Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
MR JAMES
HASSETT AND
MR PETER
HAMPSON
4 JULY 2006
Q120 Mr Hands: Private or public?
Mr Hampson: No, from pump priming
funding, i.e. Objective 1, Objective 2, ERDF, SRB. Without that
kind of pump priming money, you do not see the kinds of activity,
and that would bring me on to the point that I really would like
to get over to the Committee. One area that needs to be addressed,
where there is activity taking place, publicly funded. We need
to start looking at a "single pot" programme approach
which would make the monies that are available go a lot further.
At the moment, even places like Blackpool where there are major
schemes, it is single small schemes and it is not being sequenced
properly. It is not getting the kind of flows that they need to
maximise the benefits of public money that is being put into these
places.
Q121 Chair: Are you suggesting a
single pot for coastal towns, or just a small pot full stop?
Mr Hampson: I think that would
a step too far. If you were to go down a single pot for coastal
towns route, the danger is it would end up with one or two across
the country, because it would become competitive and there would
be a whole host of losers. Where monies are available, I am talking
about a programming and a phasing that allows it to be spent as
a single pot.
Q122 Anne Main: Can I take you back,
because you are putting in a lot of information. Before I go back
to the thing I was going to ask you about, you just said where
the money has been spent, in which case surely you can put a grid
overlay in areas and you could see if that was the case. So, I
presume there are facts to back up that statement. If so, I would
like the information. You threw in, and you said your colleague,
Mr Hassett might not agree with you, that the larger towns, generally
speaking, have the bigger problems. Again, is that backed up by
facts and figures and information, because we heard from our previous
speaker that some of the larger towns were piggybacking on the
fact that they were bigger because, by diversifying, they could
have language schools, they could have conferencing and all those
things that smaller towns cannot have. Have you got information
to back that assertion up?
Mr Hampson: Yes, the scale of
problems in somewhere like a Blackpool, because of the size of
Blackpool, will be relatively bigger and often much, much bigger.
Q123 Anne Main: Will they be less
solvable though?
Mr Hampson: No, if they are dealt
with and if it is recognised that they have got issues and problems,
they are imminently solvable.
Chair: Can we move on. I am sure you
can put in answers to the previous questions and, if you want
to, to the ones that you get subsequently.
Q124 Dr Pugh: A couple of weeks ago
I got a letter from the Chief Executive of Blackpool Pleasure
Beach. It was a copy of a letter he had written to the Prime Minister
which said more or less that he had heard the Prime Minister speak
about the importance of national tourism and all that kind of
thing but he had not seen very much action as a result. It was
a rather plaintiff, rather sad letter, and quite discouraging
of the Government's intentions. Do you think the Government adequately
understands the modern imbalance of the tourist industry, if I
can put it like that?
Mr Hampson: The modern imbalance?
Q125 Dr Pugh: Not the tourism industry
in general but the tourism industry around England?
Mr Hampson: I think the situation
has changed significantly in the last three to four years, and
that is the problem because a lot of the people who have given
you evidence, me as well, are talking about things that have happened
over the last two and three years and we are talking about situations
which are dynamic and changing. There has been a huge sea-change
in the attitudes towards both domestic tourism and, indeed, coastal
tourism as a particular issue. The fact that you as a committee
are asking such pertinent questions, I think, shows that there
is a changing attitude.
Q126 Dr Pugh: Has that change swept
through the RDAs as well?
Mr Hampson: It is changing as
we speak, rather than it has changed. I think that they are now,
three or four years down the line, starting to realise that there
are some issues. The problem with RDAs, of course, is that their
funding is markedly different and their priorities are markedly
different. In terms of coastal investment, some RDAs are able
to put significant amounts of support into coastal towns, whereas
others are not. The north-west is an example where there are significant
amounts of money and effort going in. I think the north-west is
probably, of the RDAs, the one that is the furthest developed.
Q127 Dr Pugh: Taking advantage of
this favourable wind, is there more that coastal towns can do
help themselves?
Mr Hampson: They can do a certain
amount, but there is an interchange, a number of public policy
areas. The first thing is the understanding in public policy terms
that coastal towns do have some very specific problems. If this
Committee could establish in the minds of government that whenever
any public policy is being discussed there may be nuances which
affect coastal towns, that would be a huge advantage. I have spoken
about the single pot. There are some major issues about housing,
and in particular the imbalance that has been created in a lot
of coastal towns, driven largely by housing benefit, HMO type
housing, which is increasing the relative price of low quality
housing to a point where public policy now cannot intervene in
a lot of coastal towns because the thresholds are set so low that
when housing corporations, housing associations, look at housing
projects in a lot of seaside towns the unit levels, the cost per
unit, are too high and they simply cannot intervene. So, that
is another area of public policy where—
Q128 Dr Pugh: Apart from the public
realm, you have good a tourist industry that has sunk huge amounts
of its own money into all these resorts. Do you think there is
evidence of clear long-term planning? In other words, are the
people of Newquay thinking not where they are now but where they
will be in the next 10, 15 or 20 years?
Mr Hassett: My entire association
is set up to try and get the local people to think about a 20,
25-year timeframe for the redevelopment of their towns. I suppose
the difference is that we are actually asking the residents what
they want their town to look like rather than trying to make a
strategic decision necessarily on which towns in particular should
be supported or not. It is an interesting point, simply because
I think what many of the people who are involved certainly in
my association are concerned about is a trend. It is the long-term
trend. It is not necessarily how they are at the moment, it is
what they are worried the town might be like in 20 years' time.
Some of the towns, once they have seen their service centres disappear,
are concerned that they are going to become dormitory towns for
larger cities and towns and so they are trying to second-guess
what is happening in their town at a particular point in time
and come up with a solution to that. Linking that point back to
some of the points that are raised by the RDA, we are talking
about the tourism industry and it is probably not appropriate
for the RDA to be named in that particular aspect. We have to
try and look at things from a sustainable communities perspective,
which is actually looking at the environment and the community
as well as the economy, and that for us throws up a whole different
raft of challenges in terms of co-ordination of funding, for instance,
and actually getting appropriate funding for the appropriate solution.
In our particular region a lot of people have approached the RDA
for projects that, to be honest with you, the RDA would not have
ever funded because it does not think that they are a high enough
priority.
Q129 Dr Pugh: You let slip the word
"resident" a few minutes ago. They have to own the vision
as well, do they not—
Mr Hassett: Absolutely.
Q130 Dr Pugh: —more than RDAs
and those planning bodies and partnerships, the vision for the
town. Is there a time lag between the vision being brought out
and put down on paper and being owned by the community represented
by the town?
Mr Hassett: I suppose the kind
of process we promote is the reverse of that, because we try to
get the communities to articulate their own vision. The lag that
we find is the ability for the community to communicate to some
of their likely funding agencies in a way that the current funding
agencies can listen to. So, there is a translation issue between
the general public who are trying to say, "These are the
things we need", and the things that some of the public bodies
can fund. So, it is not exactly there is a mismatch, it is just
trying to put it in terms of understanding and timeframes that
people understand.
Q131 John Cummings: Can I turn your
attention again to funding. Do you think that the coastal towns
have stood between being deprived enough and, indeed, successful
enough when it comes to securing funding?
Mr Hampson: An interesting question.
I think I understand where you may be coming from. The problem
with a lot of the towns is that they do have quite reasonable
economies. It was one of the issues that my organisation struggled
with in the late nineties, explaining why we had a buoyant tourist
economy in a lot of these tourism towns, indeed a buoyant mixed
economy, yet there were pockets of very severe social deprivation.
I think it was only when the work that was done by our previous
speaker came up that we were able to explain why you should have
this strange situation of very high deprivation but a fairly buoyant
economy. So, the economy is running very fast, and should be,
therefore, getting bigger and better. But what you are getting
is this in-migration, often people who do not come for particular
employment purposes but just come to live, because it is better
living in a seaside town than an inland equivalent very often.
So, yes, in some ways, until probably three, four or five years
ago, there was this issue that people just did not believe that
you could have a nice seaside town and yet have these huge pockets
of social deprivation. And in some cases they are enormous pockets
of deprivation. You will have seen from the evidence we present,
both written and oral, the sorts of scales where I see from my
colleague in Blackpool a 60% transcience in primary schools.
Q132 John Cummings: Hopefully after
this inquiry people will be more aware of the specific problems
that exist in relation to deprivation in seaside town areas, but
would you not agree that perhaps there is a need now for a national
coastal town funding strategy and, if so, how would you believe
that would work? How would it be managed?
Mr Hampson: If there was an endless
pot of money and you could waive a magic wand, I would agree entirely
that a major single national approach with a big pot of money
that everybody could actually go to and which was big enough to
deal with the core problems in all of the seaside resorts would
be a great solution, but I cannot see how it could or would be
practically managed. I think there are policies which encourage
that but not necessarily funding schemes. I am not sure I have
explained that particularly well.
Q133 John Cummings: Have you any
indication or any research to indicate to the Committee what sort
of sums of money you are talking about for the generation of coastal
towns?
Mr Hampson: To be honest, we have
never sat down and tried to calculate, just because of the pure
range and the scale of the issues.
Q134 John Cummings: Recognising that
Objective 2 is coming to an end, where do you think your future
funding will come from?
Mr Hassett: Certainly in the communities
we are dealing with, initially most of the communities have looked
towards the Regional Development Agencies for support. What we
are trying to promote is an increased focus on the lottery for
some of the social side aspects and, to be honest with, you some
of the issues that are being raised in terms of flood defence,
we are certainly looking broadly, again, to the Environment Agency.
A lot of it is coming from the public sector in that respect and
certainly in terms of getting the infrastructure right, it is
a breadth, but you are trying to find the funding from a variety
of sources, including trusts and charities, to be honest with
you. That is what our groups are looking for.
Q135 John Cummings: Looking at the
levels of deprivation (and I would certainly cast my attention
to Sunderland, Seaham and South Shields resorts) there is nothing
sadder than seeing a run-down, paint peeling terrace of guest
houses which you often encounter in these particular areas. Do
you find much local enthusiasm for them to do anything about it
themselves or is it always someone else's problem?
Mr Hampson: No. I think there
is an issue, and Professor Fothergill touched on this, this issue
of public realm. The typical coastal town has got a huge range
of issues—weather induced, sea induced, sand blown, the
kind of economy—and these have all been highlighted to you
in previous evidence, but there is an issue about coastal towns
that their very attractiveness relies on this grand public space,
its inherited grand public space. If you were redesigning the
long seaside resort you would not build them on the sort of scale
that the Victorians and Edwardians have done. You have got this
space and it needs to be dealt with. What we do see is that, where
money is spent on public infrastructure projects, it does have
an amazing impact on private sector investment, and the sort of
properties that you are talking about, the run down and peeling.
If the streetscape of that particular road was dealt with and
there was a signal, some enthusiasm and some future for the town,
it is almost certain that a lot of those properties would suddenly
go from, "I cannot afford to invest in this", to, "I
cannot afford not to invest in it."
Q136 Mr Hands: I have got three different
questions I am going to roll into one, so brief answers. First
of al, do you think that attention to tourism actually ironically
detracts from other problems that coastal towns face, secondly,
can housing issues in coastal towns be addressed within the context
of regional housing plans, and, thirdly do you think that the
demographics of coastal towns creates huge obstacles to regeneration
and is there much hope of changing the population structure of
these towns?
Mr Hassett: In terms of the demographics,
that does present a huge challenge in terms of the long-term viability
of the towns. The south-west is an in-migration area. The only
age group that we are in deficit in terms of migration is the
student, the 18 to about 24 year old category, and that presents
us with a particular issue in terms of skewing our demography
into an older group generally within the south-west, which is
shown to be exacerbated in coastal towns. I am sorry; you are
going to have to repeat the other questions.
Q137 Mr Hands: The second is housing
issues, regional housing planning, and, third, whether ironically
there is too much attention on tourism?
Mr Hassett: I think the tourism
industry is so important to the coastal towns that I do not think
I would feel comfortable saying that there is far too much attention,
it is vitally important. What I would say is that it is not the
only thing that we need to be focusing upon, but it is vitally
important. I would not say that it has too much attention, just
that maybe we need to give some of the other areas attention.
From the housing side of things, particularly because of the size
of towns that we deal with, because I am dealing with very small
towns (and this is a personal sort of understanding about how
things have gone), I do not see much impact currently on some
the regional housing activity in towns of the size that I am dealing
with.
Q138 Mr Betts: Just on the demographics,
presumably some of the people coming in to retire have reasonable
incomes, but, on the other hand, we heard when we went down to
Exmouth that there is a tendency for those people to say that
they rather like the place the way that it is, that is why they
moved there, and then become part of the resistance to any proposed
change to bring in new ventures which would actually enliven the
place.
Mr Hampson: It is known as "last-settler
syndrome". It is a common feature. The simple point about
the demographics is that older people move into towns and it is
still fresh blood, it is still money. But the problem is not with
the people who are retiring: the people who might be my age and
above (you are not talking about elderly people). The problem
is that young people are leaving, people of an older generation
are coming in and those people are then becoming elderly in large
numbers. It is not the retired people, it is the elderly end.
The people who need to be looked after by the social services
that cause the difficulty; so that is the problem with the resort
demography. It is not about those who people who have retired
there; it is the fact that they are creating, down the line, a
much greater elderly population. That would not be a problem,
if it was recognised as an issue and it was properly funded, but
local services, the NHS, in coastal towns are not funded to recognise
the fact that they have got this greater increase of individuals,
but also elderly individuals who are deliberately moving away.
If we still have an ethos of family support, they are people who
are moving away from their family and friends and end up, or are
more likely to end up, in local authority social care because
they have not got anybody else to look after them. I hope I have
covered that area. Tourism detracts? Tourism does not detract.
In coastal towns it is often the only solution. You are not going
to make widgets in Skegness, you are not going to build cars in
Torbay, I am afraid. And so tourism is important. The problem
with tourism is it does detract if it is not understood. It is
starting to be understood, and the inquiry that you are carrying
out, I hope, will help people to understand the dynamics of it.
In the written evidence that we have put forward, I talked about
happy holiday memories. In the absence of facts people just make
wild assumptions about the tourism industry.
Q139 Anne Main: On the infrastructure,
because we have moved away from it, do you think you can make
a particular case for improving the infrastructure so that young
people would want to come and live and work and spend time in
the town and it becomes a more vibrant place to be?
Mr Hampson: It will depend on
the town. All the towns are different. If there is work for people,
either in the town, or there is work within commuting distance
and the access issues, because in my view, and it is a broad statement
(I tend to make broad statements)—the thing that is driving
Brighton is the fact that it has got a fast rail link. The thing
that will drive Folkestone is the fact that it is about to get
a fast rail link to London—it is about issues of economy
and access.
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