Chairmen of the boards

A total of 32 local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) have now been approved, but most have yet to appoint a chair.

Given that the majority of LEPs received official sign-off at the beginning of the year, it is perhaps surprising that such a small number - far less than ten by all accounts - are still without a chair, although whether this indicates that they are having difficulties securing strong, appropriate leadership is unclear.

Today, a local newspaper reported that Leicestershire County Council has blocked the appointment of Stephen Woolfe, a partner at Leicester law firm Harvey Ingram, as the chair of the new Leicester & Leicestershire LEP. This was despite backing from both Leicester City Council and, apparently, the Leicester Chamber of Commerce, the paper reports.

And, last month, ex-Tesco chief Terry Leahy and a member of the board of the Liverpool City Region LEP, turned down an invitation to chair the partnership, although at the time Planning was unable to reach him and find out his reasons for this.

In any case, the appointment of a chair is crucial if the partnerships are to finalise their economic priorities and start having an impact in their areas.

Here is a summary of the appointments that have been made so far:

- Andy Street will chair the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP. Street (pictured above) is the managing director of John Lewis and comes from the West Midlands. In February, John Lewis announced that in 2014 it will open a new full-line department store in Birmingham as part of the regeneration of New Street station.

- Chris Pomfret will chair the Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly LEP. Pomfret lives near Port Isaac in Cornwall, and has held a number of senior executive roles at consumer goods manufacturer Unilever. Prior to this he was business director of Birds Eye UK. He also tutors on sustainable development leadership at Cambridge University and is a board member of regulator the Food Standards Agency (FSA) .

- Christine Gaskell will chair the Cheshire and Warrington LEP. Gaskell has been a board member at Crewe-based Bentley Motors since 1996. She is also chair of the board of trustees for the Rolls-Royce and Bentley Motors Pension Fund, a board member of umbrella body Business Link North West and an ambassador for the previous Labour administration’s Apprenticeship Network.

- Neville Reyner CBE will chair the Greater Cambridgeshire and Cambridge LEP. Reyner, who lives in Royston, just outside Cambridge, is deputy Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire and president of the British Chambers of Commerce. For five year he was deputy chair of the East of England Development Agency (EEDA). He is also chair of Anglia Components in Wisbech, and has previously held senior posts at Mitsubishi Electric Europe, Fairchild and Analog Devices.

- Neil McLean will chair the Leeds City Region LEP. McLean is managing partner at law firm DLA Piper Leeds and has been involved in a number of regeneration projects in the region.

- Mike Blackburn will chair the Greater Manchester LEP. Blackburn is BT's regional director for the North West and has worked for BT for the past 15 years. He has also held several different roles in Government, most recently as director of central and home affairs. In 2008, Blackburn was appointed as chair of Greater Manchester’s Commission for Economic Development, Employment and Skills.

If you hear of any more LEP board appointments, contact me at sarah.townsend@haymarket.com or via Twitter at twitter.com/SP_Townsend. Keep up with LEP news on Regeneration & Renewal's dedicated page, regen.net/go/leps.

Cities outlook: Key to growth is diversification

Last week, I attended the launch of think-tank the Centre for Cities' annual report on the economic state of the country's cities, Cities Outlook 2011. You can read my take on the report, which suggests Northern cities will remain vulnerable to public spending cuts for the next four years, here. Here's a round-up of some other interesting points raised by those who attended at last week's launch.

1) Anthony Browne, policy director to the mayor of London: "London fell into recession slower than other parts of the country and is moving out of it quicker than some - the City, for instance, has bounced back. But it is easy for the government to be complacent and forget that London is very much a tale of two cities: the 'other', less prosperous, side of London has some of the highest rates of poverty in the UK, some of the highest unemployment levels and some of the most deprived neighbourhoods. It will be affected by public spending cuts as much as other cities."

2) Mike Emmerich, chief executive of Manchester's Commission for the New Economy: "The biggest cities - the ones that have a critical mass and are already thriving economic hubs - are where the market is going to create the jobs. People will continue travelling to these cities from hinterlands whose economies have not improved much because of long-term structural flaws - so the Government would be wrong to attempt to create jobs in those areas. It should continue to invest in 'travel to work' policies instead."

3) Dave Smith, chief executive of Sunderland City Council: "The key to achieving sustainable economic growth is diversification. Any structural dependence on one particular industry is bound to make a city vulnerable. In the 1960s, the North East was over-reliant upon shipbuilding, in the '70s it was coal mining. Now, it is over-dependent upon manufacturing, which is why the council is trying to invest in small businesses and the knowledge economy, to try and boost economy recovery in the region."

Read the first column by Centre for Cities' chief executive Alexandra Jones in the current issue of Planning magazine.

Potential growth fund bidders in dark over Round 2

Officials at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Bis) are currently sifting through the 450 bids that were submitted to the first round of the £1.4 billion Regional Growth Fund (RGF) last Friday.

In the current issue of Planning magazine we reveal the value of a number of these bids - many of which were submitted by new public-private local enterprise partnerships (LEPs). For example, the Tees Valley (pictured) LEP submitted bids totalling £80 million, while bids from Birmingham and Solihull LEP totalled £39 million. On top of the bids mentioned in the story we tracked down a lengthy list of other applications submitted independently by the private sector or other public-private partnerships - for example Barrow Regeneration submitted two separate bids totalling almost £30 million and city development company 1NG submitted two bids worth £50 million.

A number of other organisations confirmed that they had placed bids - for instance Durham County Council said that some 15 bids had been submitted for the region, and the Black Country LEP said it had submitted a bid for a project to develop Dudley Zoo - but declined to reveal their value due to commercial sensitivity.

Bis, too, has refused to provide a full list of bids for the same reason, or to comment on their quality or otherwise, but it doesn't take a genius to work out that demand for the three-year RGF fund is massively outstripping supply. The Government will allocate around £250 million in the first bidding round so, clearly, just four or five of the largest bids to have been submitted would gobble up all of the available cash.

'If many don't qualify for the first round, there will more money available for the second' Sir Ian Wrigglesworth

Given that the RGF is pretty much the only major economic development funding programme that the coalition has launched, the level of competition that applicants face is alarming, if not entirely surprising.

The news is likely to increase interest in the second bidding round - details of which are due to be unveiled by the Government over the next few weeks - as some would-be applicants decide it might give them a better chance of success. The Government has been vague about criteria for the second round, but the available information has suggested that the focus might be slightly different. For example, bids for programme funding will be invited, not just bids for one-off projects.

Speaking to Planning magazine, Sir Ian Wrigglesworth, deputy chair of the independent advisory panel for the RGF, was coy about divulging information on the second round. He said: "We won't be determining the focus of the next bidding round until we have been through all of the current bids and know more about their character and quantum. In other words we will see what the demand is like.

"For instance, if many don't qualify for the first round, there will more money available for the second."

He added that unsuccessful bids might be able to be re-entered in the second round, and that, subject to available resources, Bis intended to publish feedback on the first round bids in order to provide some guidance to round two applicants.

Wrigglesworth also said he acknowledged that "the Government has been criticised for pressing ahead too quickly with launching the RGF and giving applicants little time to put together decent bids". But, he said, the reason for pressing ahead quickly is to "ensure funding reaches those economies most dependent on public sector employment before public spending cuts start to bite".

So how the RGF's second bidding round will differ from the first remains to be seen. What are your thoughts on both Wrigglesworth's comments and the RGF's objectives?

Winning World Cup bid may ease economic woes

So, today is the day. After all the sniping, scandal and alleged subterfuge, the decision on which nation, or nations, will stage the 2018 World Cup will be announced at 3pm today.

In addition to the honour of staging the greatest sporting spectacle on Earth, the hosts of the 2018 tournament will also enjoy a massive economic boost.

A winning bid could lessen the pain of the downturn in our regional cities

According to the England World Cup bid team, if FIFA gives England the nod, the economy will benefit to the tune of £3.2 billion.

Consequently, a successful English bid would not only see money pouring into London’s coffers, but would also result in regional cities such as Bristol and Sheffield receiving a cash injection of anything between £150 million to £300 million. For a list of the host cities, click here.

Indeed, research by Leeds Metropolitan University concluded that revenue generated by sporting events could be key in helping regional cities out of recession.

Let’s hope that England’s delegation out in Switzerland has swung it our way. A winning bid could mean the pain of the economic downturn is felt less keenly in our regional cities.

UPDATE 15.38: FIFA has announced that the 2018 World Cup finals will be held in Russia. @mayoroflondon tweets: "Extremely disappointing. We had an awesome bid and knockout presentation. Can’t quite believe it."

- Interactive 2018 World Cup bid map by level of deprivation

By Ben Cook

Tory manifesto leaves more questions than answers

Regeneration was centre stage at the Conservative manifesto launch last week. But not in a way that would bring any comfort to those in the sector wondering what the future may have in store, writes Allister Hayman.

“Welcome to Battersea, a great British landmark ripe for regeneration, just like our country,” said William Hague, the Tory deputy leader, at the launch of the manifesto. The use of the old derelict power station – subject to so many schemes and visions over the past few decades – as a metaphor for Britain, and by extension, the “regeneration” that the Tory promise to bring the country was clever. But it was just that: all PR and no policy. For, apart from a section in the manifesto that praised Manchester’s urban regeneration (which has largely been directed by Labour both locally and nationally), regeneration was conspicuous only by its absence as a policy area in the manifesto.

We should not be surprised. Having been long promised a Tory regeneration green paper by Tory shadow regeneration minister Stewart Jackson that was endlessly delayed and finally shelved, the sector could not have expected much from the party in the way of clear regeneration policy. Previously, Jackson has said the regeneration paper would set out the Tory position on policy issues such as Tax Increment Financing, the reinstitution of the Single Regeneration Budget, local asset-backed vehicles and a proposed "forensic audit" of the Thames Gateway and housing market renewal areas. It was also expected to further clarify the future of economic development funding if regional development agencies are scrapped.

But now the sector goes into the election not knowing where the Tories stand on these and other issues that concern regeneration practitioners. With the Tories making Britain’s “Broken Society” a key theme in their pitch to voters it is not unreasonable to expect that they would have delivered on their promise to set out some policy positions for those who actually work on the ground in Britain’s so-called broken communities. Yes, they provided details of their 'Big Society' plan to reinvigorate the voluntary and community sector. But while giving residents the power to take control of local parks and swimming pools is commendable, that alone is not going to bring forward the regeneration of Battersea power station.

Such large-scale projects of course require public intervention, which in the case of Battersea will require public money to build an extension to the North Line. If regeneration is anything it is state intervention in market failure, which by its definition requires an active state. Yet the Tory manifesto and the rhetoric of senior members of the shadow cabinet, not least shadow business secretary Ken Clarke, have been increasingly hostile to such notions. Indeed, last week Clarke mocked Labour’s “active industrial policy” championed by business secretary Lord Mandelson and said the Tories would be much more hands off.

This is worrying. Arguably – and many economists do argue this – the Government’s interventions in the economy since the financial crisis were all that stopped the country from plummeting into a truly deep recession, perhaps even depression. Additionally, Lord Mandelson can point to some recent successes in attracting investment to the UK – Nissan’s green car, offshore wind manufacturers - which of course can not entirely be credited to Government policy, but nor can that same policy be entirely discounted.

But plainly, the Tories have hardened their position on the right-side of the economic debate and want a smaller state, and a bigger community sector. It will be a revival of civil society and an unleashing of enterprise that regenerates the UK they argue, not an active state. They want to boost the private sector’s share of the economy across the country - a laudable aim – but expect to do so without the “grants and subsidies” that Clarke said Mandelson has been distributing like “a Bourbon monarch [going] round in his coach throwing out gold coins”.

But many in the sector question whether such a laissez faire approach is really the right one. Yes business would benefit from cutting red tape – that is a given – but the economy remains weak and is in need of serious recalibration. As a recent report by the think-tank the Work Foundation made clear, the industries of the future – high tech manufacturing, green technologies, the creative industries – as well as the research and development and innovation that lead to as yet undiscovered opportunities, rarely emerge out of thin air.

Rather, they are conjured through partnerships between the public and private sector, as evidenced, for example, in Germany. The worry is that, in the Tories' championing of the third sector and their evident eagerness to hack back the state, the subtleties of these kinds of relations between public and private sectors may be trampled – and with them the green shoots of recovery. If Battersea is to be regenerated – and by extension the UK – the Tories would do well to recognise that just as they might like now to cut tax but can’t, so too should they realise that a little bit of action from the state to help recalibrate the UK economy would not be the end of the world. Indeed, it could be the start of a new one.

Yesterday's unemployment stats explained

To use a phrase that has been attributed to Mark Twain (among others), there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Further evidence of this assertion appeared yesterday with the publication of the latest unemployment figures by the Office for National Statistics.

On the face of it, the figures showed that things were looking up. Unemployment fell by 3,000 in the last quarter of 2009 and now stands at 2.46 million, and this drop in joblessness is no doubt the figure that Gordon Brown would seek to draw our attention to.

However, in an apparent anomaly, it was also revealed that the number of people on jobseekers allowance had actually increased in January to 1.63 million, up by 23,500 on the December 2009 level.

It’s all a bit confusing. So what’s really going on? It seems there are a combination of factors. Some economists have pointed to the fact that the number of “economically inactive” people in the UK increased by 72,000 in the last quarter of 2009 and now stands at 8.08 million. The key point here is the definition of economically inactive – it means people who are “not available for work and/or not actively seeking work”. Included in this category are students, disabled people, or people looking after family members.

So, in effect, unemployment figures have been kept in check by people withdrawing from the labour market altogether – for example, part-time students who may have had jobs are choosing to become full time students or students who may have considered leaving full time education are opting to prolong their studies.

Another factor advanced as a possible reason for the decline in the number of unemployed is that many school and university leavers have decided to not even bother looking for a job in the current climate and have instead opted for gap years. Indeed, the bad news for people who left school and university in 2009 is that they may still be unemployed by the time the next wave of school and university leavers hit the labour market this summer.

However, this has not stopped that Government trying to put a positive spin on the figures. Jim Knight, the employment minister, protested that “long-term unemployment today is nowhere near as high as when Labour came into office – in the 1990s’ recession, under the Tories, there were over four times as many long-term unemployed people as now.”

Well, I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures. But there is no doubt that the current labour market bears little resemblance to its predecessors. The chief UK economist at Deutsche Bank says unemployment has not risen as quickly as it did in previous recessions for a variety of reasons. In his view, joblessness has not soared partly because employees have taken pay cuts in return for keeping their jobs, partly because migrants are returning home rather than claiming unemployment benefit, and partly because there has been a shift away from full-time to part-time employment leading to a reduction in hours worked.

The statistics may show that unemployment hasn’t reached the heights some expected, but it doesn’t mean people aren’t suffering.

Photo by Iain Winfield

All aboard the Farrell Express

It was a savvy move by Kent County Council to enlist Sir Terry Farrell to sprinkle some "starchitect" stardust over an already published regeneration framework.

The Farrell-authored 21st Century Kent A blueprint for the county's future launched yesterday builds on council leader Paul Carter's document Unlocking Kent's Potential and puts connectivity and landscape at the heart of its 20-year vision for economic growth.

As the man behind recent developments such as Incheon International Airport in South Korea and Beijing South Railway Station, Farrell (pictured above at St Pancras Grand) certainly has a track record in designing major transport hubs. And with High Speed 1 now up and running, shuttling passengers from central London to Ashford in 17 minutes (and to further afield Ebbsfleet in under 40 minutes), Kent has some hubs of it own in the making. Farrell reckons the population of Ashford alone could double by 2030 to 110,000. And as a further sign of the county's ambitions, it has already been in discussions with Microsoft - who brought along Intel for the ride - to talk digital infrastructure and Saatchi are apparently close to signing on to create a new Visit Kent campaign aimed at both domestic and international tourists.

For now, towns on Kent's east coast, such as Margate - where I was told yesterday that there are suburbs with 50 per cent of residents on some kind of benefit, remain cut off from high-speed rail. We look forward to hearing precise details from Kent County Council and its various partners on putting the flesh on the bones of Farrell's vision so that in coastal towns where levels of deprivation are high, jobs can be created from an increase in tourism. One of the challenges is getting this message across.

As Farrell told me at the launch: "It’s a challenge of communication. How do you get complicated ideas expressed in such a way that everybody can buy-in and feel joint authors with, from the lowest to the highest, from the widest to the narrowest. How do you get buy-in?"

White Elephant or West Ham?

Lord Coe can’t be too happy today. In his role as chair of the London Olympic Games Organising Committee, Coe – a key figure in winning the Games for the capital – has long insisted that the Olympic Stadium in East London should retain its athletics track in legacy use. But Coe’s vision, to drastically cut back the stadium from 80,000 to a modest 25,000 and make it a home of athletics in London, has long been the subject of fierce debate. Many argue that such a move would be a disaster, as without an anchor tenant and with limited demand for athletics as a spectator sport, the venue would become a white elephant.

Equally, critics say, it is a nonsense to build a world class venue only to then downscale it so severely. These critics say the Olympic organisers should follow the example of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester – where Manchester City took on the stadium - and have a football team become the anchor tenant. This option has been explored. But Coe has continued to insist that the athletics track should remain, whoever the anchor tenant, meaning football clubs, who have no interest in stadiums with tracks separating the supporters from the pitch, lost interest.

But not now. This week West Ham’s new owners – life long Hammers fans – said they wanted the club to move to the stadium after the Games - so long as there is no athletics track and it can seat around 55,000 fans. Ministers, the Mayor of London, the host boroughs – and the taxpayer – ought to be jumping for joy. The opportunity to have one of London’s premier football teams, whose current stadium is only three miles down the road, as anchor tenant of a stadium which currently does not have one ought to be leapt at with open arms. The absence of a legacy tenant for the stadium is one great stadium sized hole in the current legacy plans and West Ham would fill it. 

Olympics minister Tessa Jowell has said the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC), which has now taken charge of the legacy planning from the Boris Johnson’s economic development agency, will look at West Ham’s proposal. Even before West Ham’s renewed interest, Baroness Ford, OPLC chair, said she wanted to review plans for the stadium. Boris Johnson too has been occasionally outspoken in bemoaning the lack of a viable legacy use for the stadium and has said he favours a football club. These three key players – along with the host boroughs (Mayor of Newham Robin Wales, a Hammers fan, said West Ham was the “obvious” solution to the stadium problem) – should now do all they can to turn West Ham’s interest into a concrete commitment. That will of course cost money. Converting the stadium into a football venue and removing the track could cost around £150 million, the OPLC says. It will also require Coe - who did a grand job winning the Games for London - to be sidelined. Those with an interest in making the legacy a success must be allowed to give the West Ham option the attention it deserves.

NB: The author is an Arsenal supporter and therefore is in no way biased towards West Ham.

Japanese lessons

Bullet train technology. X-shaped pedestrian crossings. Knotweed. These are all things for which regenerators must thank the Japanese. To this list we can now add pod-style hotels.

Last week, Westminster City Council granted permission for a hotel with 495 rooms, some of which will measure a mere 12sq metres, at the Grade II-listed Trocadero building in London’s West End. These pod-style rooms are inspired by the even tinier sleeping compartments stacked side by side and one above the other found in Japanese capsule hotels. If you’ve ever stayed in one of those, you’ll know it’s like sleeping inside a shoe, only worse-smelling.

Pod hotels aren’t, strictly speaking, new to this country. The first, Yotel, was created by Gerard Greene and Simon Woodroffe, who knows a thing or two about borrowing ideas from the Japanese – he’s the entrepreneur behind the Yo! Sushi restaurant chain. It opened at Heathrow Terminal 4 in 2007; others have since followed.

Here are four other Japanese innovations we think could work in this country:

1. Underground bicycle parks. Automated parking spaces such as Eco Cycle in west Tokyo’s Jiyugaoka district store cycles beside the train station in moving carousels for members who pay around £18 a month to use the park, resulting in less clutter and less cars.

2. (Proper) superfast high-speed broadband. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the UK is placed a lowly 21st out of 30 in terms of internet connection speed, below Greece and Portugal. Most subscribers in Japan access the internet through fibre optic technology and the top advertised speed is 1 gigabite per second. Although business secretary Peter Mandelson’s Next Generation Fund proposes to upgrade the UK’s digital infrastructure so that 90 per cent of the country has access to super-fast broadband, this is likely to be at a speed of 50 megabits per second only. Can Britain remain competitive when the playing field isn’t level?

3. Turn Heathrow into a transit hub. Haneda airport is the world's fourth-busiest airport and less than 15 minutes from downtown Tokyo. Could Heathrow ever become so close to the capital? Interviewed by the Sunday Times last year, transport secretary Lord Adonis talked about integrating Heathrow into the future north-south High Speed 2 rail line, calling it "an attractive idea.'' Such a hub would encourage more passengers get to the airport by train and mean some passengers ditch air travel altogether for trips to the continent.

4. Garden cities. Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara has for a while been encouraging companies to grow plant and vegetable gardens on top of skyscrapers to lower city temperatures and provide green spaces for the public. If communications giant NTT can harvest sweet potatoes on its own rooftop farms and human resources firm Pasona can run a farm that adjusts temperatures, humidity and lighting so vegetables can grow under the ground, how about, say, Swiss Re growing gherkins on the side of the Gherkin in London’s City? Or is that just pie in the sky?

Photo by Kaarin T

Interactive 2018 World Cup bid map

Yesterday saw representatives of 15 English cities hoping to be part of England's bid to host the 2018 World Cup finals travel to Wembley stadium to submit their proposals. Around 10 cities are expected to be chosen from the list of 15. The successful cities will be announced by the 2018 bid team on 16 December.

Use the interactive Google map below to view details of all the stadia (existing or planned) put forward as potential World Cup venues, plus figures showing levels of deprivation in their areas. Click on the map and drag to scroll around.

View World Cup 2018 bid in a larger map

While every effort has been made to accurately place the stadia on the map, placemarks may only be indicative and should not be used as proof of exact location.

Full list of ADZ bids

London mayor Boris Johnson has bid to pilot the infrastructure funding mechanism to extend the Northern line from Kennington to Battersea Power Station (left).

The full list of the bids for Accelerated Development Zone powers, compiled by Regeneration & Renewal following a Freedom of Information request, appears below. To read related stories from this week's magazine, click here and here.

Council/partnership ... Scheme

Adur ... Shoreham Harbour Growth Point
Allerdale ... Derwent Forest
Allerdale ... Workington Hall
Allerdale ... Former Corus Site, Workington
Allerdale ... Mayport Harbour
Aylesbury Vale ... Aylesbury Waterside
Barbergh ... Brantham Industrial Area
Barnsley ... Barnsley Markets
Basingstoke & Deane ... Basing View
Bournemouth ... Wessex Fields A338/Riverside Avenue and Park & Ride
Bournemouth ... Bournemouth Town Centre
Bracknell Forest ... Bracknell Town Centre
Bristol City
& South Gloucestershire ... Severnside/Avonmouth Environmental Enterprises
Cambridgeshire ... Cambridge Station Area
Charnwood ... Loughborough Eastern Gateway
Chelmsford ... Chelmsford Flood Alleviation Scheme
Coventry ... Friargate
Coventry ... City Centre Precinct
Coventry ... Stoneleigh Park
Crawley ... Town Centre North
Derbyshire ... Markham Vale Regeneration Scheme, Seymour Development Area
Dorset ... Detail not available
Elevate East Lancashire ... Blackburn Cathedral Quarter
Gloucestershire ... Cotswold Canals Regeneration
Gloucestershire ... Cinderford Town Centre
Gloucestershire ... Newent Town Centre Regeneration
Gloucestershire ... Cirencester Town Centre
Gravesham ... Gravesend Heritage Quarter
Great Yarmouth ... Beacon Park
Greater Birmingham ... Wednesbury-Brierly Hill-Stourbridge Rapid Transit
Greater Birmingham ... Wolverhamption Public Transport Interchange
Greater Birmingham ... Longbridge Strategic Investment Site
Guildford ... Dominic Square City Centre Redevelopment
Harlow ... Harlow Town Centre
Haven Gateway Partnership ... A12/14 And Felixstowe Dockspur Roundabout
Herefordshire ... Edgar Street Grid City Centre Redevelopment
Herefordshire ... Model Farm Employment Development In Ross-On-Wye
High Peak ... Bingswood Estate
Hull ... Fruit Market
Hull ... Hedon Road
Kent ... Ebbsfleet Valley
Kent ... Eureka Business Park
King's Lynn and West Norfolk ... Southern King's Lynn
Kirklees ... Batley Gateway
Kirklees ... Mirfield 25 Huddersfield
Leeds ...Aire Valley Leeds Regeneration
Leicester ... Leicester Waterside Regeneration
Leicestershire ... Detail not available
Liverpool ... Detail not available
London Mayor of London ... Northern Line Extension
London Borough of Barnet ... Colindale Growth And Regeneration Project
London Borough of Croydon ... A23/A235 Growth Related Infrastructure
London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham ... West Kensington, Earls Court, North Fulham Regeneration Area
London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham ... Fulham Riverside Regeneration Area
London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham ... White City Opportunity Area
London Borough of Haringey ... Tottenham Gyratory
London Borough of Lambeth ... Brixton Town Centre
London Borough of Merton ... More Morden Town Centre Development
London Borough of Redbridge ... Ilford Town Centre - Britannia Music Site And 40 Ilford Hill
London Borough of Southwark ... Elephant And Castle
London Borough of Sutton ... Hackbridge Project
Luton and Central Bedfordshire ... East Luton Strategic Employment Corridor
Luton and Central Bedfordshire ... North Houghton Regis And Luton Strategic Employment Site
Manchester ... Northern Gateway Cooperative Complex
Manchester ... Sportcity East Manchester
Manchester ... West Wythenshawe Economic Development Corridor
Mid Sussex ... Burgess Hill Town Centre
Mid Sussex ... Haywards Heath Quarter
Mid Sussex ... East Grinstead Town Centre
Middlesbrough ... Hemlington Grange "Raising Hope"
Newcastle ... Science Central
Newcastle ... Discovery Quarter
North Devon ... Bideford- Five Sites
North Devon ... Ilfracombe - Five Sites
North Staffordshire Regeneration P'ship ... Urban Core A - Transport Interchange And East West Precinct North Staffordshire Regeneration P'ship ... Urban Core B - Railway Station And Central Business District
North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership ... Priority Employment Generators, Etruria Valley
Norwich ... St Stephen's Street
Nottingham ... Nottingham Medipark
Plymouth ... North Cross And Plymouth Railway Station Development
Plymouth ... Language Business Park Extension Into Language Energy Park
Plymouth ... Millbay
Portsmouth ... City Centre North
Preston ... Preston Tithebarne Retail
Purbeck ... Wareham Former Council Depot
Push ... Eastleigh Riverside
Push ... Dunsbury Hill Farm
Rochdale ... South Heywood Development Area
Rotherham ... Rotherham Renaissance Flood Alleviation Scheme
Sedgemoor ... North East Bridgwater
Sheffield ... Sevenstone
Sheffield City Region ... Dearne Valley Eco-Vision
South Hams ... Ermington Workshops Redevelopment
South Norfolk ... Detail not available
St Albans ... City Vision Regeneration
St Edmundsbury ... Suffolk Business Park Extension
Staffordshire Moorlands and High Peak ... Detail not available
Stroud ... Youth Centre
Stroud ... Cam Town Centre
Sunderland ... Vaux Project
Sutton ... Detail not available
Swale Borough Council ... Sittingbourne Town Centre Regeneration
Swindon ... Union Square; Swindon Central; North Star
Thurrock ... DP World London Gateway
Torbay ... Torbay Town Centre
Tunbridge Wells ... Charles The Martyr/Pantiles Crossing
Tunbridge Wells ... North Farm Industrial Estate Access
Wakefield ... Wakefield City Renaissance
Warrington Borough Council ... Bridge Street Quarter
Warrington Borough Council ... Garven Place / Bank Park
Warrington Borough Council ... The Wire Works
Wellingborough ... North Of Park Farm Industrial Estate
West Bromwich ... Town Centre Retail
West Lancashire Borough Council ... Skelmersdale, Industrial Park
Wigan ... Wigan Arc Pemberton
Wigan ... South Lancashire Industrial Estate Extension
Wigan ... Former Parsonage Colliery Site - Leigh
Woking ... Woking Town Centre Infrastructure Improvements
Wolverhampton ... Summer Row
Worcestershire ... British Sugar Factory Site
Wycombe ... Hughenden Quarter
Wycombe ... Handy Cross Gateway
Wycombe ... Swan Theatre
York City Council ... Castle Piccadilly
York City Council ...York Central

Landscape Institute Awards

View Larger Map

Spent a bit of time this afternoon combing the streets (well, virtually, anyway) in search of the very best street-level panorama of this year's winners of the Landscape Institute Awards. Alas, all I could come up with was this: a view of Queen Square in Bristol.

Bristol City Council's Urban Design and Conservation team took home the Heritage & Conservation prize at yesterday's awards for their restoration of what is apparently one of the largest Georgian squares in the UK.

Elsewhere on the night, the President’s Award went to St Andrew Square in Edinburgh, designed by landscape architects Gillespies, while the Peter Youngman Award, which honours an outstanding contribution to landscape, was bagged by the Olympic Delivery Authority for their plans for the 2012 Olympic Park. (For a full list of the winners, click here.)

But when trying to find a representative view to link to for these spots, Google's online maps pretty much drew blanks. Well, they did for me at least. Any citizen cartographers with a more attuned compass may have better luck. Leave a comment - and link - if you do.

Railing against England's stations

Everyone has had a nightmare experience at a railway station.

Common gripes include being confronted by a post-7pm retail desert, non-existent disabled access, leaky roofs or dodgy unlit areas. Most of those used to traveling by rail in England will no doubt be able to reel off a list of their least favourite stations.

Now the Government has its own list. The Station Champions’ report commissioned by the Department for Transport and written by Sir Peter Hall, Professor of Planning and Regeneration at the University College London (and R&R columnist), and Chris Green, the non-executive director of Network Rail, named and shamed the ten worst rail stations in England, as determined by customer satisfaction surveys.

According to the list, Manchester Victoria (photos above by Gene Hunt and below by Phil Beard) is the worst station in England, followed by Clapham Junction and then Crewe. Then, in descending order, the others were Warrington Bank Quay, Barking, Preston, Wigan North Western, Luton, Liverpool Central and Stockport.

Already there are those jumping to the defence of these maligned hubs. One commentator suggests the peeling paint at south London’s Clapham Junction is a small price to pay for a station that provides trains every couple of minutes that can whisk you away to the seaside, the City or the suburbs.

Clearly, then, there is disagreement in what makes a bad station. Is safety more important than car parking, for example? Does availability of staff trump the services on offer? Or are other rail stations more deserving of a place in the worst ten? Cramped Victoria, perhaps, or prefab-tastic Euston? Poorly laid-out Birmingham New Street or depressing Didcot Parkway? Or how about dank-smelling Twickenham or underwhelming Coventry? We want to know if you agree with the report’s choice of worst offenders. Vote in our poll at the top right of this blog.

By SUSIE SELL

Boris body blunders

Another week, another blunder, from Boris Johnson.
 
Last week, Johnson fell into a river while collecting litter at the launch of a volunteering campaign.
 
That was quite funny. Rather less amusing is the news this week that Boris has a massive over commitment in spending at his economic development body, the London Development Agency.
 
A major oversight by London’s tousle-haired top man, it seems the LDA has rather less cash than it thought it had. To be more precise, the LDA coffers are “tens of millions” of pounds short.
 
What does this mean? Well, the LDA says it will have cut funding for some projects, while postponing or rescheduling others.
 
In an attempt to placate Londoners, the LDA tells us that “no additional borrowing” will be needed to cover the shortfall. Presumably that’s because the LDA will be too busy cancelling projects instead.
 
It will be interesting to see what Boris is going to do to ensure the LDA doesn’t make the same mistake again.
 
I hope your organisation is not anticipating an injection of cash from the LDA. You could be in for a long wait…

Posted by Ben Cook

Business guru tells public sector how to foster innovation

Mike Harris’s credentials as a business innovator are pretty solid. He was the founder of two pioneering banking brands: First Direct, which popularised telephone banking in the UK, and Egg, which led the way on internet banking.

Yesterday he was speaking at the British Council for Offices conference in Edinburgh, telling builders, owners and occupiers of office space how they can beat the recession, as long as they are prepared to “relentlessly” search for new ideas.

His message was clear, and just as relevant to economic development professionals as to people who build offices.

First, according to Harris’s credo, innovation is not something that occurs unpredictably as a result of individual flashes of genius. Instead, he says, “innovation can be methodological, reliable and low-risk”.

Second, it’s wrong to imagine that recession creates poor breeding grounds for innovation. “People said the oil shock of 1972-74 was the end of capitalism,” he says. “But no-one told Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Richard Branson [all of whom founded pioneering new businesses at that time]”. Hence, he says, at the current time it is more important than ever for businesses to identify their customers’ unmet needs and satisfy them in ways that beats the competition.

I asked him how effective he thought public sector economic development agencies were at fostering innovation. His verdict was mixed.

He said that the public sector had played a valuable role in providing seed capital to some potentially valuable businesses that that private sector backers had ignored.

But he complained that public sector money was still too hard for these companies to obtain. This was because it was handed out in large chunks, he said, making the agencies involved very cautious about who they gave it to. Instead, he said, the public sector should make smaller grants, but ensure that they were more readily accessible.

He also said that it should be made easier for young entrepreneurs to win public sector work. At the moment, he said, this was far easier in the US than the UK. In America, he said, “they are not going to ask you for 25 references, and they are aware that the money that they put into a new company’s first project might not come back”.

Match of the Day 2

I blogged earlier this week about the important economic role that football clubs can play in their local areas. The blog highlighted the fact that five of the 10 most disadvantaged local authorities in England are home to a Premier League club. All but two Premier League clubs are situated in the 20 per cent most deprived local authority areas, according to the analysis.

But the methodology we used focused on local authority-wide deprivation. This meant that Manchester United, for example, recorded a low deprivation score, despite undoubtedly being located in a rundown area.

Below is a table ranking deprivation in the super output areas in which the Premier League's 20 clubs are located. There are nearly 35,000 SOAs in England, with an average of 1,500 residents. The table shows that big football clubs are located in some of the most disadvantaged areas in England:

Club	IMD ranking (2007)
Bolton	20,216th most deprived
Newcastle	17,087
Fulham	17,053
Portsmouth	14,573
Blackburn	11,009
Manchester United	8,510
Sunderland	7,275
Chelsea	5,762
Arsenal	3,978
West Ham	1,744
Stoke	1,642
West Brom	1,470
Aston Villa	783
Hull	770
Everton	630
Tottenham	547
Wigan	412
Liverpool	108
Manchester City	74
Middlesbrough	71

The table shows that three clubs – Liverpool, Manchester City and Middlesbrough – are located in the top one per cent most deprived SOAs in England. 

According to accountants Deloitte, English Premier League clubs reported a combined revenue in excess of €2 billion in 2006/07. There should be more debate about how this huge wealth could be used to revitalise the often very disadvantaged areas around their grounds. 

Will the new city-regions agree to establish a senate?

Regeneration & Renewal carries an interview this morning with John Healey, the local government minister. In it, he tells me that the passage towards greater devolution of powers from Whitehall will be smoothed somewhat if Greater Leeds and Greater Manchester accept the government's model of governance, the opaquely-named economic prosperity board.

EPBs effectively turn the leaders of each constituent council in a city region into senators, who have one vote on policies expected to be run at the city-regional level, such as regeneration and skills. Crucially, if there's one or more councils who disapprove of a policy, but who are out-voted by their other 'senators', the policy is carried. 

I think Healey is absolutely right to push for an EPB. Why? Well, councillors used to tell us that such robust systems are unnecessary, as decisions can be made across boundaries merely through collaboration and agreement by committee. Unfortunately, the fiasco over congestion-charging in Manchester undermined that argument. If the city-regions are not going to going the way of Greater London and establish a directly-elected mayoralty, they need to show us how tough decisions will be made in times where constituent councils in an area fail to agree on a policy.

Although neither Leeds nor Manchester have yet agreed to an EPB yet, sources in Leeds City Region (which, interestingly, now has its own .gov website) say they are ready to consider it if the Government deems that its existing system comes up short.

Leeds says its existing system is not too far away from an EPB, although constituent councils can pull out of the city-region with a year's notice. And it would be really something if Leeds City Region bites the governance bullet first, considering Manchester made most of the city-regional running in recent years. 

One thing certainly seems true: if the city-regions want new decision-making powers, they need to show Whitehall they are capable of making decisions. 

Time to bank on women

Have you ever wondered what a planet run by women may look like? Maybe not quite like that spoof dystopian sketch by the Two Ronnies in which women rule England while men are housekeepers and wear women's clothes and law and order is managed by female guards in boots and hot pants.

This week equalities minister Harriet Harman has suggested that if more women held senior positions in banks we may not now be in a deep financial crisis that we are in. She hinted that the Government might use equality legislation to force the appointment of more women managers in banks. This is not something some males in the industry were pleased to hear.

When I interviewed former Dragon’s Den judge, Rachel Elnaugh, the other month, she said she had done away with her previously ruthless attitude to business and that less competitiveness and more collaboration is important to surviving the downturn. She said: “Alpha male competitiveness is actually quite outdated. Feminine businesses these days are what are needed. They are much more collaborative."

Her views echo those of some in the social enterprise sector who think socially responsible institutions are the future, after the economic crisis has left the public disillusioned with the hubris and greed of commercial banks.

Trevor Phillips, who heads the Equalities Commission, believes that putting more women in charge would go a long way towards restoring public confidence in financial institutions.

And what’s more, Muhammed Yunus, who founded the Grameen Bank 26 years ago to give loans to the poor of Bangladesh, started it with the principle to lend only to women because it had a more beneficial social effect.

Despite the male grumbles, Harriet Harman may well be onto something.

Employment plan

More details emerged yesterday on the Government's new flagship employment programme for young adults. The scheme, announced in the budget, puts up a £1.2 billion pot for councils, voluntary organisations and other bodies to create jobs and training opportunities for 18-24 year olds who have been unemployed for 12 months.

The Future Jobs Trust, as it is called, forms a key part of the Government's new pledge to guarantee every 18-24 year old a paid job or training place from January 2010. In the budget the chancellor said the 150,000 jobs would be "socially useful", without clearly defining what that would mean. Today ministers suggested that sports coaching, crime prevention, tourism and working with children could be good examples of the kind of jobs to be created. All good wholesome stuff.

But the danger is that the programmes created, which must last at least six months, will fail to provide young adults with skills that actually prove to be useful in the real labour market. Haing worked for six months as a sport instructor, will there then be jobs in the labour market in that field?

This was the problem with the eighties community work programmes. People were put to work doing useful tasks in their communities, such as cutting grass verges, only to find at the end of it they were infact a step further away from the labour market. This mistake cannot be repeated again.

The programme must focus on skills that will be needed in the economy of the future ­ on skills where there is a forecast shortage. The obvious area is construction. More than half those working in the construction industry are over the age of 55, meaning there will be a massive shortage of skilled workers in the near future. When that is combined with the need to meet carbon goals the answer, surely is to focus this new scheme on green building on greening and modernising the public estate.

Get out of work construction workers over the age of 50 running the scheme, and teaching young unemployed the skills the industry needs, such as fitting solar panels, and improving energy efficiency. That is a sustainable jobs programme. But there was little mention of the green economy, so hyped in last week's budget, by ministers yesterday. Let's hope the start talking about it ­ and acting on it soon. Because the last thing young unemployed adults need is to be put into dead-end programmes.

London loads up on Sugar

Such is the public and media appeal of the London mayoral race that Boris has barely had the chance to oil the wheels on his commuter bicycle before the gossip begins about who may oppose him in 2012. The mayoral race that year holds a special prize for the winner: being mayor at the Olympic Games. 

Tonight's Evening Standard has a poll saying that if Sir Alan Sugar stood against Boris, he would beat the flaxen-haired Tory by 40 per cent to 32. The poll is slightly misleading, as it assumes that Sugar would stand as an independent – not beyond the realms of possibility – when an embryo proposal suggests he is being wooed as the Labour candidate. 

Still, party ID might not matter that much by 2012, and a Labour ID (as hard as it may seem today) may even help. London is usually a fairly Labour-friendly place, and by then David Cameron's Tories are likely to be in Number 10, and London often likes to vote against the incumbent national government. 

So let's assume the figures are robust and Sugar has a real chance of winning London, whether he stands as an independent or for Labour, of whom he is a supporter and a donor. Can he really win? My spidey-sense says Yes. 

Thanks to the hit TV show the Apprentice, he is a bigger name now than when he launched eighties supercomputer the Amstrad CPC464 (pictured). And Sugar has the right credentials – born the son of the tailor in Hackney, he is a man self made by hard graft. In the YouGov poll, working class voters favour Suralan over Boris by a large margin. And he's seen by the public as a no-nonsense figure who gets things done. I can see why he has public appeal. 

But would he be a good mayor? For what it's worth, I have my doubts. I suspect that, while I'm sure he has his mellower moments, Suralan is not too far from his TV persona. In short, he's a bully-boy. It's hard to run City Hall by just bulldozing through, it requires collegiate working. I'm not sure Sugar has the time or the inclination for such niceties. But that doesn't mean he won't win. 

Boris Johnson has pleased many and offended few since arriving as mayor with his sunny disposition and cross-party appeal. But so far he has lacked any big vision or ideas. He will be afraid that Sugar may one day say to him: "Boris, you're fired."