Supplementary memorandum submitted by
Essex County Council
THE SUCCESS
OF ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT AND
REGENERATION IN
ESSEX
Essex is a populous county of some 1.3 million
residents. Our economy is worth around £20 billion, bigger
than over 130 national economies.
Home to two post-war "New Towns" (Basildon
and Harlow) and with the largest regeneration project in Western
Europe—Thames Gateway—in our county, we have long
been alive to the challenges and possibilities regeneration offers
communities.
The following pages highlight a number of examples
where local economic development and regeneration activity combine
to ensure sustainable growth, improvements to our residents' life
chances and meet our pledge to deliver the best quality of life
in Britain. The examples range from our nationally-acclaimed programme
to re-open Essex Post Offices, through our support for rural entrepreneurs
to our work ensuring current and future development in the Thames
Gateway is of good quality and reduces our carbon footprint.
While each example is different—distinctly
urban or proudly rural, focusing on promoting entrepreneurialism
or retaining social capital—what links them is the involvement
of Essex County Council. As a forward-thinking local authority,
Essex County Council is ideally positioned to bring local knowledge,
technical expertise and effective partnerships to bear in order
to deliver local priorities—sustainable growth that benefits
our economy, our environment and our residents.
SUSTAINABLE SOUTH
ESSEX
The Parklands development celebrates South Essex's
heritage and environmental character, embraces its identity and
connections with the Thames estuary, is aware of its carbon footprint,
and welcomes people and enterprise
The Thames Gateway South Essex Partnership (TGSEP)
has played a key role in the regeneration of the Thames Gateway
area and the partnership recently securing £24.5 million
of funding for the South Essex Parklands Programme. Led by Essex
County Council, the South Essex Parklands programme will regenerate
and develop South Essex's green space to unlock its true potential
to achieve significant environmental, social and economic benefits.
The projects stretch across the Thames Gateway
Landscapes, Waterfront, Corridors and Squares regenerating a number
of marshes, nature parks, country parks and other green areas.
TGSEP has recommended nine projects spread across the length and
breadth of the Thames Gateway area, these are significant regeneration
projects in their own right and the Parklands programme as as
a whole will receive £24.5 million of investment between
2008 and 2011, delivering a number of outcomes such as improved
accessibility and connectivity, with educational, vocational and
recreational opportunities and health benefits; Improved habitats
and benefiting wildlife; Improved quality and length of life in
the sub-region and improved public health.
A major component of the programme is the South
Essex Marshes. It comprises 3000 hectares of publicly owned land,
across five contiguous local authority boundaries. It is within
easy reach (5km) for 650,000 residents—not to mention the
huge "playground" market of London. It will be managed,
accessed and used by the public in harmony with nature and will
be a thriving hub of human, natural and animal life.
In addition to these outcomes a number of more
tangible outputs will also be achieved including 288 hectares
of new green space; 1,300 hectares of enhanced green space, 300,000
additional visitors; four new visitor centres; 30km of new and
enhanced pedestrian routes, and the creation of 20 new FTE jobs.
As illustrated above the South Essex Parklands Programme has the
ambition and ability to dramatically improve the quality of the
Parklands in Essex and create sustainable regeneration for the
benefit of both residents and businesses.
REGENERATING BASILDON
As part of a larger urban renewal scheme, decisive
action and far-sighted investment by Essex County Council has
unblocked a huge regeneration scheme that will tackle a critical
area of deprivation in Basildon and improve the quality of life
for thousands of residents
The council put together an imaginative package
that will allow English Partnerships to deliver a £250 million
regeneration project to remodel the Craylands Estate and redevelop
the former Fryerns School site as a new sustainable community.
The ambitious scheme, which was close to stalling
before the county council stepped in, will help deliver a number
of Local Area Agreement targets related to improving outcomes
for children and young people, making Essex a safe place in which
to live and creating a strong and competitive economy.
It will be the first major move to correct the
issues caused by New Town residential planning in the 1950s and
1960s in the Thames Gateway South Essex sub-region, part of Europe's
largest regeneration programme.
The Craylands Estate has a reputation for isolation,
poor quality housing and inadequate social amenities and is seen
to be in a downward spiral of deprivation, social exclusion and
neglect. It has high levels of crime, neighbourhood nuisance and
antisocial behaviour and extremely low levels of educational attainment
and skills.
The estate's 957 homes are within four-storey
maisonette blocks, which are in a poor condition, and terraces.
Almost half the properties have been bought under the right
to buy scheme and the remaining 53% is social rented housing,
most of it through Basildon District Council.
The project involves remodeling a 1960s housing
estate and building new housing on the adjacent surplus school
site, along with a new local centre. The plan is to retain 344
existing homes, re-build 613 and construct a further 695 dwellings
on the new site, resulting in a total of 1,652 homes.
The then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister
awarded initial funding for the scheme in 2005, but the complex
scheme was referred to the Treasury for a decision in November
2007. At the end of this delay, the scheme had a £6 million
funding gap that needed to be filled for it to go ahead as planned.
Essex County Council stepped in to sell English Partnerships land
the agency needed to allow tenants to be moved into new homes
so that work on the estate could begin.
At the same time the council pledged to use
all the money from the sale to support regeneration in Basildon.
It will provide about £30 million to the area for road improvements,
a new neighbourhood centre, £5 million towards the flagship
Basildon Sporting Village and support for other regeneration initiatives.
In addition, it has pledged £6 million
from the land sale to plug the financial gap in the Craylands
scheme, allowing the original £250 million project to go
ahead as planned and lighting the way for a brighter future for
residents.
Essex County Council's commitment to the scheme
and its practical funding support was not just useful in cash
terms but helped to persuade the Treasury to back the scheme with
a positive decision that ended years of uncertainty for residents.
The council has also promised £3 million in highway improvements
that will allow a new bus link into the estate and give residents
a genuine choice over how they travel locally.
SAVING ESSEX'S
POST OFFICES
Few issues have stirred up as much public outcry
in recent months as plans to close smaller Post Offices across
the country. While others simply campaigned to keep them open,
Essex County Council went one better and embarked on an ambitious
plan to save them
The programme, which has attracted huge national
media interest and the close attention of at least 200 other local
authorities across the UK, will see up to 20 closed Post Offices
re-opening under a carefully-thought out plan that has overcome
complex financial and legal issues.
The scheme will not simply re-open the Post
Offices closed across Essex as part of Post Office Ltd's (POL's)
national network change programme, but will instead provide an
improved community facility that really will demonstrate the Essex
Works message that the county delivers the best quality of life
in Britain.
It reflects the county council's commitment
to supporting vulnerable people, promoting economic growth and
providing services locally, and has redefined what local government
can do.
After raising the issue with Government in December,
Council Leader Lord Hanningfield announced in his annual budget
speech that the county would commit up to £1.5 million over
three years to keep Post Offices open in Essex. The three-year
commitment matches the term of the Government's national contract
with POL, which runs until 2011.
Although the 31 threatened Post Offices have
already closed, they started to re-open this summer, offering
Community Information Points (CIPs) alongside their usual services.
These CIPs provide access to, and information about, a range of
public services that would otherwise be unavailable. In the longer
term, branches will host digital information points, telephone
access to county council advisers and printed material.
The council believes the local Post Office has
a social function as a community hub and an access point for public
services that can often transcend its value as a local retailer.
Keeping Post Offices open in communities across Essex will contribute
towards the county's quality of life objective as well as helping
it deliver its key priorities of supporting vulnerable people
and promoting sustainable economic growth.
The county council believes that many of the
branches that have been closed were serving enough customers to
become financially independent in the longer run and aims to provide
a package of funding and business advice that will help Post Offices
operate independently outside the national network.
INSPIRING THE
RURAL ECONOMY
Supporting the rural economy is an essential part
of Essex's sustainability agenda and a critical factor in reducing
the number of workers commuting out of the county, particularly
to London
The county council's Essex Rural Strategy
established priorities for rural development up to 2010 and
recognised that a healthy and sustainable local economy provided
a foundation for community and environmental well-being.
The council took the lead in a major scheme
that used European grant money to promote rural enterprise, bringing
together 14 partners from across Europe in four ambitious pilot
schemes.
As lead partner in the Praxis: Making Rural
Entrepreneurship Work INTERREG IIIC project, Essex County
Council coordinated the entire bid, which used the four pilot
schemes to investigate different approaches to supporting rural
entrepreneurs.
In addition, the county council worked in partnership
with Business Link and Writtle College to manage one of the pilots—the
I DARE project—on behalf of the Essex Rural Partnership.
I DARE encouraged innovation in rural
businesses, providing a tailored, customer-focused approach to
business support and a new way of working, and had a strong partnership
element. Delivery responsibilities were shared between partners
while the Essex Development and Regeneration Agency (ExDRA) managed
the project.
The council knew from research that a number
of rural business types would benefit from an intelligent analysis
of their operations and an injection of expertise in innovation.
These included well-established businesses that were failing to
adapt to changing markets, farming businesses that could benefit
from co-operative branding and marketing and new businesses that
lacked the skills to innovate.
The project provided support and mentoring to
25 businesses aimed at increasing their capacity for innovation
and boosting their future competitiveness. Alongside the year-long
support, the firms took part in a number of workshops that focused
on leadership, marketing and business development.
Follow up visits showed that the businesses
had all gained from the experience, understood the benefits of
innovation and more focused marketing and felt more "in control".
Specific help with intellectual property issues, identifying new
markets, improving cash flow and profitability, collaborating
with higher education institutions and website development had
benefited many of those involved.
The businesses involved also gained from the
networking opportunities that I DARE opened up to them
and benefited from the flexible and tailored approach. The lessons
learned from the pilot have influenced a major programme of innovation
support, the Supporting Innovative Businesses Programme now
being managed by ExDRA on behalf of the Essex Innovation Network.
Those businesses that are not eligible for continued
support from ExDRA have been pointed towards alternative opportunities,
while several of the businesses have already made significant
progress using the skills they developed during the project.
IMPROVING QUALITY
OF LIFE
IN JAYWICK
Essex County Council is committed to improving
the quality of life all our residents—and that includes
people living in "difficult" areas where past efforts
have been unable to reverse a steady economic decline
Jaywick was recently ranked as the third most
deprived super output area in England. Homes in the area were
built for holiday use rather than year-round occupancy, the roads
are in a very poor condition and privately owned by a company
that is now in liquidation, it has no significant public housing
and 30% of homes in the core area of Grasslands and Brooklands
are privately rented.
Although currently well defended, Jaywick's
difficulties have been made worse by the fact that it is located
in a high flood risk zone. In late 2007 the county council made
Jaywick a key corporate priority and is committed to working with
partners to improve the socio-economic conditions of the resort.
Regeneration is also expected to bring benefits to the whole North
Essex coastline, including nearby Clacton.
After taking over from the East of England Development
Agency (EEDA) as the lead partner driving the regeneration effort,
the county is working hard to bring a new sense of determination
and energy to the partnership that is seeking to breathe new life
into this isolated coastal resort.
Those partners—Go East, EEDA, Tendring
District Council and the Environment Agency—have now agreed
to back a comprehensive prospectus driven by the county council
and aimed at securing funding and delivering improvements designed
to arrest the rapid decline of the area. That prospectus will
tackle the fact that despite its high ranking in terms of deprivation,
Jaywick is not eligible for funding under current regeneration
rules. It will be submitted to Government as an outline case for
funding support, without which the significant investment in housing,
roads and infrastructure will not be possible.
The prospectus sets out possible schemes that
could improve tourism, attract new businesses and improve the
local economy, as well as improving the quality of life of the
local residents. As well as seeking support from partners, the
county council is consulting widely with people in the local community,
many of whom enjoy living where they do.
Past regeneration proposals have not taken local
people's views into account, which has left residents despondent
and wary of any new schemes—tackling that negative feeling
and bringing residents on board is a priority for the county council.
Another difficult issue is land ownership, where
negotiating with numerous land owners and untangling the complex
arrangements for maintaining local roads is proving a challenge,
but one the county council is determined to face.
Although government funding remains crucial
and will be a focus of the next phase of the Jaywick project,
the county council-led approach has already secured financial
support from key partners. The challenging initiative will achieve
real, tangible benefits for local people. While increased levels
of educational attainment, improved housing and new road infrastructure
will take time, a new dedicated neighbourhood management team
will focus on environmental and community safety improvements
such as tackling crime and antisocial behaviour and stopping rubbish
and fly tipping.
LOCAL ASSET
BACKED VEHICLES
SUPPORTING REGENERATION
The execution of an innovative scheme to realise
the value of local authority held assets, countering the worst
effects of the economic crisis
The depressed value of land currently, coupled
with the emergence of new and innovative partnership models between
private and pubic sectors, creates the conditions for us to develop
a leading approach to regeneration. We are now considering ways
in which we can use Local Asset Backed Vehicles (LABVs) to take
advantage of the current economic conditions to deliver regeneration.
It is common for local authorities to sell off
assets in an ad hoc fashion at market rates, often to developers,
who then redevelop to make a profit. An LABV enables the disposal
and re-use of assets and land to be planned in a longer-term strategic
way, maximising quality of development and sharing in the profits
for further reinvestment in local regeneration.
An LABV is a partnership between public sector
land-holders and private sector developers/investors—CLG
define an LABV as "funds, combining locally-owned public
sector assets and equity from institutional investors, established
to finance the delivery of major regeneration outcomes".
There are various types of arrangement ranging from a straightforward
joint venture (developer/local authority); to a complex multi-agency
investment vehicle.
The regeneration projects are delivered according
to an agreed business plan, with profits recycled back into the
company and shared on an equal basis between partners. The result
of this arrangement is to provide the public sector with a profit
share, rather than S 106 or similar formulaic systems.
We are exploring the possibility of a pilot
LABV in various parts of Essex.
HCA has offered to work closely with relevant
partners to test their new operational approach. This brings a
wealth of additional financial and other support to the process.
October 2008
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