By Richard McKeever
Yesterday Parliament’s All Party Urban Development Group published a report on regeneration; specifically the impact that physical regeneration can have on local employment. (Thanks to Kevin Harris whose Neighbourhoods blog alerted me to this publication).
Last autumn we at Community Links put together our own analysis of the physical regeneration taking place around us in the London Borough of Newham, home to the new 2012 London Olympics site. Our Social Change booklet on Regeneration is available for free download (or email me for a printed copy). Much of what we considered is reflected in this weeks APUDG report. They also list in the bibliography a report we produced jointly with new economics foundation (nef) about the Olympic development entitled Fools Gold.
The current economic climate means that the large scale physical redevelopments currently underway in east London are unlikely to be repeated. This makes it all the more important to ensure that local people are able to benefit fully from the community regeneration legacy with long-term, sustainable jobs providing quality training and good prospects.
Our regeneration report suggested that Section 106 agreements could be better used. Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allows an agreement between developers and planning authority to deliver specified community benefit. Our view is that S106 should be used to ensure the benefit to communities both in infrastructural developments but also in ongoing revenue support of community activity.
The new report this week from APUDG concurs that S106 could be helpful in providing local people with jobs and that it is important to ensure these jobs are sustainable after physical regeneration is complete.
Regeneration is about so much more than shiny new buildings, now more than ever it is vital that we seize this a once in a lifetime opportunity to get it right for the communities of east London.
Of course, with viability being squeezed by the current economic crisis, the public sector may have to step in to provide community benefits, often in advance of development, to secure effective holistic regeneration.
On employment, I have worked on a major London regeneration project which required local labour to be used. The effectiveness of this requirement was undermined by, firstly, the proliferation of small sub-contractors and, secondly, the lack of skills sets required.
I would like to see efforts made to align the FE sector’s courses with contractor requirements well in advance and during the planning process. I would also like to see more efforts to exploit the supply chain requirements of major developments. This is especially true for the technologies required to achieve high levels of environmental performance which, too often, are satisfied from abroad.
I couldn’t agree more that regeneration is about more that ’shiny new buildings’; but can I make a pleas also that we recognise how much it can influence the knowledge economy (in its widest sense), as well as ‘just’ jobs – vitally important though these are?
Proper use of S106s are an important element of this aspect of regeneration; but even more important (in my view) might be the opportunities which recognising overtly how knowledge is a critical driver of renewal would offer for us, to lift the whole of the debate, and indeed the action on the ground, to a potentially even higher level of impact.
Thnaks,
Hilary