UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1023-v

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE

 

 

COASTAL TOWNS

 

 

Tuesday 24 October 2006

RT HON MARGARET HODGE MBE MP

BARRY GARDINER MP

RT HON RICHARD CABORN MP

MR PHIL WOOLAS MP

Evidence heard in Public Questions 429-529

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Communities and Local Government Committee

on Tuesday 24 October 2006

Members present

Dr Phyllis Starkey, in the Chair

Mr Clive Betts

Lyn Brown

John Cummings

Mr Greg Hands

Anne Main

Mr Bill Olner

Dr John Pugh

________________

Witness: Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MBE, a Member of the House, Minister of State, Industry and the Regions, Department of Trade and Industry, gave evidence.

Q429 Chair: May I welcome you Minister as the first in a series of ministers in this session this afternoon on coastal towns? May I begin by focusing on the effectiveness of the regional development agencies in respect of coastal towns? It has been represented to us that coastal towns have certain characteristics in common which differentiate them from non-coastal towns and there seems to be a difference of opinion as to whether RDAs are effectively meeting the needs of coastal towns or not; some RDAs seem to be and some others not. What do you think would be the advantage of requiring RDAs to have a specific coastal strategy, assuming they have a coast obviously?

Margaret Hodge: May I go back a step to the presumption that coastal towns have many features in common? It is true that they do, but if you look at the regional dimension it could well be that a coastal town has more in common with a nearby market town than it does with a coastal town elsewhere in the country. Coastal towns themselves have very different features, so I think this presumption that all coastal towns are the same is the first one I would question. The second point I would make is that we deliberately took the decision to give the RDAs maximum flexibility, which is why we gave them a single funding pot. A suggestion that we should in a sense ring-fence activity and funding around a particular category - coastal towns - although those coastal towns may face challenges, runs counter to the policy of devolving power to the region which we think is the best tier in which to intervene in the economy where the market is failing. Having said that, I just want to say a third thing. In preparing for this I looked at what the RDAs were doing and every RDA - all except London, which has no coast to it - had developed strategies to tackle the specific issues which face the coastal towns in their regions. They are all called something different: Yorkshire has a renaissance programme for its towns and cities; EMDA is doing quite a lot, but it has a coastal action zone on the Lincolnshire coast; SEEDA has a south-east coastal strategy which runs from Whitstable in North Kent to Southampton; the South West RDA has a market and coastal towns' initiative with a special association where they have brought together lots of funding; One North East has a framework for the development of the visitor economy; EEDA is doing things around Yarmouth, Lowestoft, Felixstowe, Harwich and in Southend where they have set up Renaissance Southern; North West has a new vision for north-west coastal resorts which was actually in 2003. Without direction they are all cognizant of the particular challenges which face them around the economies in coastal towns and are tackling them.

Q430 Chair: Notwithstanding that, the East Riding of Yorkshire did actually say that their "... RDA was very much based on sub-regions which cut across the coastal strip", so it is not uniform and there are some areas where people feel it is difficult. May I ask where tourism fits into the RDAs' strategy in relation to coastal towns?

Margaret Hodge: Tourism is one of the industries which they will want to sponsor where relevant and where they will wish to tackle challenges, again where relevant. Tourism is changing hugely: there is a growth in day tourists and probably a decline in people staying there, but, again, if I look at the RDA record, in Morecambe they are actually putting money into an urban splash development for the Midland Hotel which is part of the tourism strategy. Almost all the RDAs, as I looked through their actual expenditure programmes, have programmes which will support tourism in their area. Take another one, Blackpool: there is a Re-Blackpool URC which is doing something about a central gateway into Blackpool, which is about green space and sports, a central promenade investment. There is stuff going on in every RDA which is trying to reduce the gap we talked about last year in economic growth and prosperity within their regions and obviously promoting tourism as one of the industries which are a feature of the coastal towns.

Q431 Anne Main: I should like to pick up on the fact that the Minister said many of the RDAs are doing things in different ways. That was part of the problem which was raised by Kent County Council. They said that the funding in their case was being channelled through the area strategic partnerships and this was breaking up geographical boundaries. It appears to me that what has come over from the evidence is that we have a somewhat fragmented approach and as a result we are not getting a vision for coastal towns. What do you think about that?

Margaret Hodge: I do not agree; it is as simple as that. Kent falls into the SEEDA area where they are actually developing a pretty consistent approach right across their coast. You might argue that there ought to be a national strategy around coastal towns. What you come up against there is the Government's policy that we believe in devolving power and resources to the lowest tier possible and for these purposes we think the region is the best tier. I think that is the best place to take those decisions. These coastal towns - think of Blackpool and Bournemouth - are all very, very different. The idea that we could nationally, either in DTI or in DCLG, establish what is an appropriate solution for the very different things for Southport against some of the ones in the South East or the South West is misconceived. I would rather do it ... Having said that, what I do accept is that there are real issues around coastal towns and we probably in the past have not focused on those issues sufficiently; we need to do more so in the future. What I also accept is that clearly there is something to be gained from sharing the experiences. If we can create fora where people can talk to each other, share what they have done, that is to the benefit of all. Where should the decision be taken? No, not in Whitehall and yes, in the regions and sub-regions.

Q432 Dr Pugh: May I take you back to tourism for a second? When we were discussing tourism and what the RDAs do for tourism, you mentioned two examples from the North West, Morecambe and Blackpool. You are aware, are you not, that the North West Development Agency is considered to be one of the better-performing development agencies by external audited assessment?

Margaret Hodge: They have not all been assessed yet. We have had two assessed by the NAO - presumably the North West was one - and both the ones which have been assessed have done well.

Q433 Dr Pugh: You will recall what they were given a black mark for, will you not?

Margaret Hodge: No.

Q434 Dr Pugh: It was tourism and their development and promulgation of tourism. They are not the best; I think they would recognise that themselves. They have taken over this new brief in part.

Margaret Hodge: I have to come back to you and ask whether you are saying to me that what they are doing in Southport, for example, where they are trying to renovate the pier and the trams, is a bad thing? Is what they are doing in Blackpool, which I described, what they are doing in Morecambe a bad thing?

Q435 Dr Pugh: I am not saying anything. I am just saying that following external assessment and by their own confession I think they would acknowledge that tourism is not one of the areas where they are performing at their best by their own standards and relative possibly to other development agencies.

Margaret Hodge: I do not want to put them down, but have they said that to you?

Q436 Dr Pugh: Their own documents reveal it. If the Minister is not aware of them, I can certainly present them to the Minister and they will show under-performance in that area and a recognised under-performance which they wish to attend to. That brings me on to the question I really wanted to ask. There is a feeling that the RDAs are not really well attuned to the problems of coastal towns and tourism as well, in fact the East Riding of Yorkshire Council said "Because of the quite distinct urban and rural split within the RDA neither team fully understands the needs of a coastal town". There is a perception, is there not, that RDAs were set up to deal with economic blight and under-achievement in cities and all that kind of thing? Do you not feel they have not sufficiently got to grips both with the problems of coastal towns and the potential which exists for tourism within coastal towns and the economic benefit that brings?

Margaret Hodge: Let me correct some things in that contribution. The first thing is that RDAs were established to promote economic growth in all our regions and to close the gap in economic prosperity between regions. They are not just set up to deal with poor economic growth: they are there to keep us pushing forward. They are not just dealing with the weaker economies within their regions: they are dealing with the whole of the region and encouraging economic growth. The second thing is that what I would accept - it is not a particular RDA issue - is that we as a nation have probably not focused sufficiently on the issues around coastal towns, hence this inquiry, hence the work which is going on in RDAs, hence the academic work which is being done around coastal towns. I welcome that focus on coastal towns. I have just recently been involved in having to re-draw the map of those areas which are given assisted area status and a number of coastal towns fell out of that under the EU criteria for one reason or another. That is a problem which I am going to think about at a national level, how we can ensure that we have sufficient and appropriate resources in the coastal towns. However, from my reading of what the RDAs are doing, they do recognise the importance of tourism as an industry in their area, they are tackling it, they do acknowledge and recognise that coastal towns have specific problems; they are attempting to do that. They have more to do, they could share better and it is a new area of policy where ideas will evolve as we find out what works.

Q437 Dr Pugh: On the "more to do" bit, do you think it fair to expect the RDAs, given their increased responsibility for tourism, to reflect that in their staffing structures?

Margaret Hodge: With the greatest respect, I do not think that we at government level should get involved in the staffing structures of RDAs. I am quite surprised to see a Liberal Democrat who believes in devolution of powers suggesting that.

Q438 Dr Pugh: You have more control of the RDAs than I have.

Margaret Hodge: I do not want to be involved in the staffing structures of RDAs full stop.

Q439 Anne Main: You keep saying we need to do more but you also say we have no ring-fencing. I actually struggle with the concept that we need to do more without telling the RDAs what to do. Many coastal towns say they struggle to attract significant inward investment levels. What action, if any, is the DTI taking to encourage inward investment in coastal towns? I do not know whether the Minister has already answered that by saying there is no ring-fencing and she is going to stay out of it. I would welcome a bit more clarity on that one.

Margaret Hodge: First of all may I say that coastal towns are different: some are doing extremely well. I have two tables in front of me, one on employment rates and the other on gross value added rates. If you look at unemployment, greater Worthing, Weymouth, greater Bournemouth, Eastbourne ---

Q440 Anne Main: I asked about inward investment.

Margaret Hodge: These are all towns where their employment rates have increased at a faster rate than the national average. We then look at the other end. What I am trying to say is that a universal prescription around coastal towns is inappropriate. If you look at other coastal towns, there are some real problems and ones which lots of us know about. I was in Great Yarmouth two or three weeks ago, Hastings, greater Blackpool. If you look at GVA, some are doing much better than the national average.

Q441 Anne Main: I am sorry; I really want to know what steps the DTI is taking, if any, to encourage inward investment in coastal towns.

Margaret Hodge: Do you mean inward investment into the area or inward investment from abroad? Do you mean from elsewhere in the UK?

Q442 Anne Main: From wherever is appropriate.

Margaret Hodge: Growth. You just want new jobs, new business, those sorts of things.

Anne Main: Yes, inward investment and growing indigenous businesses.

Q443 Mr Olner: That is what the RDAs do.

Margaret Hodge: Yes, that is what the RDAs do.

Q444 Anne Main: So the DTI is actually standing back from that.

Margaret Hodge: I have very regular discussions with the RDAs; I meet the RDA chairs every six weeks; I take a close interest in their business plan; I see their regional economic strategies. To that extent there is a constant conversation between the DTI, officials and ministers, and the RDAs. The RDAs are tasked with the job of encouraging inward investment, encouraging growth and dealing with disparities in their regions.

Q445 Anne Main: In that case, is your department taking any action to monitor the investment levels and business growth by the RDAs?

Margaret Hodge: Yes, we do that and it is reported to Parliament, as I said in evidence to this Committee last week. You can pick up what the RDAs are doing from their output data, their six-monthly reports to Parliament. I think I am right on that but I shall correct myself if I am wrong on that. I think there are six-monthly reports to Parliament.

Q446 Chair: May I say that when we had the representative from DWP here the Committee found it quite difficult to believe the numbers he was putting before us in that most people in many coastal towns, not all, had been saying that it was a low wage seasonal economy, yet the rates of temporary work, as recorded by the DWP, seemed pretty low. We are in no position to challenge them, but suffice it to say that what the DWP told us did not seem to accord with the qualitative impression we have been given by certain towns. I just mention it to you.

Margaret Hodge: I am happy to provide you with the statistics we have which are in the public domain. What they show is a differential rate of performance.

Chair: We had it for specific towns and I cannot recall now just which ones. What the DWP were giving us just seemed counter-intuitive. We are in no position to challenge the figures, but we just felt they were wrong.

Q447 Lyn Brown: The figures which were given to us were the labour force survey figures and in our probing what we wondered was whether or not there was any real knowledge beneath the basic figures we were given. There did seem to be seasonal work, but what we could not work out was whether or not people came in to do the seasonal work and then left. What we could also not work out was how much of the economy was based on tourism. We just wondered as a committee whether or not there might have been value to additional pieces of work which could explore the specific phenomena within coastal towns and give us a bit more information. None of us thought that the labour force figures were bad per se in what they showed, but we did wonder whether or not there might be a little bit more mining which could happen which would give us a clearer picture.

Margaret Hodge: I think that is right. The picture is complicated: there are some coastal areas where seasonal work is taken up by migrant labour of one sort or another; in other areas seasonal work is taken up by local labour. If you talk about a feature of a coastal town, the low wage, low income, low skill, seasonal employment is a feature. What I am saying to you is that if you were to say to Government, look at coastal towns, you are looking at some extremely successful coastal towns alongside some coastal towns which have real challenges. The question you then have to ask is what the best way of tackling those challenges is. Is it best for Government to tackle it or is it best at the RDA and sub-regional level, relationships between RDAs, local authorities and other interests? I would put to you that I think the better way forward is to do it at the regional level with sub-regional partnerships, always saying of course that information should be shared across the piece and of course more research and a better understanding of the sorts of issues which face communities in coastal towns is of benefit to us all.

Q448 Mr Betts: Someone who did not know better might paraphrase your answers to us by saying you have set up the RDAs, it is nothing to do with you now, let them get on with it.

Margaret Hodge: No. What I have said is that it is a function of the RDAs, that is the appropriate place to place it. The issue of tackling some of the challenges facing communities in coastal towns is new. There needs to be additional thinking about that, quite a lot of research has been done, some by Sheffield University, which is very helpful. We need to keep thinking about the issues, but where is the best tier in which to take action? I do not think it is in DTI, I think it is down in the localities.

Q449 Mr Betts: Two points to which you alluded. I just want to know where in the Department this sort of thing happens. Is there no attempt to monitor the performance of different RDAs one against the other in terms of how well they are doing on coastal towns?

Margaret Hodge: Yes.

Q450 Mr Betts: If so, what is that system and how does it operate? Secondly, yes, coastal towns are very different but similarities might be that Morecambe is not very similar to Blackpool in the same region but might have some similarities with Bridlington or Scarborough in another region. What is the mechanism for pulling together whether initiatives are successful in one area which could then be replicated and produced in another area to similar effect?

Margaret Hodge: Do we monitor it at that detailed level? Probably not enough. Should we do more? Probably yes. I am reviewing our monitoring data on RDAs. We are half way through the NAO exercise so I want to see what comes out of that. As part of the CSR, the Comprehensive Spending Review exercise we are now looking at evaluation and monitoring and seeing whether we can improve it and we probably can. The answer is that you probably could pick out of the monitoring a comparative evaluation about how RDAs are performing around their coastal towns. Has that been done? No, it has not. Could we do it? I shall look at that. Would it be an interesting thing to do? Yes, probably. What mechanisms are there for sharing experience? Part of that is DTI, where we hold the data from all the RDAs so we have a function there. Remember that one of the benefits of the regional tier is that it is easier to get ten people round the table than it is to get however many local authorities. There is a huge amount of collaboration between the RDAs on sharing best practice but, again, we could do more; not in this area but in other areas we do not do enough. I think SEEDA - and I shall come back to the Committee if I am wrong - does take the lead among the RDAs on the issue around coastal towns, so I assume that becomes a forum in which they can share their experience and find out what has worked best. Can we improve that? We can always improve those mechanisms. I come back to this point: coastal towns are an emerging issue on which undoubtedly all of us can do more work.

Q451 Anne Main: Given that they may be sharing best practice, what sanctions are there, if any, or what, if anything, is done if an RDA is performing badly according to your assessment after you have evaluated their data?

Margaret Hodge: Interestingly enough, we are just looking in relation to the Comprehensive Spending Review at whether we should consider a similar awards mechanism that they have in local authorities where, if you do better you get greater freedom. I cannot remember the term which is currently used to describe that but something along those lines.

Q452 Chair: Earned autonomy.

Margaret Hodge: Thank you. A mechanism of earned autonomy, which is slightly praising the good. Clearly the NAO audit will be the first interesting evaluation. We have the performance data, which is open to all of us as parliamentarians and I have it as the Minister responsible, and I have said I want to develop rather more sophisticated evaluation data as part of the CSR.

Q453 Mr Olner: You mentioned a review of your department and I just wondered whether you had a specific team within your department in the DTI which has responsibility for coastal towns, not for giving them money which I think is the RDAs' job. Is there a department in your department which keeps its eye on the overall economic plight of some of these coastal towns?

Margaret Hodge: We have a team which supports our regional policies and within that coastal towns will be one of the areas, as will the coal-mining communities or anything. There is a whole set of issues which you could define, such as market towns; you could look at all sorts of definitions which might warrant a sharing of information, a sharing of knowledge, a sharing of what works in terms of interventions. We do not have anything specific for coastal towns but clearly we focus on those issues of importance and again I say coastal towns are an important issue. It came really home to me when I was doing the assisted area map because a number of coastal towns fell out under the criteria established by Europe. Great Yarmouth was one where we know the need is huge, where there is high unemployment, where there is a lot of seasonal employment, where wages are low, yet because Lowestoft had improved so much and therefore no longer met the criteria necessary to be described as an assisted area that had a knock-on effect on our ability to find sufficient population to cover Great Yarmouth. There are issues like that. Dover was another one, Blackpool was another one which has not come in as an assisted area where we know there are issues and we know that we need to focus our interventions because the market is failing.

Q454 Mr Olner: That leads me very neatly on to what, if anything, your department is able to do about levering in some European monies. You are obviously very correct in saying that coastal towns are extremely diverse and I just wonder about the European fisheries policy and how some of the fishing industry in coastal towns has been particularly hit. Not wishing you to encroach on another Minister's views, surely your Department as a lead Department has a view on that.

Margaret Hodge: I am not going to encroach on fisheries policy which I know Barry can help you with. However, I do have a view on European funding and I am expressing it now. I think what I am trying to do for those areas which did not obtain assisted area status is try to ensure that they get what is known as tier three status, which means that the small- and medium-sized enterprises in those areas can access state support at a lower rate but nevertheless state support for those enterprises. We are trying to ensure that happens. The structural funds, and I made a statement on Monday this week to the House on how we intend to allocate those, do not have any geographical boundaries and I would hope that access to those structural funds will be open to those coastal towns which need extra government intervention and support and that we can do that. I have a list of projects where coastal towns had support from European regional development funds: Cromer seafront enhancement programme, something called Into Great Yarmouth ---

Q455 Chair: Perhaps you could leave the list with us.

Margaret Hodge: I shall leave the list with you. It is not a complete list, it is an indicative list, but I am happy to leave that with you.

Q456 Mr Olner: As you will see, we have four ministers giving evidence to us today on coastal towns. I notice you are not all in the room at the same time, but I wonder whether you and your staff are in the same office at the same time because obviously the plight of some coastal towns affects very much what each of your respective departments does. I just wondered whether there were meetings at ministerial level. At what level in the system do you coordinate?

Margaret Hodge: Talk about coastal towns?

Q457 Mr Olner: Yes.

Margaret Hodge: I suppose the honest answer is that we do not at present and that is a perfectly valid issue for you to raise with us. Perhaps we should, as this evolves as an area of policy, try to see what cross-government action could benefit. It is a good idea.

Chair: Thank you for being so honest with us. Thank you very much.

Witness: Barry Gardiner, a Member of the House, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Biodiversity, Landscape and Rural Affairs, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, gave evidence.

 

Chair: I do not intend us to have an in-depth discussion, or any discussion at all frankly, about the EU fisheries policy. Could we move instead to the first question?

Q458 Mr Betts: Most of the questions will be about sustainability and what the Government can do to help preserve the future of coastal towns. The reality surely is that some towns are already crumbling away into the sea, others, with global warming, may at some stage get washed away or flooded. Is one of the functions of your Department not to be looking at whether it is realistic in the long term to sustain some of these towns at all or whether in fact we may be wasting money now trying to attract investment there for towns which really have no future at all?

Barry Gardiner: Let me begin by apologising and that is not for who I am but for who I am not this afternoon because the Flood and Coastal Defence Minister was supposed to be in China and the Fisheries Minister and Marine Bill Minister were supposed to be elsewhere - I cannot remember where. So you have me who is not the specialist in either of these areas, but I hope we do talk to each other across our own Department as well as inter departments and I shall try to cover the brief as best I can. To respond specifically to that, it is clear that the last person in authority in England to try to hold back the sea was called Canute and he was singularly unsuccessful in that. I take it that nobody is suggesting that we should be doing that, but what we do have to take account of here is that there are significant communities all around our coastline who quite understandably expect that Government are going to help and support them in flood defence management. That is why what we have been trying to do is to bring together, in a far more integrated way than has happened hitherto, the whole spatial planning and we hope through the Marine Bill ultimately the planning of the marine environment, the land environment and through the methodology which has been given to us through the EU of integrated coastal zone management. We are spending increasing amounts on coastal and flood defence. I think that is right, but I think you are right also to suggest that what we should be trying to do is to work with the natural environment instead of seeing ourselves as working against it. Experience shows that where we simply try to work against it and put up defence measures per se often what happens is that nature finds a way round and that can cause more havoc further down the coast than you have prevented in the place where you put up the defence.

Q459 Mr Betts: At what point are you planning to identify some areas where we may have to say to communities that their area is not sustainable physically and we are presumably then going to have some serious planning to do about relocation of those communities, compensation and all those sorts of issues. How far advanced is that planning process?

Barry Gardiner: If you ask me whether we have identified or the Environment Agency has identified specific communities where we have to say the game is up, the answer to that is no. Increasingly what we are talking about - and this is part of the resilience pilot which we have already put under way - is piloting grant schemes to make properties more flood resistant and resilient in areas where community schemes may actually be impracticable. That is part of this responsive approach to the environment, trying to say that for the level of risk one has here, for the occasional flooding one is going to see from a particular estuary, then perhaps the appropriate response here is not simply to build a wall and think one can protect the whole community, but is more in this resilience planning method.

Q460 Mr Betts: That has not quite answered the question, has it? Planning going on about some areas which may not be sustainable. At what point does that get shared with those communities and with other government departments? In the meantime it is quite likely that someone else in Government is offering some grants to somebody to invest in that area and to attract business to employ the people who do live there.

Barry Gardiner: This is precisely why we want the Environment Agency to take the strategic overview, because we believe that is absolutely the best way to ensure that we can get a holistic approach here and we can identify exactly those problems. You are asking me at what point on a scale and the answer is that I do not know. That is a matter which the Environment Agency will have to consider and determine as part of the process of coastal management and coastal zone management in which it is engaged. We do think it is important that there is that strategic overview and we are consulting on a proposed model for the EA to exercise that role. In effect the Agency would become the lead authority for all sea flooding and coastal erosion issues; it would take a lead role in long-term planning; it would have a key role in the decision about allocation of resources and in managing delivery of the defences. It would do that of course in partnership with the local authorities. That is the vision we have for the future and that is what we are consulting on at the moment. You want me in a sense to run before I can walk. What I am saying is that at the moment we are at the point where we are consulting on that framework which we believe will be able to give a much more integrated, much more coherent approach to this problem. I am afraid you want to take me a bit further down the road and for me to say at what point they would then go to a community and tell people that they are going to have to say that this part of this community is not one which can actually be defended against climate change or against erosion.

Q461 Mr Hands: You have answered the gist of what I was going to ask in your last answer. However, in terms of the Environment Agency, it sounds as though the Environment Agency will be making the decision effectively about the future of one of these developments and obviously all kinds of factors will have to be taken into account. You said the Environment Agency in consultation with the relevant local authority or authorities. I just have a feeling, having seen various citizen action groups over the years, that they are going to want to know who is in charge on an elected basis of making the decision which effectively ends their community. Is it going to be the case that the Environment Agency is going to be the person for them to seek to lobby or blame or is there going to be a ministerial decision above that?

Barry Gardiner: It is critically important that we recognise the role of the local planning authorities and they must play a key and important part in this.

Q462 Mr Hands: Presumably the local authority would never make such a decision to end one of their communities on the basis that those are the people who vote for the local authority. Essentially the local authority will always say it is the Environment Agency. Who will people think is accountable for the decision to end their community?

Barry Gardiner: Ultimately I am sure you know that the people who are always accountable are politicians and ministers.

Q463 Mr Hands: Yes, but which one?

Barry Gardiner: As the ministers in the Department that accountability would come back to, Defra because the Environment Agency is an agency of Defra. It is always important that ministers should be taking decisions on the basis of evidence and on the basis of coherent strategic planning policy. That is what we are trying to ensure happens through the role of the Environment Agency working alongside the local planning authorities.

Q464 Mr Hands: What worries me still is that in the meantime other government departments could be carrying on spending money on communities which the Environment Agency might in three or four years' time say have no future.

Barry Gardiner: With respect, nothing that is happening in terms of the setting up of this more integrated approach is going to change the status quo in that respect. Climate change is an inevitability; we know that. Coastal erosion is an inevitability; we know that. Therefore it is quite possible that is happening now. It is not going suddenly to start happening because of the change in the way in which the Environment Agency is working with local authorities.

Q465 Chair: Before we move on to talk about the integrated coastal management zones can we have a bit of clarity? At the moment presumably there is nothing to stop the RDA pouring a load of money into coastal town A even though the Environment Agency thinks that half of coastal town A is going to be beneath the sea in ten years' time. Is that the case or would that information be available to the RDA and therefore would it not be extremely foolish to be taking that decision now?

Barry Gardiner: No. Let us establish a couple of things. It is clear that at the moment the Environment Agency and the RDAs do talk to each other. It is not that they are going to find suddenly this wonderful contrivance the telephone and be able to speak to each other: that information is there already. The change will be in that there will be a much more strategic role for the RDA in the planning, the defence planning and the management planning, as communities may wish to expand or not the areas into which they may wish to expand and the potential risks to which they would be exposed if they were to do that. That is the role which is envisaged, that strategic overview role. Of course at the moment they talk to each other, of course at the moment the RDAs are looking to make sensible strategic investment in local infrastructure, in the local skills base, in the sort of things you were talking to Margaret about earlier in terms of skills base for tourism and so on.

Q466 Mr Betts: So already the RDAs may be getting on the telephone and be being told by the Environment Agency to be very careful about putting money in somewhere because they are actually looking at it as a possible issue of concern.

Barry Gardiner: The Environment Agency is already working in many areas looking at flood defence and coastal erosion. I do not want to bore you with lists, because I saw what happened to Margaret.

Q467 Chair: We had some pictures from the Environment Agency which were extremely graphic.

Barry Gardiner: They are already spending £100 million on major infrastructure projects for coastal defence and flood defence. They are already aware of areas where there are such problems, but of course the RDAs are aware of that as well. Regional Development Agencies are well tapped in to what is going on in their regions and, as Margaret said to you earlier, that is the whole point: it is to devolve that autonomy, that knowledge down the chain and get decisions being taken in the light of that local knowledge.

Q468 Anne Main: I should like you to expand a bit on the inter-departmental work but I do think Clive had a very valid point. Really the decisions to be making large inter-departmental decisions rather than individual departmental decisions need to be taken soon rather than later, from what you have described, otherwise we could be ending up with departments working at odds with each other for a considerable period of time. I should be quite interested to know whether you can tell me what steps you are taking to improve the coordination of coastal policy between departments so we do not have exactly what Clive described which is basically investment going in only to have the rug pulled from underneath the community down the line.

Barry Gardiner: We actually work very closely with DCLG on these matters.

Q469 Anne Main: Could you give us examples?

Barry Gardiner: Yes, certainly. I can give you one or two: PPG20 and PPG25. These are guidances which we are working on with DCLG. If I could just get for you exactly what we are doing with them on that, planning policy guidance 20 on coastal planning provides the basis for coastal planning stating that developments should not be allowed on land which is affected or likely to be affected by erosion or land instability and that local development plans should clearly show where those areas are. That is the existing PPG20. Against that, what we are now introducing in the Marine Bill and what will be, as part of the integrated coastal zone management, trying to make sure that we then work very closely with them after the Marine Bill is in place to see what revisions need then to occur to PPG20 to bolster that and make it a much more holistic, integrated view which is looking at what is happening in the marine environment as well as on the land environment. This is one of the ways in which we are already working for what is quite some time down the line to make sure that their planning policy guidance is going to line up with the sort of new integrated approach we are taking. If there are other points on which you would like specific examples of how we are working together ---

Q470 Anne Main: That is working together on a planning policy statement. The wider picture to which Clive was referring, and which I am still not really happy with, is the strategy for the whole area being referred to. It could well be that in a regional development area there does not seem to be a strategy for the whole area.

Barry Gardiner: No, that is absolutely wrong and that is exactly what we are seeking to address and actually making more integrated and more strategic.

Q471 Anne Main: How?

Barry Gardiner: Let me explain how: putting through shoreline management plans. In the last ten years the progress we have made with shoreline management plans now covers 6,000 kilometres of coast in England and Wales. Those plans form the basis of the work which is done then between the local authorities and the Environment Agency; they form an agreed basis, if you like, for managing that area. That is part of the whole integrated coastal zone management approach to this that what we are doing is trying to set out in a much more coherent and much more holistic way what is going on both in the marine and on the land environment where the coast is affected. It provides the infrastructure for us to do that. I could give you other examples of ways in which Defra as a department is working closely with DCLG and other departments: for example, in terms of the specific issues I know you will be raising with other ministers, on housing we have put together the Affordable Rural Housing Commission and the report they have now produced and both departments working together to address that need; the question of tourism and the impact that has and the low wages which are often there within the tourist industry and within small coastal towns. These are things which are part of the whole rural agenda we have in Defra, because of course many coastal towns are a very significant nodal point for a wider rural area.

Q472 Anne Main: Did you just say that your Department would have an impact on the development of tourism? That did not seem to be what the Minister said to us earlier. It seemed to be to leave it to the RDAs.

Barry Gardiner: I am sorry, I did not say that. What I said was that these are areas where we speak closely and in fact I speak to the RDAs as well because we put in about £80 million of funding to the single pot, to the RDAs, precisely to deliver on the rural agenda. Although the RDAs are line managed in silo, as it were, from DTI, as Defra we actually are contributing to that single pot and we expect our PSA targets to be delivered out of that in exactly the same way. There is "joined-upness" here; there really is coherence across Government in terms of the approach we take and the importance we attach to many of these smaller coastal towns because of the effect they have on the rural area in which they are situated.

Q473 Dr Pugh: You talked about the excellent cooperation which exists between government departments where they are all singing from the same song sheet, but there are occasions when they will not be, are there not?

Barry Gardiner: I do not want to give an over-rosy impression. There are tensions sometimes.

Q474 Dr Pugh: What we should be interested in hearing about from you is how you deal with conflicts. Sometimes Defra's responsibilities will lead them through action on habitat preservation and the DCLG may want to stimulate housing growth; you may wish to look after some site of special scientific interest and there may be a conflict between that and tourism initiatives. Therefore councils, in furthering their aims, may talk to different government departments in different accents, as it were. How do you address this inter-departmental conflict which occurs because they are working to two different government departments?

Barry Gardiner: Yes, but government departments may have specific focuses and specific things they are trying to achieve and you gave an example of housing development. Let me take that as a good example of where very often, at a governmental and at a regional level, grant is allocated for public sector housing in an aggregated way and it makes it very difficult for small towns to get that development in place where the cost of any particular small scheme, say five or six houses, is proportionately much higher per unit than if you are doing it in an urban conurbation where you are able to put in 100 or 150 units. The point is that Government also recognise, whilst you want to get maximum bang for your buck, you want maximum return on your policy for the money you put in, that there is an argument of equity here and that there has to be some form of disaggregation, that there have to be some ways of ensuring that there is equity for people in remote, high-cost-of-land rural communities who equally need to be able to access housing because they have the same housing need. The way we resolve that in Government is precisely as we have done, by setting up an Affordable Rural Housing Commission, by listening to the recommendations that it made and by then working together as departments across Government to deliver on that wider agenda of maximum effectiveness, but also equity.

Q475 Dr Pugh: With respect, what I was really trying to get at was that there are quite clearly going to be conflicts from time to time between habitat preservation and housing growth. In the local authority area they will take an overview, they will strike some sort of balance. You could imagine at RDA level they will take an overview, they will wish to strike some kind of balance, but the government departments may well be working in individual silos and no overview is taken at government level and that can be a complication.

Barry Gardiner: That is exactly what I am telling you we do do: we do speak to each other, we do take an overview and we do try to resolve those problems at a government level. Of course we are all trying to achieve the maximum within our own given area, but we do recognise that occasionally the convergence of that can bring tensions. It is then for us to resolve that as Government in the appropriate government sub-committees, the cross-departmental committees, where we do precisely that. Actually the best ways in which Government do it are by setting up things like the Affordable Rural Housing Commission to help us by getting the local knowledge which is precisely living with these tensions and is able to see it from a slightly different perspective.

Q476 Chair: May I put this in a slightly different way? One of the issues which has been drawn to our attention by a number of previous witnesses in earlier sessions is that because the Environment Agency's remit is coastal and flood defences they do not always maximise the potential economic regeneration benefit which might be derived for certain communities if the flood defences were planned in such a way that they also took note of economic regeneration needs, for example like providing a nice promenade that people might want to walk up and down. I merely use that as an example.

Barry Gardiner: That is not a point which has been made to me before but it is certainly one which I should be very happy to pursue with the Environment Agency. If one were to look at a very good example of best practice, and one which has been quite topical at the moment, British Waterways and what they have been able to do with the increase in their funding over the past seven or eight years, it has been quite extraordinary because what they have done is precisely, having coped with the backlog of safety and maintenance that they needed to put right, to embark on a very impressive and innovative property development and regeneration programme. In many parts of the country what they have done is used that investment precisely not just to create the 200 miles of new waterways, expanding the network by ten per cent, but they have actually also at the same time created regeneration hotspots through doing that. That has been by very astute, very experienced and skilled use of the property portfolio and management of that and the dialogue they have entered with the private sector.

Q477 Chair: We should like to encourage you to take that example to the Environment Agency. It was pointed out to us that in many of these communities the sums of money invested by the Environment Agency are very, very large, much larger than any other agency and that some benefit should be derived.

Barry Gardiner: That is a very fair point. It is not one which has been made to me before, but if that is the case then I should be very happy to speak with them to make sure that we do manage it in such a way that we maximise the regeneration opportunities.

Chair: Thank you very much.

Witness: Rt Hon Richard Caborn, a Member of the House, Minister of State for Sport, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, gave evidence.

 

Chair: Welcome Minister. As you know, we are looking at coastal towns and taking this up with a number of ministers with different responsibilities.

Q478 Dr Pugh: May I start off with a very easy question? What action is your Department taking to monitor the number of domestic and overseas visitors to coastal towns and also how much they spend, which is the key factor?

Mr Caborn: I do not think they monitor specifically visitors to coastal towns; that would be an expensive exercise. We are accused of too much bureaucracy as it is now. We can give you figures and a breakdown in writing from VisitBritain of how many are coming here and we can ask them if they would make a stab at whether they believe they are going into coastal towns. It would be very difficult to see exactly. We are trying desperately to make sure that this great capital of ours, London, is a gateway into the whole of the United Kingdom of which coastal towns are part. If you are asking me specifically whether we have a breakdown of those figures, I do not think we have, but I shall ask VisitBritain to provide you in writing with the best stab possible at that.

Q479 Dr Pugh: In terms of profiling tourist patterns to the British coast, do you have no information at all? Do you have anything you can provide to us?

Mr Caborn: Britain received 91 million spending £16.2 billion, England accounted for 70.8 million of these holidays and £12.2 billion of the total spend. That is domestic holidays involving at least one overnight stay in the year 2003. The British took 20.5 million seaside holidays in the UK, spending £4.7 billion; England accounted for 19.1 million of these and £3.5 billion of the total spend. As a proportion of all holidays, seaside holidays in England by British account for 27 per cent of holiday trips, 32 per cent of all nights and 29 per cent of all spend. That does not give you what you were asking, which was on seaside holidays. If we have any further detailed analysis on that, I shall send it in writing to your Clerk.

Q480 Dr Pugh: Do you think it worthwhile getting that sort of information and checking on what is basically a national institution, the English seaside town?

Mr Caborn: It depends what you want. I should have thought that it would be far better and time spent far better to make sure that the regional development agencies do factor this into their economic strategies. As you probably well know, my Department just a little over three years ago brought the RDAs into play on this. We thought it was an important part of the economic driver of a region. I am talking now about tourism. We gave that responsibility to the RDAs. What has happened since then, if you look at the statistics over the three years, is that the spend now is about £52 million through the RDAs of which we shall be spending through our Department, ring-fenced, about £3.5 million. I think overall the investment through the regional development agencies has been considerable and some of that obviously will have hit the areas you are talking about here. That is part of it. My view would be to make sure that they are factored in very much to the economic strategy of each of those regions. You get copies of that like I do and indeed every other MP and indeed the various authorities do make comments on that. They are driving up the economic wellbeing of their regions driven by GDP per capita.

Q481 Dr Pugh: Having given this largesse to the RDAs and also the responsibility, how do you measure the success of that enterprise in terms of getting a result?

Mr Caborn: It is very simple. They were set up by statute and their drive is to create wealth and that is measured by GDP.

Q482 Dr Pugh: Specifically on the tourist function.

Mr Caborn: Tourism is part of that. They are charged with driving up GDP per capita and wealth creation in the regions and tourism is a part of that.

Q483 Dr Pugh: Do they do it?

Mr Caborn: I think they do. If you look at the Hallam report on seaside economy, overall, talking about tourism specifically, you will see that, contrary to popular belief, during 1971-2001 total employment at the seaside grew by some 320,000, or more than 20 per cent. You have had a copy of the report. I think the general direction is showing what that is doing. It is absolutely true that a lot more could be done and that is why we saw tourism much more as an economic driver for the regions than stand-alone as it was three years ago.

Q484 Dr Pugh: Are you satisfied both that a good job is being done and that it is being properly assessed?

Mr Caborn: No, I am never satisfied. I think more can be done and we are in a changing world. I know for example that tourism generally is the fourth largest sector, something like £75 billion. We are running the largest deficit of any sector in industry, something like £15 billion, when that was broadly neutral just over a decade ago. I cannot say that is satisfactory by any stretch of the imagination and that is why the RDAs are looking at this specifically. There are many areas of tourism which need to be exploited. The Olympic Games give us a great opportunity to do that, but things like business tourism, educational tourism, many of those niche markets, have not been exploited to the degree they ought to be. That is why I say to the resorts that they have to think in a modern way as well. I am not satisfied; far from it.

Q485 Lyn Brown: Some of the issues we have been looking at have been down-at-heel resorts, possibly decaying attractions, seaside hotels which have now become homes for multiple occupation. Do you think more needs to be done? Do you think there needs to be a more robust methodology to improve the offer that our seaside towns are making in the tourist economy? Has the DCMS got a strategy for doing so?

Mr Caborn: I know that you are looking specifically at the seaside, but overall, as far as tourism is concerned, it has always been one of those Cinderella industries and I know that my Department over the recent past has been trying to drive the quality up. We have been doing that with the whole fitness-for-purpose, the quality counts, all those have been developed. When I was a tourism minister a few years ago I remember going to Blackpool and having long discussions. I remember going to Sussex and having discussions about how we can get proper investment, how we can get a proper career structure inside tourism and the wider industry. The industry has not invested in that way in the recent past. It is changing now and hopefully for the better. I also believe that there are some niche markets in tourism which have not been exploited.

Q486 Lyn Brown: I think you are right when you talk about it being a Cinderella industry. One of the issues for me has been the quality of the offer which is made. It does vary across the country and the ways and methodology for measuring that quality vary across the country. If I am going to the Lake District, which is an area I know fairly well, then I am fairly confident that, if I am looking at a four-star or five-star accommodation, it is going to deliver four- or five-star accommodation for me and I know the quality of the offer I am buying. Would you say that would be similar for the rest of the country or do you feel we have some way to go? If so, how are the bodies you have just mentioned going to help to deliver that?

Mr Caborn: The overall body for tourism is genuinely trying to look at how you can bring proper standardisation into the industry, a proper hallmarking of that. There are several markets now for quality hotels and they are trying to bring that into one. They have had some difficulties and no doubt some of the bigger hotels were reluctant to come into it, particularly the four- and five-star hotels. I believe that is still under discussion but progress has been made. You are right that we do need to have one standardisation if that is possible. Then we need a threshold in which you get to that standard and if you do not meet that standard you are not in that marketing campaign. That is indeed what the industry has been doing.

Q487 Lyn Brown: I am fascinated to hear what you say. Given the 2012 Olympics are going to be a huge opportunity for us to market tourism and indeed our coastal towns, how are you going to encourage the visitors to the Olympics to go into our coastal towns and how are we going to ensure the standardisation of the offer has some credibility?

Mr Caborn: How we are doing that is that we have asked every region to bring forward an Olympic strategy. We have put somebody in each region for a time working with the RDAs, working with the sports board, working with the tourism board and we are looking at a whole series of ways in which UK can benefit from the Olympics. We have a nations and regions committee set up under the Olympic board which is chaired by Charles Allen and all the regions and devolved administrations are represented on that. I would hope that over the coming weeks and months they will be coming forward with those strategies and part of that should be a proper tourism strategy involving the coastal towns. It is not just about the tourism there; it is about how they can attract other activities around sport. We shall probably be looking, I would guess, at around 200-odd teams from countries coming here for the Olympics and probably over 100 of those will be having holding camps. It could well be that some of those coastal towns with good facilities, particularly for aquatics, sailing, canoeing and so on could be attracting teams to come over and domicile themselves in those areas. I would suggest that there are a great many opportunities for coastal towns to benefit from the Olympics.

Q488 Anne Main: Written submissions have suggested that the allocations to local government via the revenue support grants and distributed locally do not reflect the number of day visitors and the great impact on coastal towns of having visitors. Do you have anything you wish to say about addressing that?

Mr Caborn: Not particularly. I thought that overall the investment from local authorities into tourism particularly had increased year on year over that period. Those were the statistics which were given to me.

Mr Hands: I think the question was more whether local authorities should be given greater funding for higher visitor numbers.

Anne Main: Yes, that is right. The funding just does not reflect the actual cost of supporting an area which is supposed to attract visitors.

Q489 Chair: That is a separate question. There are two separate questions. One is in relation to visitor numbers and the second is about what has been said to us about the fact that in many coastal towns they have a great deal of public space which they have to keep in good condition because it is part of their tourism offer; a lot more parks and things than would be justified for a town of similar size.

Mr Caborn: That is part of their economy, that is part of their wealth creation is it not? That is a judgment which will be made at the local authority level. That is a judgment they will make with the regional development agency in terms of where the investment is going to go. It will be a judgment which is made by Sport England in that region as to what they want to put in as a visitor attraction around recreation and open spaces. The whole public realm is a big issue in these areas. Those are judgments which are made by the local authority and we do not specifically say they will do X, Y, Z. That is what I thought local democracy was about.

Q490 Anne Main: Getting away from open spaces and onto the built environment, many important elements of the country's heritage are in coastal towns. Should the National Lottery develop a specific grant funding programme for coastal towns recognising that?

Mr Caborn: I do not think they should specifically. It is for them to judge; it is not for Government to intervene. We get criticised anyway on the Lottery that we interfere when we do not interfere; that is the allegation made particularly by Opposition parties but it is not true. The bodies are at arm's length from Government. They are set up and given a remit by Parliament to carry that out. If you believe that the Heritage Lottery Fund is not actually delivering for the area you are talking about, I would suggest that Members of Parliament write to the Heritage Lottery Fund. It is not for government ministers to direct that. We say that we are impartial in these areas and that they are at arm's length from Government. As you know, we have just had a debate in the House over the new Lottery Bill and we have made it very, very clear indeed that those funding bodies are at arm's length from Government. However, if you believe they are wrong, then you ought to take that up with the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Q491 Anne Main: So you do not believe there is any special case to be made for coastal towns to have any extra grants in any way, shape or form to support the heritage, the often crumbling Victorian piers and so on that they need to support, which are very, very expensive.

Mr Caborn: That is a decision for the Heritage Lottery Fund, if we are talking specifically about the Lottery Fund.

Q492 Anne Main: I was talking about any of the funding streams.

Mr Caborn: Any funding stream. As far as we are concerned, funding streams have been completed or there have been extra funds from the RDAs and the single regeneration budget. Over £1,234 million have gone to 517 projects in English coastal resorts. That is not Heritage Lottery Fund, that is what is levered off from the various other funding schemes which you referred to. I do go back and say that in terms of the Heritage Lottery Fund, it is their decisions not decisions of Government.

Q493 John Cummings: The British Resorts and Destinations Association told the Committee in evidence that there were 110 destination management organisations across England responsible for tourism delivery within their areas. Do you think this contributes to the tourism sector being currently too fragmented to promote seaside resorts?

Mr Caborn: It is a characteristic of British life. When I came into this job there were 400 governing bodies governing 130 sports. I found that in Trade as well. I agree with you that there are far too many bodies there and that really needs to be streamlined. I do believe that the initiative taken by Digby Jones of the CBI, probably about four or five years ago, has helped, through what we have done in VisitBritain as well, to start consolidating that into a much more focused position than we previously had.

Q494 John Cummings: Are you focused upon any definite benefits that you can see by reducing the number of bodies with responsibility for tourism in England? How might the impact of this affect coastal towns directly?

Mr Caborn: I hope we can continue to reduce the numbers of bodies involved in that and the way we would do it is actually by not giving public money to certain organisations and making sure that they did focus in. In terms of coastal towns, that is much more for both their local authorities and how they interface with the regional development agencies, because that is where the money tends to come from for tourism now and will for coastal towns, as indeed any other area for tourism.

Q495 Mr Hands: I want to come back to the issue of visitor numbers. I am not sure we did properly cover that. I am genuinely confused as to whether visitor numbers should be viewed as being a good thing or a bad thing in terms of local authority funding. I was wondering what your Department's view is on whether, if a coastal town is getting higher visitor numbers, that should mean more or less funding in the sense obviously that the local economy is benefiting from higher visitor numbers, but at the same time local infrastructure potentially needs more funding from central government to cope with the visitor numbers. I was wondering what your Department's view is on that.

Mr Caborn: It depends where the funding comes from.

Q496 Mr Hands: Central government grants essentially to local authorities.

Mr Caborn: That is already factored in, is it not, and also the investment which comes through other streams, transport ---

Q497 Mr Hands: Is it factored in? I am not sure visitor numbers are. Clearly central government funding is based primarily on resident population and I am not sure visitor numbers are reflected in that. My question is: do you see visitor numbers as overall being a good thing for the target authority or a bad thing? What is your thinking?

Mr Caborn: It is a good thing surely because it is going to create employment, it is going to bring wealth into that area. As I have already indicated, I think the more progressive authorities, the top ten in per capita investment, outside Liverpool, were all coastal towns.

Mr Hands: I happen to agree with you but I am just going to present the alternative argument which we have heard from various authorities, which is that because of larger visitor numbers their public amenities, parks and so on, are somewhat burdened by too many visitors coming to them. Do you think that is an invalid argument?

Chair: Could I just expand on that? We are talking about day visitors. They are not staying the night, they just come in, sometimes with their picnic and they hardly spend any money locally. They are the ones these results are most concerned about.

Q498 Mr Hands: It could be either, because I am not sure central Government grants would even be looking at people staying a week or two. I think one of the key questions is whether we think visitors are a good thing or a bad thing for how we fund local authorities.

Mr Caborn: I should say visitor numbers are a good thing; attracting into a town or resort would be a mark of success. Again it depends how you quantify some of those visitors. If you look at some of the spends, I know some of the resorts are looking at how they can attract business in for business conferences. Let us look at our own political parties. Our political parties go to Bournemouth, to Brighton, to Blackpool, there is huge investment. Look at the number of conferences taking place now. Bournemouth is a big attraction for that, Scarborough is a big attraction; you can go round the coast. That is business, it is conferences, it is exhibitions and many other activities. When you are talking about visitors, then some of these have very large disposable incomes either singly or corporately. I would suggest these are the areas which need to be looked at. I know that some universities are also taking coastal towns into consideration for some of their conferences.

Q499 Anne Main: I should like clarification. Do more visitors equal greater pressures therefore more funding or do more visitors simply equal, in the Department's view, a greater revenue stream for the local authority and possibly attract less funding? Which is it? Which model does the Department follow?

Mr Caborn: It does not follow any particular model because it does not control transport, it does not control the ideas budget, it does not control a whole series. The budgets we control have a very good fist on it. One is that we have put tourism with the RDAs and where we were putting something like £3.5 million into it that has gone up to £50-odd million. The investments we are putting in through areas like Sport England, again at the regional level, have increased considerably. In the areas we have directly controlled from DCMS we have been able to invest very wisely and also to lever more money into those coastal resorts and tourism in general. Several departments are funding that public well and the services inside those coastal resorts as they are other areas.

Q500 Dr Pugh: May I ask you to reflect on the partnership you may or may not have with other departments in Government? Clearly there is a need in terms of promoting tourism to look at other things as well and help the promotion of tourism. For example, you need housing so young people can stay in seaside resorts and the like and find affordable accommodation. Equally, one of your predecessors, Kim Howells, went round many of the seaside resorts and he said that wherever he went people made points about transport links and the inadequacy of them. Clearly if we are to have successful coastal tourism we have to have a number of things going right as well both in terms of housing and in terms of transport. Is there a sufficient partnership between the various departments of Government to ensure that things do go right or is there still something of a silo mentality here?

Mr Caborn: To be absolutely honest, I do think there was a silo mentality. If you look at where tourism has been, it has slopped around many government departments in England. It has never been the case in Wales and it has never been the case in Scotland or indeed in Northern Ireland but it has in England, which is why three or four years ago we took the decision to put that into a multi-agency. Rather than it slopping around somewhere we decided to put it inside the regional development agencies, a multi-agency organisation, which has the sole objective of driving up the wealth creation of their region. That is why we put tourism there, because we saw it as a major economic driver. Before then it had gone round DTI, to the Home Office to DCMS, it had slopped around Whitehall bouncing from pillar to post. I do know that because when I used to chair the Trade and Industry Committee we argued then that we ought to find a home inside the economic sector. We have done that in DCMS by putting it inside the RDAs which are an economic driver. That is the reality.

Q501 Dr Pugh: I can understand that it is entirely desirable to have a regional overview and to integrate these things at a regional level, but also necessarily a number of government departments are involved in the process and therefore there is a need for there to be an overview at a central government level. What I am wondering is what your Department does in terms of meeting other departments like DCLG and so on to facilitate that, to make that happen, to have a general focus not just on tourism but what actually makes tourism happen.

Mr Caborn: We worked with the Department for Transport, DCLG on the good practice planning guidance for tourism, which was published by DCLG this year and there are several areas where we work together as departments on the whole question of tourism. I do come back, if you are asking about the day-to-day activity, to the fact that is now taking place inside the regional development agencies, which is a multi-agency for Government anyway with a very specific objective. That is where I believe the focus has to be to drive up both the quantity and quality of tourism.

Q502 Dr Pugh: Would you feel it appropriate for example if your Department had input into housing strategy at a national level simply because housing is a big problem which has been brought up in all our inquiries into all the coastal towns we looked at? I am not saying you are responsible for solving it, but you have a view on what effect it will have on the tourist economy.

Mr Caborn: Yes, in the normal course of Government we would have a view. If it is something on open spaces or in other areas of sustainable communities, in these areas yes, we would have an input. We would have an input in terms of the arts, culture and so on. We would make our contribution to that debate. That is one thing about developing the policy and it is then about delivering it. The delivery mechanism, as far as tourism is concerned and therefore this area you are talking about, is actually through the regional development agencies.

Q503 Dr Pugh: Just to touch briefly on the issue of transport and transport links, do you make representations to the Department for Transport about what transport links would beneficially help inbound tourism?

Mr Caborn: Absolutely. As I said, the good practice tourism guide which went out was a case in point where the Department for Transport was one of those, along with other departments, which came together to look at that at a strategic level.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed Minister.

Witness: Mr Phil Woolas, a Member of the House, Minister of State, Local Government and Community Cohesion, Department for Communities and Local Government, gave evidence.

 

Chair: Good to see you Minister. As you know, we have had a series of ministers from other departments on various aspects of coastal towns before you. We want to take up in a session with you a number of issues which have arisen during the course of our investigation and our visits to a small number of coastal towns.

Q504 Anne Main: In your memorandum you accept that there tend to be larger numbers of older people in coastal towns and that this presented challenges for local authorities. What are the challenges to coastal towns from having higher concentrations of the elderly and what action is your Department taking to address them?

Mr Woolas: It is very true, as our memorandum states and as you have just stated, that on the whole coastal towns do have higher than average numbers of elderly people. The main way in which we take that into account is to recognise that through the mainstream funding, through the revenue support grant to the local authorities. As you will know, we are currently operating on a two-year settlement, moving to a three-year settlement from April 2008 onwards. In particular the elderly social services funding stream takes into account and weights the grant accordingly; indeed I increased the weighting in that grant in this current two-year settlement to reflect the fact that significant numbers of people are living to 80 and beyond. So that is taken into account and that did benefit the coastal towns.

Q505 Anne Main: May I just ask for a little clarification? When you talk about weighting the grant, what figures are you using to assume grant levels? Are you using current population or predicted population? What figures are you using to do that?

Mr Woolas: I recognise that is a very important question. A change was made in the formula for this settlement over previous settlements to try to take into account to a greater extent future population projections rather than simple historical facts by using the mid-year Estimates. We plot population trends so that the future is taken into account more than it was previously, although I recognise of course that some local authorities, not just coastal towns, argue that the data do not keep up to date, do not adequately reflect the fact that the difficulty with that argument for our department is that of course the allocations are made in advance and with a two-year settlement that obviously affects that matter. Secondly, we have to be fair to everyone, so the Secretary of State at the time and the Deputy Prime Minister tried to strike a balance between historical trends and future projections.

Q506 Anne Main: May I ask what figures you are using for the future projections? They are based on what?

Mr Woolas: They are the mid-year estimates from 2004 and then they are updated each year. Although the formula does not change, the figures do change throughout the two years. They are based on the ONS figures and of course we utterly rely on data from the Office of National Statistics, which is independent data obviously. Our policy is to use their data and to refer any queries over that data to the ONS.

Q507 Anne Main: Is that solely based on age?

Mr Woolas: No, no; that is based on the total population and then a combination of the census and the mid-year estimates to track historic trends and predict future trends. It is a weighted formula based on the total population and then on the demographic range within that population.

Q508 Dr Pugh: Some of the coastal towns have told us that they have higher than average costs in maintaining the public realm. Think of Victorian piers, think of public promenades, think of some of the listed buildings, the high number of visitors and the burden they impose on the public infrastructure. Do you think it is a fair point that they have higher than average costs maintaining the public realm, any more so than a city or a town?

Mr Woolas: I have never met a council or group of councils which do not say they have higher than average costs maintaining the public realm.

Q509 Dr Pugh: Are they making a fair point in this case?

Mr Woolas: Let me just answer in this way, if I may. The formula does take into account to a significant degree the number of estimated visitors to a local authority area, whether that be day visits or extended tourist visits. Of course authorities such as Westminster, York and so on do get compensated - if that is the right word. On the whole coastal towns do benefit from that. There is of course a debate in the local government family as to the fairness and accuracy of the weighting that we give to day visitors and we have a statistical working party that meets with the Local Government Association representatives and technical experts and we have very robust discussions about the accuracy or otherwise of the figures. We do take that into account. The particular needs are of course recognised by the Defra schemes in terms of coastal defences and you have been taking evidence from other departments. I am sorry, I think there was a third point.

Q510 Dr Pugh: You dealt with it. You have anticipated my second question by saying it is reflected in terms of the rate support grant and so on. I should imagine that you are not often lobbied by a group of councils which calls itself the coastal councils or anything like that which makes a specific plea along these lines; at least I am not familiar with such a lobbying group.

Mr Woolas: There is an emerging one and there is, as you are aware the all-party group. From the middle of last year we undertook a series of meetings which we called summits. We started out with the eight major city areas in England, but then extended those to 56 other major towns and cities and groups of towns and cities as well and held a series of summits. On 16 May 2006 we held a coastal towns and cities summit in Brighton which a number of representatives from across the country from coastal towns did attend. The purpose of that summit and the others was to ask some pretty fundamental questions about the relationship between those areas and central Government, particularly to ask them to identify, a process that has been going on since, the barriers which stop them taking joined-up decisions locally and any requests that they have as part of the powers that they need to join up their strategies better in each area. I think the coastal towns' summit, which I attended personally in Brighton and have followed since, was one of the more fruitful ones because it did show up some common themes, particularly, as you will be aware with your constituency, the changing nature of the tourism offer where the work on themes are common themes, changes to the fishing industry and ports industry. Although one would say that there are significant differences between towns like Newhaven and Southport, there are indeed some common approaches which we are addressing through the Local Government White Paper process and indeed the embedding of the local area agreements which I believe have already shown success in some of the coastal towns.

Q511 Mr Betts: Another issue which has been raised in quite a few areas is the fact that many coastal towns look quite attractive if you walk down the promenade but behind is a number of pretty poor quality houses, often in the private sector and often housing in multiple occupation. The memorandum from your Department talks about measures in the 2004 Housing Act which could drive up the quality of those particular dwellings but not much about how we might remove and reduce the quantity of them to make a more balanced community. Do you have any ideas on that?

Mr Woolas: Yes. The housing in multiple occupation and the affordable homes point is a very important point. What we identified, and obviously we had the Sheffield Hallam report to help us as well, was that in some towns there is a vicious circle of a decline in the traditional tourist industry leading to a movement generally from hotel and bed and breakfast to properties being transferred to private rented with populations moving in because of the availability of relatively affordable private rented, relative to the region they are in, leading in turn to difficulties in those towns due to the nature of the tenancies and the people moving in tending to be less well-off people. I am just looking for the figures. We do within our neighbourhood renewal strategies identify that of the 88 most deprived local authority areas in the country some five of those areas are indeed coastal towns. We recognise very much these issues and this point about this vicious circle that I have described. The new powers on HMO licensing do allow the local authorities to influence the quality and offer of the housing that is available where it is in multiple occupancy. The introduction of mandatory licensing of high-risk HMOs that are three storeys or more and that have five or more persons in them is particularly obviously relevant to local authority areas. We have also given all local authorities the discretion to extend licensing to other types of privately rented HMOs in all or part of their areas and that is a power which is particularly taken up by coastal towns.

Q512 Mr Betts: I was going to ask about authorities which come back and say that they find the mandatory licensing is a welcome step forward. I think most of us think it is. There still are properties which fall outside that mandatory definition and authorities do have the discretion to come up with plans which would extend licensing to all HMOs in their area and probably put forward plans as well for licensing of the private rented sector in general. If coastal towns were to come forward if they had particular problems with those plans, would the general presumption be that the Minister would be sympathetic to them?

Mr Woolas: Yes, both specifically to that request and in the Local Government White Paper process. We see the White Paper as an evolving process and a dialogue with different local authorities and their partners in different areas to recognise the very different needs that they have in housing. Take Boscombe in Bournemouth where we have a new deal for the community which is, one would think, a relatively prosperous area and indeed Bournemouth as a whole is but that particular area has high levels of deprivation and private rented housing. You clearly need a different solution there than you would say in your constituency, Mr Betts, or others; similarly where you have old holiday-village-type facilities. The approach we take is to say to the local authorities that they should identify what powers they do not have that they need to address the problems and also tell us what obstacles our policy - central Government not just DCLG - or the law in particular, what barriers there are to stop them doing what they want to do. If you take Blackpool's regeneration strategy which grabs headlines because of the proposed casino, underneath that headline grabbing initiative is a very substantial regeneration programme which largely revolves around the change in tenure and nature of the housing that Blackpool has. In that example there are powers which they do not have over housing financing that we are examining. The answer to your question is very definitely yes.

Q513 Lyn Brown: DCLG evidence to us talked about 21 of the 88 most deprived areas being in the coastal areas and that includes five resorts, as you indicated earlier. One of the things that was raised with us by one of the coastal resorts was that they did not believe that the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit had within it the expertise necessary to understand or deal with the issues experienced by the coastal areas. They felt that much of the expertise within the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit was predicated upon problems in inner city and urban areas. They raised with us two examples. One was the issue you have just been speaking about of homes in multiple occupation and how that impacts on coastal area. The second was the issue of dispersal policies and how coastal areas and others of the 21 areas did not have the expertise available inside those coastal areas to help them deal with the issues which came from dispersal because they did not have a history, a knowledge bank to be able to cope and they had nobody with whom to work. Would you think that was a fair concern? Would you agree with it? Is any action planned?

Mr Woolas: It is a very good point. My view would be that the expertise is there across the Department and across Government, but whether or not it is all located in the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit ...? The strategy regarding the Neighbourhood Renewal Unit is to work with local authorities and some of those local authorities that we work with are substantial in their own right; the Birminghams, the Manchesters and so on. As the memo says, some of them are not that big, such as Penwith, which is obviously in a different category. I suppose the honest answer is that I do not know, but it sounds a reasonable point and if the Committee were to raise it, it is something I should certainly investigate.

Q514 Lyn Brown: We shall be happy to do that. The second issue that was raised with us was about authorities taking their looked-after children into coastal areas, into foster parents' homes, children's homes, other residential facilities and leaving them there, so that at the age of 16, 17 and 18 they became the responsibility of those coastal areas and did not revert to being the responsibility in particular of the London boroughs which had enabled them to go there. The obvious issue for the coastal towns was clear: it is a matter of resources and the nature of their communities. The second issue is one about children. I accept this is not necessarily an issue for the DCLG, but it is about children and whether or not they should be located so far away from the homes they had come from.

Mr Woolas: This is a hugely important issue and it has been an issue in local government finance ever since local government finance was invented. The policy we have adopted is to recognise, again going back to the point from Anne about the funding formulas, from demographic data and compensate, if that is the right word, to a degree those towns which are the recipients as it were of children. What emerged also - and I think was covered in the annual report two years ago - is that there is a potential tension between the economies of scale and the efficiencies which, say, inner city boroughs can meet by placing children out of borough and a desirability in policy terms of doing so. What we are attempting to do, again falling back on the local area agreement strategy, by providing better joining up of funding through, in this case, children and young people's services and health and PCT and environmental health, and also very importantly through the supporting people budget, which is also distributed via local authorities, is to enable councils to release efficiencies which allow them to a greater extent to place more children in borough rather than out of borough. As the Committee will know, you can make some very significant savings. Even though the economy and efficiency argument might push boroughs, other things being equal - and I say "boroughs" quite deliberately because it tends to be boroughs which have the significant numbers - to make savings by pulling them out of borough, they can be and increasingly are being offset by the efficiency savings that can be gained by better joining up with other government partners. That is the approach we take. Just to emphasise the point about the funding for children and indeed young adults being recognised in the funding formulas.

Q515 Lyn Brown: I accept all that you say; I am not arguing with it. I realise that maybe this is something we need to take up with the Children's Minister, but given that the area which raised this particular concern with us is also an area which talked to us about their low educational achievement, talked to us about the low aspiration of the young people in their area, talked to us about the lack of facilities for further education and higher education in their area and the lack of resources and facilities for young people generally, it is clearly not necessarily an environment into which we would want to put vulnerable young people. I accept what you say to me in terms of funding and in terms of economy of scale, but surely there is something fundamentally wrong with a policy which enables us to allow some local boroughs, London boroughs in particular, to displace their young people into places which are not necessarily in the best interests of those children.

Mr Woolas: The Committee will be aware that the division of responsibilities is such that our main portfolio is on the funding. The presumption of our financing policy is that the children should be cared for as near to home as possible and in-borough if possible. My joining-up funding point is important also for those children who are placed out of borough and the historic example of Hastings has always been cited in local government finance debates, particularly from central London boroughs and boroughs South of the Thames and there are similar regional and sub-regional examples around the country. If the funding formula recognises those factors, say the funding of children with needs in Hastings, but that funding formula is a health funding formula rather than a social services funding formula or an education funding formula, it is therefore not joined up. That again is why we attempt, through local area agreement, where partners share their outcomes, to achieve a better result.

Q516 Lyn Brown: Is there a performance indicator which local government is judged upon which would enable us to see, to ascertain whether or not the outplacements for young people in care were in their best interest?

Mr Woolas: Yes, I believe there is. It is one of the ones we share with other departments, but I shall confirm that.

Q517 Chair: Although by far the most distressing cases drawn to our attention were about the children in care and one of the points was - I think it was in Margate - that Margate social services were completely unaware of a vulnerable child being in their area until she walked into the sea and committed suicide, there were similar problems with a number of vulnerable adults and in Margate in particular there is essentially a care-home industry with homeless adults, adults with mental health diseases and children who are essentially being dumped there, paid for by their home boroughs, but subsequent costs being picked up by Margate who are not being funded for it and, most importantly, the individuals are getting an appalling service and no rehabilitation as far as we could see.

Mr Woolas: Is this in relation to children?

Chair: The lot. It is most distressing in terms of children, but exactly the same thing is happening with vulnerable adults.

Q518 Mr Hands: A related area and that is that I should like to probe you about the effects of immigration in coastal towns, both in terms of funding and also potentially in terms of community cohesion. Obviously on the funding side we are working currently on figures for the current grant settlement based on population in mid-2004. I am using a bit of guesswork here, but certainly the experience in London has been that a large number, 300,000-plus have come to London from the new EU accession countries but I think also a lot have come to the coastal towns. Has immigration in the last two and a half years had any impact on funding for coastal towns? Secondly, is much attention being given by the Department in its community cohesion role to the effect that may have in coastal towns and most specifically port towns where there have been problems?

Mr Woolas: On the latter point, one of the purposes of moving the responsibility for community relations policies and community cohesion from the Home Office to the new Department for Communities and Local Government in the most recent changes in the machinery of Government was indeed to recognise the point that you rightly make that the ability of Government centrally to work with local areas required a departmental focus on that local area where you would get expertise and contact in a way that perhaps the Home Office did not have. In the Local Government White Paper process the responsibilities and strategies for community cohesion, in part to reflect the point about new immigrant communities, is a central part of the policy and quite right too I believe. On the funding issues, of course one has to balance in community cohesion terms the perception in some areas that if grants or funding are given for a particular community at the expense, as is perceived, of other communities within that area, often the indigenous population, you can, if you are not careful, do more harm than good. I am not saying that overrides the policy.

Q519 Mr Hands: That is very difficult to avoid. You are essentially talking about communities which have their central government funding based to some extent on population, to some extent on need. I do not think anybody would be saying the additional money would be going to the Poles or to the Bulgarians or wherever it might be. It is updating those population numbers from mid-2004 to reflect the changing nature and changing size of the community.

Mr Woolas: I believe very strongly that the balance we struck in the funding formula by changing is the fairest way of doing that. Of course we have examined and continue to examine other ways, but the danger is deciding at what point to take a decision and how much flexibility you bring in, bearing in mind that the revenue support grant is a pool of money which is distributed to all authorities. If one were to have a more short-term change, there would be losers as well as gainers.

Q520 Mr Hands: I guess my question is that instead of changing the formulae you should have a more frequent assessment of the data which goes into the formulae to reflect Britain changing. This is moving slightly away from coastal towns but coastal towns are visibly affected by this. You should have the data updated more often than every three years.

Mr Woolas: It is updated every year, even within the three-year settlement.

Q521 Mr Hands: Then to reduce the lag time I guess.

Mr Woolas: Whatever one does with the formula there are losers as well as gainers until you have to strike a balance in that. My own view - and I have looked at this personally in some depth, as have our statisticians and policy officials - is that we have the balance as right as is possible in the system we have. The population fluctuations in two types of areas, coastal towns as a result of seasonal labour as well as the immigrant point you make and student towns where there are dramatic shifts in population to coincide with college and university term times, present a particular challenge in the funding formulae because as well as how frequently one refreshes, there is also the question of the point at which you measure and this is one of the challenges for the statisticians. If you take a measurement of students in August you well get a different figure than you will if you take it in December and similarly with the coastal towns. I appreciate that is playing off the point about immigration; I am sorry if I am diverting you. It is something we have looked at and if one examines the statement to the House on the RSG settlement in December of last year, that point is specifically addressed and indeed I think some Members asked questions about it.

Q522 Dr Pugh: In the Government's own memorandum they say "... the Government has not undertaken any large scale research in recent years into the problems facing coastal towns", which is why I am delighted to hear that your Department has had a summit on the issue. Do you think the absence of research is a real deficiency in terms of teasing out what are the generic problems of coastal resorts or whether in fact they do have generic problems? Is there scope for further research or do we have a known phenomenon with obvious solutions?

Mr Woolas: I think there is. It is a personal view and I shall tell you why I think there is. I think that there is, because what is happening in towns and cities around the country through the better joining up of financing, the better ability that councils now have to work with other government agencies, to work with the private sector and the voluntary sector in producing strategies for their towns and cities and indeed counties through the sustainable communities plans, through economic regeneration plans, indeed through the local development framework planning documents, that greater freedom of flexibility that local areas have, their attempts to re-invent their economies, is a common theme throughout the country, but is particularly sharp in coastal towns where there has been and is a heavy dependency on the tourism industry, coastal towns where there has been a heavy dependency on fishing and coastal towns where the port is the economic raison d'être. In order to better inform those strategies more research has to be done and in some cases outside the big cities their capacity to do that research is not as great as everyone would desire. The regional development agencies in some instances can help fill that gap. I think particularly of the South East RDA string-of-diamonds strategy. I do not know whether you have come across that yet. That is a good example. If you look at the South West Regional Development Agency economic plan, which recognises the sub-regional differences, that has been a great, great help. In all honesty, the answer to your question is yes.

Q523 Dr Pugh: In order to benefit from research and get results we obviously require integrated policy across the piece. We have been much tasked with the problem of how you get policy properly integrated and unified and a common answer we have had this afternoon is to say that it is done at the RDA level. Then we always ask what happens at central government level and how far the efforts of central government departments are coordinated. The DCLG has a series of cross-cutting responsibilities, the DCMS is responsible for tourism, Defra are described in your memorandum as having the lead responsibility for coastal policy and the RDAs, who sew it together on a regional basis, are answerable to the DTI. You can see the difficulty we have here in understanding how, if there is a common view about how things are to be progressed, they are to be progressed at the central government level as well as through regional level.

Mr Woolas: What we attempt to do as part of the enhanced policy, again through changes in the Department's function, is to become better at what we describe as place-making. Those economic regeneration strategies, which are multifarious, are fundamentally bottom-up. They are fundamentally about empowering local councils and their partners to lead economic regeneration. What we do through multi-area agreements as they emerge, through sub-regional strategies of RDAs and indeed working with Government Office, is to make sure that those strategies are complementary; a point the Committee considered last week in your deliberations on regional policy. What seems to be common through the coastal towns is a greater emphasis, apart obviously from the fishing and maritime industries which are inherent in coastal towns, not just on tourism but on culture as a vehicle of regeneration itself. Therefore the relationships become a bit more complex. The tourism may be a regional or a sub-regional as well as a local offer; the culture may be specific to a particular town or cultural city. We think that the building block approach, the bottom-up approach is the right approach. I am confident that the Department has or is obtaining a good understanding of each strategy in each area. Not that we can dictate the policy but so that we can facilitate it, acting as what we describe in the Department as a junction box between the local area and the regional and national strategy. May I just give one example to illustrate my point, which is a very powerful example and relates to Torbay. Torbay are trying to re-invent and re-engineer their tourism offer to one of the most important domestic tourist destinations in the country. Torbay is made up of three towns essentially, one of them being Brixham, the second highest fishing port by value in the United Kingdom.

Q524 Mr Hands: By value of what?

Mr Woolas: Fish sold. The quantity is not great but the crabs are more expensive than the haddock; in fact I am told the Brixham crab is now a world-renowned dish. The point is that Defra's fishing investment grants looked at particular bids, particular projects proposed by local areas all round the coast. The particular one in Brixham, although only £2 million of bid, was a central part of their regeneration strategy of the waterfront including a £100-plus million private sector development and was a central part of their job creation and educational strategy building around the fishing industry, restaurant trading, catering, fishing, engineering, boat building and so on. So the £2 million, although a small amount of money if looked at exclusively as a fishing project, would have had various merits over other bids, but looked at as part of a regeneration strategy became much more important and by working with Defra, Defra of course recognised that point and were able to facilitate that particular grant, giving the taxpayer essentially much better value for money and giving Torbay a real opportunity. There are similar examples elsewhere.

Q525 Dr Pugh: So a scenario we fear, which is somebody looking at their fish and the DCMS doing something different with it vis-à-vis the hotels and not talking to one another and not colluding at any government level, is a scenario which we wrongly fear because it just does not happen.

Mr Woolas: I think it is a scenario every elected Member of Parliament is very familiar with and that understanding is what the Department for Communities is attempting to act as a facilitator of. The key weapon in that, as our memorandum points out, is the local area agreement. Again in the case of Torbay, their further education college is a major partner of the local strategic partnership and they have a very innovative principal. Because that strategy has been drawn up locally, the partnership is able to facilitate that, with our help, across Whitehall. So their information to the DfES or in that case the Learning and Skills Council was part of that and was successful.

Q526 Anne Main: In terms of partnership and communication, I just feel that the picture you have painted, which sounds absolutely admirable, is not exactly the picture we were given by the Minister of State for Industry and the Regions when she gave us a very frank answer that no, they were not good enough and yes, they needed to do better. Would you endorse that view or would you say that your view, which seems to be a little rosier, is more the accurate picture?

Mr Woolas: One can always do better. The local area agreement process is very early in its life. We are only in year two. Every area in England will have an LAA up and running by 1 April next year, so there are areas where it is too early. Conceptually, if one tries to join up strategies from Whitehall, I do not think personally you will ever succeed. You can join them up locally and Whitehall can facilitate them and that is what we are trying to do.

Q527 Anne Main: We were concerned about lines of communication; that departments work together and communicate with each other so we do not have the ridiculous situation which we had in sea and coastal defences where money may be going into a project that may have the rug pulled from under it a few years later as somebody changes strategy. We want to make sure that the communication between departments is going on.

Mr Woolas: That is a good point. One can strive to be perfect of course, but the locking in of those decisions in the local area agreement is the solution to that point, in so far as there is a perfect solution. The other point worth making is that many of the examples I receive as local government minister on the alleged lack of "joined-upness" actually reflect a lack of money, not a lack of joining up. You can be joined up as much as you want, but it does not pay all the bills so not every town can have its ideal plan.

Q528 Chair: May I just take up the question of simplifying the money which comes to coastal towns? It was put to us in Margate that it would be helpful if the Government could simplify the number of funding streams which are available to coastal towns and given that Margate is in Kent they drew an analogy with the coalfield communities' funding where there had been a single stream going into those communities and they thought that maybe coastal towns should be considered in a similar fashion and get a single stream of funding.

Mr Woolas: One of the objectives of the local area agreements is to bring as many specific area-based grants as possible into a pooling arrangement to give areas greater flexibility on the use of their funding and to simplify arrangements by having a similar set of terms and conditions. Our White Paper is due out shortly.

Q529 Chair: Excellent. We look forward to it with bated breath.

Mr Woolas: It is a very important point. Our policy is that unless there are exceptional circumstances area-based funding should be pooled or aligned exactly to meet the point Margate made.

Chair: Excellent. Thank you very much indeed, Minister.