Memorandum submitted by Opportunity Peterborough
URC
BACKGROUND
This response is given as the experience and
comments of Opportunity Peterborough (OP) URC. In giving this
response OP needs to declare an interest in the fact that the
East of England Development Agency (EEDA) is one of the three
founding partners of OP and consequently one of its main ongoing
funding partners.
EEDA is represented on the OP Board and as a
result there is a regular dialogue between OP, Peterborough City
Council (PCC) and EEDA on Peterborough's strategic objectives,
key priorities and projects all of which sit within the framework
of the Regional Spatial Strategy, Regional Economic Strategy and
locally produced policy, strategy and vision such as the OP lead
Integrated Growth Study and the statutory adopted local plan etc.
DETAILED COMMENTS
In responding to the BEC inquiry the contents
of this paper responds to a select number of the questions set
out on the web site http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/berr/becpn48.cfm
As follows:
1. The need for a level of economic development/
business/ regeneration policy delivery between central and local
government;
Given the ever changing nature of central government
policy to respond to changes in national and international legislation,
economic conditions etc it is extremely helpful to have an organization
with a regional remit that can act as the interface between local
and central government in distilling/digesting the changing policies
into practical advice at local level. Quite often there is a need
to take a region wide perspective on policy etc to ensure the
region is performing to its optimum by recognising its strengths
and weaknesses and avoiding expensive and unnecessary duplication
of effort or initiative.
The real value here is having an organization
that can truly maintain that regional perspective and have the
resources both in terms of people and finance to maximize opportunities
as they arise. A key example would be to have an organization
that actively marketed the region as a whole by highlighting the
strengths of elements of the region in business, innovation, educational
excellence, sustainability credentials, competitiveness, knowledge
and skills etc. This could be executed in a cost effective way
and does not prevent each sub region/ city running its own local
marketing campaign but coordinated under the wider umbrella of
the regional pitch.
Another example would be to act as an information
exchange for the region eg if one city in the region has set up
an ESCo to deliver low carbon renewable energy then that knowledge
and experience gained could be made available to other regional
cities about to embark on the same process and avoid paying for
yet another set of consultants to provide the same advice again.
It may even be that several cities could come together to commission
a much larger piece of work looking at the benefit of a regional
ESCo rather than a parochial approach.
There is a very strong need for business to
be able to engage in the regional agenda and a region wide body
provides the vehicle for this. This could help business develop
a strong regional network or forum and again share knowledge,
best practice, experience, issues and benefit from say regional
procurement contracts etc to make their business more competitive.
A regional debate of business issues is certainly
needed as the scale of certain problems may need to be tackled
at that level rather than locally eg transportation issues, general
level of educational attainment and its impact on the skills base
of the workforce, business support and consequent survival rates
etc all of which are common issues across the region and could
act as a deterrent to future investors in the region.
In conclusion a joined up approach at the regional
level is essential if the sub regions and cities within it and
therefore the region as a whole is to perform to its maximum potential.
If not there will be the development of pockets of improvement
or excellence which will only encourage the movement of business,
investment and population within the region rather than a net
gain in the regions economic activity, output and inward investment.
2. The effectiveness of RDAs and their role
in adding value;
The general experience of working with EEDA
has been a positive one and one which has led to some key improvements/
developments locally in Peterborough.
Examples include the input of EEDA staff into
the development of key projects such as the proposed 3,000 sq
m accommodation block to house the new university centre development
by Anglia Ruskin University including a significant funding contribution
to this project. EEDA staff also played a key role alongside OP
and PCC staff in the development of a Phase I Eco Innovation Centre
in central Peterborough to act as a focal point for the Environmental
Goods and Services Cluster in Peterborough.
Earlier this year EEDA invited OP to take part
in a pilot to deliver an Integrated Development Programme (IDP)
which sets out the detailed infrastructure delivery programme
to support the city's growth. This has been a very valuable exercise
for OP and PCC in that it has brought all the key infrastructure
providers together and forced the debate about the impact of the
growth agenda on a variety of hard and soft infrastructure. The
IDP is now a very useful tool for local and regional partners
to use and develop to direct future infrastructure investment
decisions.
EEDA has also been a key partner in the Carbon
Challenge project in Peterborough to deliver 342 zero carbon homes
in the UK's largest demonstration project of how to meet the government's
aspiration for all new homes to meet CSH Code 6 by 2016.
The biggest issue that has been experienced
in dealings with EEDA has been the relatively high turnover in
staff over the past few years and the problems that has created
in developing long term relationships, consistency of project
team input and the time and expense of inducting new staff into
the local growth agenda, vision and priorities. This has probably
been a result of the long term economic upturn and it will be
interesting to see if the recent downturn will enable EEDA to
secure some longer term project staff.
There are also issues around the clarity of
funding availability on projects but again this is largely due
to the annualised nature of EEDA's budgets and their reliance
on the performance of partners to spend the allocated funding.
This places project spend into the vagaries of property deals
and other areas of risk which often leads to a hiatus around year
end to achieve the spend targets which makes project planning
extremely difficult and speculative.
A more programme based funding arrangement (akin
to the new Growth Area Funding round) would be of great help to
partners and would enable EEDA to engage with local partners with
confidence of available funding streams and timing of delivery
not being tied to financial year ends.
EEDA's effectiveness is also hampered by their
overall budget allocation. The East of England has the largest
infrastructure deficit in the UK, to quote just one indicator,
and yet EEDA receive the lowest RDA budget out of all RDA's. This
leaves insufficient funding available to tackle effectively the
problems of the region and impacts on the scale of support to
local based initiatives to drive forward economic and spatial
growth.
This situation is further hampered when the
modest budgets made available are further reduced by central government
to fund national initiatives at the very time the RDA's support
to the local economy is most needed.
3. The extent of, and need for, their overseas
activities;
As OP moves towards a re-branding of Peterborough,
we are very keen to work with EEDA on the opportunities for attracting
overseas investment to the city. This is placed in the context
of recognizing the level of challenge associated with securing
overseas investment, especially over recent years, but as Peterborough
develops its status as the UK's Environment Capital, it is hoped
this will encourage companies, especially those who are innovators
in modern methods of construction, renewable energy etc to engage
more closely with Peterborough's growth agendas and economy.
Overseas inward investment is extremely important
to the region and we are particularly aware of the considerable
investment in the Peterborough sub-region which provides a number
of clear benefits including capital investment, new skills, higher
value salaries and the opening of wider markets. Established foreign
companies often bring further capital inflows and close partnership
working with the RDA's Investor Development team is productive.
We have some concerns that the RDA's Business
Development activities within EEI is being directed from the centre
to focus more on developing UK export opportunities to the detriment
of new business work to deliver new inward investment enquiries
to the region. These overseas activities need to be refocused.
19 September 2008
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