2 Informed decision making
7. Reviving the former English coalfields has
been one of the largest regeneration challenges to face the country
over the last 30 years.[20]
There was a huge decline in the number of people working in the
coal industry, from 200,000 in 1981 to 7,000 in 2009.[21]
Many former coalfield sites contained contaminated land.[22]
Some were among the most highly contaminated in Europe and some
sites had a very low economic potential.[23]
The Department had a legal obligation to make the land safe and
up to 90% of the costs of bringing former coal pits back into
new use could be for treating the land.[24]
8. The Department's benchmarks for physical regeneration
were too wide to give it confidence that it had achieved value
for money.[25] It used
a range of benchmarks as the levels of contamination and the range
of outputs varied enormously from site to site. To reflect the
breadth of the Programme, the Department used other benchmarks,
such as the cost for building a house and the cost of creating
a job, to support its assessment of value for money.[26]
The Department was unable to demonstrate the value for money of
the jobs created by the Programme as it did not capture information
on the expenditure on making the land safe, as distinct from the
money that was being spent to generate jobs.[27]
9. The Department has not monitored which groups
have benefited from its initiatives or assessed the number of
jobs that have been filled by people from former coalfield communities,
but the Audit Commission estimated that 38% of the jobs created
have gone to people outside the coalfield areas.[28]
The Department expected some people from coalfield communities
to commute to jobs outside the area and for others to travel in
because the labour market has ceased to operate on a highly localised
basis.[29] There was
a shortage of skills in the coalfields and people from other communities
who travel into coalfield areas for jobs bring additional skills,
and create economic diversity and wealth.[30]
Overall there had been a modest net increase in the number of
people commuting from coalfield areas.[31]
10. The Department did not have a sophisticated
measure of the additional jobs created by the initiatives.[32]
Some of the jobs created have been due to general growth in the
national economy and some have been the result of the coalfield
initiatives.[33] The
number of additional jobs could have been between 8,000 and 16,000.[34]
The Department commissioned an evaluation of its initiatives which
estimated the number of jobs the initiatives have helped to create,
but this estimate was based on benchmark projects and did not
draw on a representative survey.[35]
11. The main indicators of unemployment suggested
that the coalfield areas have improved compared to national averages,[36]
and there has been a fall in people claiming Income Support, Jobseekers
Allowance and also Incapacity Benefit.[37]
The Department asserted that it monitors key indicators for deprivation,
which show that coalfield areas have made progress compared to
the national average.[38]
20 C&AG's Report, para 1.1 Back
21
Q 13 Back
22
Q 63 Back
23
Q 66; C&AG's Report, Figure 8 Back
24
Qq 20, 21 and 90 Back
25
Qq 43 Back
26
Q 90 Back
27
Qq 65 and 66 Back
28
Q 13 Back
29
Q 27 Back
30
Qq 13 and 24 Back
31
Q 28 Back
32
Q 15 Back
33
Q 26 Back
34
Q 15 Back
35
Qq 24 and C&AG's Report, para 4.6 Back
36
Qq81-84 Back
37
Q 14 Back
38
Qq 80-83; Ev 14-22 Back
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