Conclusions and recommendations
1. Thirteen years after the start of the schemes,
the Department still lacks clarity as to how its initiatives can
best revitalise the local communities in which it is investing.
The Department should reassess the needs of coalfield areas in
2010, and articulate a clear, measurable and time-bound aim and
develop an overarching strategy to achieve it. Its commitment
to produce an action plan is a step in the right direction, and
should set out how it will better lead and coordinate coalfield
regeneration to obtain the best value for money from the remaining
£450 million to be spent by its initiatives. The Department
needs to assign action dates and specify how and when its progress
will be measured and reported.
2. The Department has failed to lead coalfield
regeneration across Government. The Department
should take the lead to bring together relevant Government departments
to support enterprise, employment, education, health and transport
in coalfield communities. The Department should agree clear terms
of reference and establish national aims, underpinned with clear
lines of responsibility.
3. The Department has not sufficiently coordinated
its three strands of coalfield regeneration, and funding for improving
local coordination is at risk. The Department
should define the respective responsibilities of the initiatives
and how they should work together in coalfield areas. The Department
should assess the additional value for money from improved local
coordination between its initiatives and use this to inform future
funding allocations.
4. The Department has failed to develop a
robust assessment of the direct impact of its initiatives, including
proof that the money spent has created jobs that would not have
been created anway. To demonstrate that
its plans merit continued funding, the Department should establish
the success of its initiatives using direct measures such as the
occupancy rates on sites and the number of jobs filled by members
of coalfield communities as a direct result of the initiatives.
To better assess the true impact of the Programme, the Department
should compare the benefits achieved by site redevelopment with
those former coalfield communities whose sites were excluded from
the Programme and publish the lessons learnt from this evaluation.
5. The Department does not have a specific
programme in place to help local people benefit from jobs on its
site developments. The Department should
have a specific programme in place for every site to help local
people access job opportunities created by construction work and
incoming business. It should urgently check all its site developments
and make sure that such programmes are in place. And it should
incentivise the Coalfields Regeneration Trust (the Trust) and
the National Coalfields Programme (the Programme) to make best
use of their collective networks and expertise to create job opportunities
for local people.
6. The benchmarks the Department uses to assess
its spending on the contamination, housing and employment aspects
of coalfield regeneration are too broad to give confidence over
value for money.
- To improve the comparability
of the cost of treating land, the Department should develop separate
and narrower benchmarks for differing levels of contamination,
and
- The Department should develop more sophisticated
housing and employment benchmarks that exclude the unavoidable
cost of treating land to meeting legal obligations, and are based
solely on the incremental costs and benefits associated with the
work.
7. The Department did not act quickly enough
to support enterprise in coalfield areas.
By the time the £50 million Coalfield Enterprise Fund to
support businesses was proposed in 1998, the employment, skills
and confidence in many coalfield areas had been lost. An urgent
response was needed but the Department took until 2004 to develop
and launch a £10 million fund. And the Department took until
2009 to identify a mixture of public and private funding to reach
the £50 million mark. The Department should urgently reassess
the enterprise funding needs of coalfield areas.
8. The Department is not confident of achieving
its target outputs for the physical aspect of coalfield regeneration
by 2017 because of the current economic downturn but it has not
reviewed its spending plans. The capacity
of coalfield areas to absorb new building developments on former
coalfield sites and create jobs is dependent on the speed of economic
recovery. The Department should re-evaluate how best to achieve
its aim to revitalise coalfield areas in light of the downturn.
It should reassess the immediate and long term needs of coalfield
communities in light of further job losses. The Department should
reassess the balance of spending between physical regeneration
on sites, physical regeneration and infrastructure elsewhere,
support for training and skills development, and support for enterprise,
and set itself challenging targets to maximise its contribution
to employment and sustainable growth in coalfield areas.
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