earlier, they gave us two scenarios: one, that someone they quoted was spending £20 a week on getting to where they were going, leaving them with very little left to survive on, and for others it is poor transport links in as much as the infrequency of public transport meant that someone could not take a job. Have you identified whether it is the cost of transportation or the sheer unavailability of it which is the primary consideration? Mr Marsh: I think it is both. Again, it affects periphery areas including coastal towns in that same way. Obviously we have discussed these issues with local authorities to see the extent to which that can be mediated, but it is a particular issue, yes, that is true. The other opportunity, of course, is to establish new learning centres which enable more people to access provision more closely to where they live. Q409 Chair: So that is moving the provision? Mr Marsh: Yes, it is developing new provision or getting providers to outsource some of their provisions more closely to the community. Q410 Lyn Brown: The Coastal Academy's memo states that young people in coastal areas have low aspirations. First of all, do you think that is true? If you do, why is it true? Finally, what are you doing about it if it is true? Mr Marsh: I do not know how much has been discussed before but in any area which is socially and educationally deprived there is an issue of aspiration, and that certainly applies to coastal areas as much as any other area, for example inner city areas. Q411 Lyn Brown: So you would not say it is any more prevalent there than it is in inner city areas? Mr Marsh: I do not believe it is, compared to an inner city area or an area that has a high rating on the index of deprivation. The issues of deprivation impact upon that, impact upon aspiration, and the Learning and Skills Council is responsible for purse compulsory education and learning, with the exception of higher education, and so what we have been doing is working very, very closely with local education authorities and particularly in the 14 to 16 age group, to try and encourage more young people staying on and learning in education. That is the particular issue - low attainment at 16 and low staying on rates, and the two go together, and really you cannot go back far enough to start trying to tackle that issue, and we have been working very, very closely with local education authorities in those areas where that applies. Q412 Lyn Brown: Are there networks of Sure Start? Mr Marsh: Yes, there are networks and we are doing even more work now through some of the local area agreement arrangements, which bring together a wider range of partners. And a key issue for us - and I do not know how much that came out in our evidence - is having the right partnership and having recognition of some of those linked issues which will impact upon young people's aspirations and attainments. Q413 Lyn Brown: Do you think that educational attainment across the board, through the Key Stages and all the way up to GCSE, are significantly poorer in coastal towns, and could you compare them to the inner cities? Mr Marsh: I think if you compared them to other areas of low attainment they would be very similar, but it starts at an early age, and I would say that some of the initiatives like Sure Start are the beginning of that process to try and do something about it. Q414 Lyn Brown: Are there more failing schools in coastal town areas? Mr Marsh: I would have to get further information for you about that. There are some very good schools but there will also be some failing schools. Q415 Lyn Brown: Is the LSC doing anything specific in those areas in order to remedy the situation for the 16 plus? Mr Marsh: Yes, we have set up a number of vocational learning centres to attract young people into learning, which is more appropriate to their needs and is more attractive. We have also looked at the type of provision we are offering, to ensure that there is a ladder of progression, so that we are not just offering for people who do attain, but also we have opportunities for people who have not done so well at school. Particularly tackling some of the issues around what we call skills for life, basic skills needs, looking at more informal ways of introducing young people to learning, working with those agencies which can offer those particular opportunities, and particularly youth services, and that we fund through what we call our discretionary funding and local initiative funding, and there are a range of different initiatives which will have been established with those agencies. Q416 Lyn Brown: To go back to the point of the discretionary fund would you pay for transport in areas where a student might be having to fund a very large sum out of their benefit? Mr Marsh: Unfortunately I do not think our funding will stretch to that level of subsidy and in that sense it would not be the best use of the amount of funding that we have to subsidise the transport system; and also access in periphery areas is not just an educational issue it is a broader social issue which needs to be tackled with other agencies, and I think that is an area that we need to tackle jointly through some of those partnership arrangements. Q417 Anne Main: I want to take you back to the poverty of aspiration and you said that you did not think it was any different between any other area that was deprived within a coastal town. Can I ask you if you see no correlation by the fact that in coastal towns we have had lots of evidence that says there is very little incident of jobs for young people to go to, so as a result if they were to get these qualifications that they may have to leave the area, so it is a disincentive. Do you have any view on that? Mr Marsh: First of all your first point. I think high unemployment - and I heard the discussion about seasonal unemployment and whatever - our data suggests that there is higher than average unemployment - I am not sure whether it is seasonal or otherwise - in coastal towns than the national average. But if you take other areas where there is higher unemployment you have the same problems; there are few jobs and lower levels of aspiration. The less economic activity in terms of, I suspect, business formation - so you cannot just look at the skills issue in isolation, and this is where we have to work closely with partners to ensure that there is a vigorous approach to trying to develop local economies, and skills in that sense is a part of that continuum. Q418 Anne Main: So they can stay within that community should they get well qualified? Mr Marsh: Yes. Q419 Mr Hands: We are talking about a lot of things that are common problems between coastal towns and other smaller communities. Would you say that there are perhaps any specific solutions that can be offered to coastal towns rather than just to all smaller communities? And is there anything in the seasonal nature of employment in coastal towns, anything there that opens up particular possibilities for learning and for the LSC? Mr Marsh: I think certainly some of our work with the tourism sector is something to try and develop a skills base, it is something we found to be very, very helpful in terms of getting more people into learning, even if they are in temporary employment, and that seems to me to be something which is valuable and worthwhile doing. I think it is also necessary for us to look at those employment sectors where there are opportunities for people to work and seek to develop those. I know that the RDA have suggested that coastal communities and coastal economies ought to seek to grow their businesses, the businesses they have rather than necessarily import them, attracting with investment. We probably believe it is a combination of the two. We have to develop the local economic base to be able to get, if you like, the jobs which will employ people and you have to develop the skills base to ensure that you can attract those jobs in the first place. So the two are vitally interconnected in that sense. Q420 Dr Pugh: Just a very general question first. Do your targets in relation to Level 2 qualifications mean that you find it hard to get at the resources or to allocate resources to hard to reach categories? This obviously applies to a lot of places apart from coastal towns. Mr Marsh: So what you are saying is that we have a target for Level 2 which in some way distracts us away from the most needy? Q421 Dr Pugh: Yes. Mr Marsh: I do not think so because we target below Level 2 as well and particularly skills for life, basic skills, literacy and numeracy; and in working with young people we are seeking to support young people into a position where they can start attaining Level 2 qualifications. So I would not say that that is a particular problem in the way that perhaps you are suggesting. Q422 Dr Pugh: A specific question on coastal towns. Blackpool submitted evidence that in coastal towns you often get small primary schools maybe with a very transient population of children, moving in and out and their parents in bed-sit land, perhaps, and this obviously starts them off with an extremely poor basis as far as their educational attainments go. Have you picked this up and how significant a factor do you think it is in the educational performance of children in coastal towns? Mr Marsh: I have not seen any data and I could ask to see if there was any, but I believe that it would be the case that with a transient population it is less likely that people will be sufficiently stable in their environment to see learning as a high priority for both their families and themselves. Q423 Dr Pugh: So given that specific problem, if you were going to ask the government for a specific initiative which you think would benefit and affect the educational outcomes in coastal towns, what would you ask for? Mr Marsh: I think it is related to the availability of employment and the employment for those particular communities, and again that is something that we are working with in partners in some of the regeneration partnerships. Q424 Dr Pugh: You do not need any more resources or programmes? Mr Marsh: I think we always need more resources and more programmes to do that, but I think in a way it is part of a broader problem of people who are under achieving, under participating, and it is just one aspect of that cycle. So, yes, I would suggest that we do need more resources. Q425 Chair: The main theme of a lot of your evidence is that you need to be working with local partners in local communities to actually meet the specific needs. Do you find that there is a tension between that need to be locally responsive and the fact that you have to meet national targets? Mr Marsh: There can be a tension between targets and being locally responsive. I think if we tried to look at it in a broader context some of our targets are the very targets which will assist communities to achieve the level of skills that they require to find work and progress in employment. So I do not think there is a direct link, but if you were saying hypothetically if the targets were inappropriate, yes, but I think our targets, which were at a lower level of skills level, are the right ones to have as targets. Q426 Chair: You do not think there is any more freedom you need in order to be able to meet the specific needs of the coastal towns in the southeast, which is your region? Mr Marsh: It is interesting. Some of the work that we have been undertaking through local area groups are beginning to look at some of those freedoms and flexibilities that we might need to actually achieve what we need to achieve in terms of initial engagement. Where we do have programmes we have a community budget which enables us to fund a provision which is not necessarily qualification bearing. So there are some opportunities there. I think the flexibility, if you like, is required in the responsiveness in the way in which we can sometimes allocate small amounts of funding to achieve what we need to achieve at a very, very local level. Q427 Anne Main: Just on that point, because you did answer my colleague at length to say that you would not run to funding, for example, transport, but if in some coastal town areas the population is disproportionately aged then it could be that the flexibility you would want in that area is to support a relatively small number of younger people for them to access education which it would not be realistic to bring in because there is just not the sheer volume of numbers to make it work. Mr Marsh: Yes, and we have worked with schools to support them in terms of sharing the provision between groups of young people. I cannot give you specifics on that in terms of coastal regions but I know elsewhere in the country that that has certainly been the case, and it is managing those scarce resources, both in terms of provision and access, that is essential to this and having a very detailed knowledge of what is available and what young people want to do. Q428 Chair: What about distance learning? Mr Marsh: Again, distance learning is something that is available as well. Chair: Thank you very much. |