COMMITTEE FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
OFFICIAL REPORT
(Hansard)
Inquiry into Town Centre Regeneration
15 November 2007
Members present for all or part of the proceedings:
Mr Gregory Campbell (Chairperson)
Mr David Hilditch (Deputy Chairperson)
Mr Mickey Brady
Mr Thomas Burns
Mr Fred Cobain
Mr Jonathan Craig
Ms Anna Lo
Mr Fra McCann
Miss Michelle McIlveen
Mr Alban Maginness
Witnesses:
Mr John McGrath ) Department for Social Development
Ms Linda MacHugh )
Mr Ian Snowden )
The Chairperson (Mr Campbell):
I welcome Mr John McGrath, deputy secretary, from the Department for Social Development’s urban regeneration and community development group, and his colleagues Ms MacHugh and Mr Snowden to the Committee. I remind members and witnesses of the normal protocols and to turn off all mobile phones. Please remember also to speak clearly into the microphones for recording purposes.
Mr John McGrath (Department for Social Development):
Thank you, Chairman. We are very grateful for the opportunity to contribute at the beginning of the Committee’s inquiry into town centre regeneration. With me today are Linda MacHugh, who heads the central policy directorate on urban regeneration, and Ian Snowden, who is the deputy director of the Regional Development Office that looks after most of the regional towns outwith the north-west and Belfast. I would like to make some opening remarks to set the Department’s work in historical context.
I hardly need to say that many of our city and town centres were badly affected during the time of conflict, and many continue to live with that legacy. While many local retailers were very resilient and stuck at the business over time, many outside retailers were unwilling to invest in our city and town centres until recently. Equally, during the Troubles, when new developments were put back in, they were, in many cases, not necessarily as well planned or executed as they might have been in a normal society. We have many examples of defensive, bomb-proof designs around, which is not necessarily what one would want in a modern, prosperous society.
High security and frequently disrupted transport meant that many towns were desolate and unwelcoming places when shops closed — and, in some cases, they were not much more welcoming when the shops were open. In response to that, people developed patterns of socialising and entertainment, which in many cases simply excluded town and city centres. In some cases those patterns still prevail, and that has meant the towns and cities in Northern Ireland have, until recently, not fared as well as their national and international comparators.
At the height of the Troubles, the two principal development offices in Belfast and Derry undertook the majority of the work, particularly in those two cities. They carried out much of the restoration of bombed-out buildings — 700 sites alone in Derry were redeveloped through the efforts of the north-west development office, as it is now. The two cities were symbolic of the whole of the North — hundreds of damaged buildings, no commercial confidence and a need to try to rebuild quickly. Much of that reactive and repair work was carried out fairly quickly, and, inevitably, Government took the lead in that.
Prior to the first period of devolution, the former Department of the Environment was responsible for urban regeneration. Initially, that work was very much focused in Belfast and Derry through the Belfast Development Office, and the then Londonderry Development Office. It looked mainly at the delivery of urban development grants and leading comprehensive development schemes. It is indicative of the work of those two offices, and the impact of the Troubles, that the CastleCourt development in Belfast was led by Government as opposed to the private sector. More recently, the Foyleside centre in Derry was initiated by Government rather than the private sector. Thankfully, we are now in better times.
The physical regeneration approach at that time was supplemented by social regeneration programmes in the late 1980s, with the Making Belfast Work initiative in north and west Belfast in particular, and the Londonderry regeneration initiatives. However, in other towns, regeneration work was largely limited to environmental improvement (EI) schemes, which were then implemented by the Department of the Environment’s Planning Service.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, regeneration schemes in smaller towns were boosted by the creation of the partnership between the then Department of the Environment and the International Fund for Ireland (IFI), which saw the introduction of the community regeneration improvement special programme (CRISP), which delivered 90 schemes in total until it ended in 2003, the community economic regeneration scheme (CERS) and the urban development programme, all of which were worked and delivered by the then Department of the Environment and, more recently, by the Department for Social Development (DSD).
At devolution in 1999, responsibility for urban regeneration moved to the new Department for Social Development. Policy and financial management of the regeneration of the regional towns rested with the Department, but the Department of the Environment’s Planning Service retained an operational role for a time. It was only in 2004 that the Department for Social Development assumed full responsibility for the delivery of urban regeneration work in the regional towns and cities.
Currently, we have a number of regeneration tools and programmes. We have detailed those in the written evidence that we have already passed to the Committee. However, I will run, at high level, through some of the examples. We have undertaken comprehensive development schemes in, among others, Lurgan, Armagh and Carrickfergus. We have carried out a number of significant public realm schemes, particularly in Banbridge. The pilot shop front scheme has improved the quality of buildings, as well as paving, lighting and street furniture in towns, including Dungannon and Portrush.
The EI budget has increased from £0·75 million in 2003-04 to £5 million in 2008-09, and £7 million in 2009-10 — subject to finalisation of the current budget. Significant projects have been carried out in Omagh, Coleraine, Cookstown, Newcastle and Ballycastle. To date, the work has levered in significant private-sector investment. We are currently engaging with the private sector across Northern Ireland in a range of significant projects that would bring in a further £900 million of private-sector investment across the Province, subject to our facilitating that investment and, in some cases, facilitating the assembly of sites.
All of that work is set in the Department’s overall objective of improving the physical, economic, social and community environment of neighbourhoods, town and cities in Northern Ireland, with a particular emphasis on tackling disadvantage.
It is important, therefore, that our town-centre regeneration work is co-ordinated with other interventions such as neighbourhood renewal and community development. As we try to develop proper, prosperous, vital and viable town centres, and support and promote prosperity, it is particularly important that that prosperity washes out to the more disadvantaged areas of many towns so that everyone will be able to benefit from the growing prosperity.
Proper master planning for towns provides a basis for co-ordinated intervention, which will identify potential implications for both economic and social development; the likely market response to intervention; timescales; and potential delivery vehicles.
Coleraine is a good example of the usefulness of that process. A master plan has not been completed for work that we are doing in Ballymena. The absence of a master plan for Omagh has resulted in important work not proceeding properly.
In addition, we are constantly looking for and testing out new methods and programmes, including, as I mentioned, the pilot urban development grant that was rolled out into some of the regional towns, and shop front schemes that are currently being considered.
Evaluation of the overall impact of the urban regeneration policy and activity is difficult. The requirements for regeneration vary between towns; therefore, measuring the outputs from regeneration is preferable to an evaluation of the overall policy impact. Problems are different; development opportunities are different; private-sector responses vary; and a number of external factors are involved. Therefore, interventions differ and outcomes could well differ.
We have, however, carried out a number of evaluations that demonstrated the success of schemes. Evaluation of programmes and pilot programmes are current and continuing. An evaluation programme for our comprehensive development schemes is also currently being worked out.
The conflict is over, and we have a new environment now — a peaceful society with growing commercial confidence and a buoyant consumer economy. In that context, the challenges that we have identified include raising the standards for investment, particularly regarding sustainability and good urban design. When developers wanted to invest during the Troubles, no one pressed them too much for high standards, and rightly so. Therefore, we want to promote sustainability in good design. We are constantly seeking that from developers. The work that we are currently carrying out in Belfast on the Victoria Square scheme reflects that, as will the next major retail scheme. That will be a growing theme in the work that we are doing across Northern Ireland.
We need to look at a more holistic approach to regeneration. Again, some developments in the past met the needs of that time. However, they are perhaps not well suited to prosperous, open and growing town centres. Castle Court, for example, pump-primed a lot of development in Belfast city centre, but when we look at it now, it is not necessarily the best development because it actually closes off areas of north and west Belfast behind it. If such a centre were being developed now, it would be more permeable so that people could come in and out; as opposed to almost forming a wall around the back.
We need to ensure that the work that we do provides added value in terms of public interest, rather than being simply about facilitating private investment. At the same time, we need to take full advantage of the commercial confidence, maximise investor potential and reduce the demand on the taxpayer and the public purse.
A lot of our interventions in the past were about dealing with market failure. In many cases market failure no longer exists, and we need to move to a different agenda that is about good design and sustainability. We also see investment in cities and town centres as a way of developing and promoting shared space, in which all sections of the community can mix, and, if not live together, can certainly work together and take part in recreational activities.
Another major challenge that we face is prioritisation. Owing to demand and the legacy of the Troubles, it is difficult to be able to say that we will be in a position to do something in every regional town. A detailed hierarchy of prioritisation will be required to emerge over the next few years. Linked to that, we want to ensure that the prosperity that will certainly come out of growing urban centres is not just restricted to people who shop there, but also benefits the wider communities in those towns.
The Chairperson:
Thank you, Mr McGrath. In undertaking the exercise on which it has embarked, the Committee will want to hear examples of best practice, wherever they exist, to ensure that those are followed. The converse is also true: the Committee will want to examine areas in which problems emerged, for whatever reason, to ensure that they do not recur. Setting aside the development at Victoria Square for a second, are there any examples of either good or bad practice? We do not want a recurrence of any bad practices.
Mr McGrath:
There may well be examples of developments during the Troubles that were appropriate to the time and in that context. In hindsight, they may not have been ideal, given that there is now peace, and the town centres are open.
The Chairperson:
Will you give the Committee an example?
Mr McGrath:
I will ask my colleagues to talk about that. However, it does not necessarily mean that those developments were wrong at the time. Perhaps Ian will cite an example of either scenario, and you can take it from there.
Mr Ian Snowden (Department for Social Development):
The Castle Centre in Antrim is an example of what was required during the Troubles and is now inadequate. For the most part, it is an inward-looking development, without a single window on the outside of the building as it was deliberately designed to be bomb-proof. Had a bomb exploded in Antrim town centre, the damage to that shopping centre would have been minimal. The difficulty now is that because the Castle Centre is not integrated into the town centre, its regenerative benefit is extremely limited. The shopping centre now needs to be more fully integrated into the town centre. Perhaps the Castle Centre can be redesigned to some extent and other changes made to the town centre itself to ensure that they become a whole.
There is good and bad in almost every scheme. To some extent, Carrickfergus may provide an example of good practice. However, there is a negative element to it too, and I will touch on that. In Carrickfergus, we were able to take a totally derelict piece of land, on which nothing was happening, and create a vibrant quarter. However, it has been difficult to integrate that with the centre of Carrickfergus, which is on the other side of a main road. Therefore, none of the vibrancy and energy that has been created in the waterfront area has migrated across the road. We need to find ways to ensure that, when we undertake a similar scheme in which there is potential for the development of both harbour lands and the town centre, the two are linked by design, access and integration arrangements. For example, we are trying to ensure that the same mistake is not made in Coleraine. We learn lessons all the time: we now try to ensure that where a scheme works well, it is also properly integrated into a town centre.
The Chairperson:
That is useful, and I am glad that you mentioned the Coleraine scheme. After plans have been drawn up, how does the Department follow up on the responses to the consultation? We will discuss how the work in Omagh followed the example of a similar scheme in Stirling in a moment.
Mr Snowden:
So far, we have received about 220 responses to the consultation, and Coleraine Borough Council will discuss the matter next Thursday evening, which will mark the end of the consultation process. At the moment, we are analysing the responses to the consultation exercise. Largely speaking, they have been positive: I think that there was a 98% positive response to one scheme and 75% to the other. Some of the issues raised are minor and will, therefore, be easily resolved. Our report on the consultation will identify the issues raised, detail our responses and describe how we will take them forward in the scheme.
The Chairperson:
I do not want to go on about the Coleraine scheme, but I was informed that a display was created for the public, and, having seen that, people had an opportunity to respond.
Mr Snowden:
Yes, that is right. The proposed scheme was on display for two weeks in Coleraine town hall.
The Chairperson:
What prevented the same person, or a small number of people, submitting several responses? Did the Department have to try to quantify the process to ensure that the responses were bona fide?
Mr Snowden:
Staff were on duty during the consultation. As far as possible, we tried to get all those who attended to sign their names in a visitor book — although some did not bother — and there were about nine or 10 pages of names as a result of that. Subsequently, the consultation was loaded onto the Internet. There was a mechanism whereby only one response from each computer could be submitted, thereby preventing people from posting hundreds of responses from the same computer. It is fairly easy to identify where that is done repeatedly, because the same handwriting will appear on all of them and can be picked out.
It is not only the quantity of the responses that come in but the quality as well. A number of complaints about a really minor issue will probably not get the same weight as one that picks out a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed.
The Chairperson:
In the written submission, Mr McGrath, you mentioned that you drew on experiences elsewhere, and you said:
“The value of this can particularly be seen in work carried out in Omagh where work carried out draws directly on a similar scheme in Stirling.”
Can you elaborate on that? Was that a good example of best practice, and if it was how have the people of Omagh responded?
Mr Snowden:
That is the public-realm scheme that was undertaken in the town centre. The scheme in Stirling was designed by the same design team that we used in Omagh, so they drew on their experience in Stirling on how the materials fitted into the context of a historic-town centre, how durable they are and how well the public responded to them. They built on that and applied it when they were designing the scheme for the Omagh streets. That has been very well received, and has also been nominated for an award, so it has been an important public-realm scheme for the town.
Mr Hilditch:
Thank you for the presentation, and the briefing paper that was supplied has been very informative. I am delighted that you referred to Carrickfergus, which is my town. When I put this subject forward for investigation you highlighted why that was the case.
Obviously, the regeneration of the maritime area in Carrickfergus was a very successful scheme. Is it possible to draw down figures that show the amount of public money against the private investment? I believe that Carrickfergus was one of the better ones at a ratio of 1:6. Can we get an overall picture of other schemes to see what ratio is being attracted from the private sector?
Mr McGrath:
Apart from environmental improvement and public realm schemes, most of the schemes are funded mainly by the private sector. The Department facilitates, chooses the developer, sets the context, perhaps does the land assembly through vesting, but gets recompensed. Therefore they are largely private-sector investments with some facilitation, and that is what we aim to do. The schemes in Coleraine, Ballymena and Belfast are entirely private-sector investments, and the public-taxpayer element is the payment of officials to facilitate that, which is what we want to maximise. Overall, our leverage rate is about 6:1, and we want to increase that in the future. Increasingly, we see our job as attracting and facilitating the private sector, and raising the bar for design standards.
Ian used the example of Antrim. When a shopping centre is built, the owners’ aim is to get people in and out, and, to a large extent, they will not worry about anything else. The Department’s interest in regeneration is to add value to that centre so that it is permeable and people can come in and out. Therefore, we want to raise the design standards and set down the conditions that we want, and on the basis of that we will support and promote the private sector. The Department’s job is not, for example, to promote shops but to promote regeneration. If schemes do not add value and regeneration, increasingly, in urban design, why would we be involved in them?
I mentioned some major schemes in my opening remarks, and they are also referred to in the written submission. At the moment, there are a range of schemes — developers are talking about upwards of £900 million across Northern Ireland — waiting to get all the permissions, but needing some assistance from the Department. That is significant. In a lot of our work we see ourselves as facilitating and drawing in private-sector investment, rather than putting in public-sector investment.
Mr Hilditch:
So generally, at this stage, you are quite happy with that ratio?
Mr McGrath:
In elements of this work we see ourselves as an economic development Department, as much as a social development one. A lot of our work is about generating private-sector jobs in private-sector investment. It is not fully understood that in some cases we may be generating as many jobs as the more specialised industrial development side. Victoria Square will generate 3,000 permanent jobs and 3,000 jobs during its construction. Those are significant economic drivers on their own merits.
The Chairperson:
Your counterparts at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) do not have a problem with that?
Mr McGrath:
I could not possibly comment on that.
The Chairperson:
I am sure that they might.
Mr McGrath:
Those are investments that are not brought in with grants. For example, as part of the Victoria Square project we have looked at how to link pre-employment job opportunities with disadvantaged areas. We have training schemes from Victoria Square that link into east and west Belfast. Our aim is to obtain private sector investment and sweat it to get more public gain. That is what regeneration work is about.
Ms Linda MacHugh (Department for Social Development):
It is not only about the economic benefit; by increasing standards in urban design you are doing two things. First, there are the aesthetic benefits of developing towns and cities to which people are attracted to live in, to visit as tourists, or to invest in, which have a knock-on rolling effect. Secondly, in terms of urban sustainability, designing much better energy efficiency in buildings by the use of thermal heating and the use of biodiversity in the design of the urban environment will benefit people’s lifestyles, quality of life, air quality, and so on. Those are the areas that we need to develop over the next few years.
Mr Snowden:
On the issue of leverage, the schemes will be different in each individual circumstance, so the leverage rates will be substantially different in different places. In Carrickfergus, there was a contamination issue because the area had been used for a long time as an oil storage depot. Therefore, public investment had to go into clearing out the contamination in order to reduce the risk to the private sector, which then allowed the private development to take place.
To use the example of Coleraine, the value of the two schemes combined will be £115 million, but there will be no cost to the public sector, except, for example, my salary.
Mr McGrath:
Which does not come anywhere near that.
The Chairperson:
We are not going to go down that route. [Laughter.]
Mr Snowden:
In the case of Coleraine, we generated money, but I am not sure how that leverage rate would be calculated. Two or three miles up the road in Portrush, there is a strategy for the regeneration of the western peninsula, the total value of which will be approximately £80 million. Currently, we are looking at the infrastructure work that needs to be done in order to facilitate that, but we hope to ensure that the private sector will deliver as much of that as possible. The council is bidding for funding from European sources in order to look at the extension of the harbour, which will help to pump-prime that project, so that would be the public investment that would facilitate private investment in that resort. The leverage may be approximately one in five, but each situation is different. It is our responsibility to examine the requirements to allow that development to happen, but the lower the leverage the better, from our perspective.
Mr A Maginness:
The presentation and paper are very interesting. However, I am still trying to understand fully the function of the Department in relation to the development of town centres. You appear to have a social, an economic and possibly a retail function in the development of facilities, and a public- realm and environmental function. There appears to be a number of different functions; am I right in identifying those? The Department appears to be a mixed bag, which is dependent to some extent on the goodwill of other Departments such as DETI and DOE Planning Service. What would you define as its central function?
Mr McGrath:
The role of the Department in respect of urban regeneration is to promote prosperous, viable, vital and vibrant town and city centres. The Department uses different methods to achieve that including the promotion of public realm and shared space, comprehensive development schemes, and retail that is appropriate. Retail is often a key part of a town centre, although culture and arts are also important.
It is a fairly broad, holistic approach. It is the one Department that has the job of promoting vibrant, urban centres. We hope that the spin-off from that — town centres becoming places where communities will mix — will make a significant contribution to a wider, shared-future agenda. Although it may not be fully understood, people shopping in town centres, where previously they did not, contributes to a greater mix between different communities. That will include the increasing number of ethnic communities in the future. We see regeneration as contributing to all of that and having a strong economic dimension.
Ms L MacHugh:
Mr Maginness is right: regeneration is not a single-issue subject. It is almost a glue that fits a whole lot of things together. The key role of our Department is to ensure that the economic and social interests are pulled together into one place. It is not just about physical development; rather, it is about setting it in the context of people, ensuring that the communities are well serviced by those developments, and that it is also the best option for them.
Mr A Maginness:
How does one define a town centre? There are traditional town centres, such as that in Coleraine, to which the Chairperson referred, where the traditional centre is around the Diamond and the streets that lead from it, yet, across the river there is a fairly intensive retail centre. Therefore, notionally, a town centre could move across a river to another part of the town.
Mr McGrath:
We try to promote a viable urban centre, wherever the precise centre of that town will be, over time. That is why, in many cases, we aim, in conjunction with local interests and district councils, to develop a master plan as regards where we would like it to go. Then investment is put around that, providing a more strategic dimension.
In the past, particularly during the Troubles, if the private sector wanted to invest, it was not the Government’s job perhaps to tell it not to. Therefore, you could not necessarily be that selective or that strategic. Currently, we are doing work in towns such as Coleraine, Omagh and, increasingly, Ballymena, where we try to agree a master plan with all the local interests and, then, to channel investment around that plan — in some cases it is not instead of. However, in areas such as Belfast and Lisburn you are growing older, traditional quarters and also niche quarters, cultural quarters and historic quarters.
In many cases, you are trying to promote a sense of place, so that when people are there, they get a sense of place. There are town centres and areas that give you a buzz, while others do not. There are open spaces, public spaces and town centres that do not work well at all — particularly, when there is a lot of mall developments.
The Chairperson:
Mr Maginness raised a relevant point about historical and traditional town centres. Antrim is an example of what he was talking about. There have been a series of retail developments, such as Junction One, which potentially offer challenges to the old, traditional town centre. How does the Department analyse progress such as that? Mr Maginness referred to Coleraine as a similar example of that, although Antrim is, perhaps, a more major one. What does the Department do when faced with challenges such as those?
Mr McGrath:
The Department’s job is to promote urban centres. It is a fact that, during the Troubles, lots of people did not go near town centres — instead, they went out of town. Even Belfast suffers from the fact that a lot of people who live and work in the city or who live in north Down do not shop in the city centre. Therefore it is about bringing those people back.
There are issues about out-of-town shopping. For many years, the policy in England has been robust in restricting the number of out-of-town developments to allow city and town centres to redevelop and regenerate. That has contributed greatly to the return of cities in England, such as Leeds, Bradford and Manchester, to being economically vibrant places.
It is a difficult issue here, although I do not want to go into details, because we have to start from a lower base and go much further to go to attract people back into town centres by persuading shops to open later, making the centres less dead at night and creating, if not a 24-hour culture, an 18-hour one. Out-of-town developments present challenges to that. Therefore, we must make town centres more attractive and vibrant and try to support local retailers. Most shopping malls contain national retailers; they all seem to be the same. The issue in towns is about support for local retailers and niche developments and trying to achieve a blend of services. Most people park at malls, shop and go home, whereas we want them to broaden their experience.
Regeneration presents some challenges, and those are just some of the issues. I do not want to talk today about issues such as the John Lewis development and its impact on Belfast, but they impinge on the way in which we try to achieve a balance. That is an issue for wider planning policy.
Mr Craig:
You will be glad to know that I am not going to mention the John Lewis development.
Mr McGrath, I read with interest the section of the written submission about amending the planning context and the Laganbank Quarter development in Lisburn. Given that the Department is changing the old area plan with regard to that development, how much consultation was carried out in the area that will be most affected? There has been some controversy.
Mr Snowden:
Lisburn City Council carried out consultation during the production of the development frameworks that were published early in 2006. The Department came to the process after the development frameworks were produced. We have agreed that we will consider creating a development scheme, because certain changes to the planning context will be necessary to allow the scheme to be implemented.
We have engaged in intensive consultation with the key statutory agencies over the past three months to examine the issues. Several major issues concerning transport and the environment must be considered. When those issues are tackled, and when we have more information on them, we will undertake fuller and wider consultation on the contents of the development scheme.
Hopefully, we will publish a document that will be subjected to the same consultation process as that for the area plan documents. The Department intends to ensure that it identifies any possible points of objection as early as possible in the process and deals with them at the development stage, so that the scheme will proceed smoothly to the next stage.
Mr Craig:
I thank Mr Snowden for that answer, Mr Chairman. As in the situation in Coleraine, which you are familiar with, we need to bring people on board.
Mr F McCann:
It has been interesting to hear about what has been done. Some years ago, there was a conference in Liverpool, which talked about the city centre. In the 1950s and 1960s much of the population moved into the suburbs, and that had a dramatic effect on the city centre. Newcastle and Gateshead have what is probably the biggest shopping centre in Western Europe on their outskirts. It has had an impact, and you can start to see the regeneration of those cities. Towns such as Ennis have benefited from economic and tourism regeneration, and that has had an impact.
When you look at a map of the North, how do you choose a town for regeneration? Do you consider the whole town, or do you start with one section and work from there, which was how Dublin was redeveloped?
Mr McGrath:
There are differences between a significant city and regional towns. Here, Belfast is the only significant city that compares with cities such as Newcastle or Liverpool — and that comparison is at the lower end of the scale. However, there are parallels with the examples that you cited.
A city centre is dead if people live or shop outside of it, and there are wider impacts. We consider tourism to be a growth area in Northern Ireland. Therefore, in addition to visiting unique attractions, tourists want to visit urban centres in which they can shop, dine and be entertained. That is the sort of product that must be provided by city and town centres. For example, by improving Belfast’s retail offer, the Victoria Square development will encourage and add to tourism growth. Compared with other major cities, Belfast’s retail offer is pretty poor. Therefore, such developments are not just about retail; they are also about tourism. If people come to Belfast, they will go beyond.
To date, in smaller towns — and Ian may wish to comment on this — much of our work has been reactive to initiatives taken by the private sector, chambers of commerce and district councils. To facilitate such initiatives, we are now taking a more strategic approach, and we have found that, in towns with significant problems, we must attempt to spark the investment market. Some regional towns have undergone significant development and are doing well; however, some are still drab and depressing, and the offer, with regard to shopping, public space and entertainment, is not good. Consequently, people just do not go to those towns.
The Chairperson:
Will you outline some of those towns, Mr McGrath?
Mr McGrath:
I though that you might say that, Chair.
Mr F McCann:
Half of Belfast.
Mr McGrath:
Bits of Belfast are not the most inviting. To be honest, at times, Larne is not the most exciting place, and a Saturday morning in Derry is not the most dynamic time either.
The Chairperson:
Bits of Londonderry are not bad though. [Laughter.]
Mr McGrath:
Sorry. Some places have not had much investment. Perhaps Ian will add to that.
Mr Snowden:
Antrim is an example of a town that has struggled over the past 20 years. There are a number of large, vacant sites in the town centre that we want someone to do something with. The town has potentially a lot going for it, but it never seems to be able to maximise that potential. John mentioned Larne, which has stagnated. Although not in decline, it seems to trundle along without going anywhere, and there is a lack of ambition about it. Carrickfergus suffered as a result of the Abbey centre, and, in the 1980s, the loss of industries such as Rothmans Carreras had a major impact. The town struggled to find a new role or a focus. Those are examples of towns that have experienced difficulties.
The method of selecting towns on which we work is a combination of identifying those that are in need of assistance — such as Larne, Antrim and Carrickfergus, in which we are currently initiating work — and those in which opportunities arise. We are progressing quite quickly with schemes in Coleraine because opportunities are there to do something. The statutory agencies — ourselves, the Roads Service and the Planning Service — agreed that there were two sites that needed to be developed urgently.
As much as possible, we attempt to look at the town as a whole rather than concentrating on the town centre or part of the town centre. Currently, Lisburn is a complicated example of that approach. As Mr Craig said, we are working on the Laganbank Quarter as well as on potential developments on the outskirts of the town at Sprucefield, Blaris and the Maze. Lisburn also has substantial deprived communities — particularly the Colin neighbourhood — which are not taking advantage of the city’s prosperity. As part of our work with Lisburn City Council on the Laganbank Quarter, we are attempting to construct a framework, or strategy, that will allow us to take advantage of those various developments and to spread the benefits to deprived areas in the city region.
It is estimated that those developments combined will create about 17,000 jobs and the strategy is to fill at least 6,000 of them from the ranks of the economically inactive or unemployed who currently live within the boundaries of the city. That will make a substantial impact on social exclusion and poverty issues in Lisburn.
That is how we try to develop strategies, but it is not possible in every town or city. However, in Lisburn, circumstances allow that to happen. In Coleraine, to refer to that example again, there are two neighbourhood renewal areas and town-centre development schemes. In working with the developers, we want to ensure as far as possible that people who live in deprived areas and neighbourhood renewal areas are given maximum opportunity to get the jobs in those new town-centre development schemes. Each one will create a substantial number of jobs.
The Chairperson:
I remind Committee members and officials that we must watch the clock. We are under some pressure of time today because of the rally.
Mr Burns:
I apologise for being late, Chairman. I missed the earlier discussion on Antrim. Antrim is in my constituency. How you are going to get Antrim back on track remains to be seen. Antrim town centre is simply banks, offices, bookies and hot-food outlets that would not get planning permission in any other location. Such premises have all to go into a town centre. Antrim is not alone in that: towns such as Lurgan and Portadown, or anywhere that feeds into the Lisburn-Belfast connection, suffer the same problem. A big new Tesco store, offering free car-parking, makes a major impact on the centre of a town.
However, Antrim has a greater problem because it is accessible to Belfast by train and bus. You can travel to Belfast for the price of parking a car, and the choice of shops there is so much greater. That is a difficulty that Antrim has to overcome: travel is so easy. It is not a simple matter to regenerate a town. Shops that people want have to be brought in. People have freedom of choice and can travel elsewhere by train or bus.
Mr McGrath:
That is true. At the end of the day, retailers will go where there is sufficient demand. We work with developers to create opportunities. Developers try to attract retailers, but retailers do their own market research, and they know where the demand is. Government does not offer them incentives. When developers offer a big shopping development, the anchor tenant in it will often get that shop for almost nothing. That is the way the market works. It is a difficult issue for towns like Antrim. It is ironic: people want good transport links so that they can commute, yet such links have their downside.
Mr Snowden:
Conversely — or paradoxically, perhaps — Antrim is, statistically, an attractive location for many retailers. There is a large and growing population, and it is generally one of the most prosperous parts of Northern Ireland. Its proximity to Belfast is not necessarily an issue. Antrim’s problem is that there is no suitable space for those retailers. There are a lot of small and old properties, which are not really adequate for modern retail needs. There is, then, a physical constraint on the development of Antrim.
Mr Burns is quite right: while there is competition from Belfast, we must try to ensure that there is balanced development across the Province. Not every development can be sited in Belfast. It is the capital, and therefore it should be the site of our biggest and most prestigious developments. However, from the point of view of environmental sustainability, transport and other factors we have to ensure balance across the country. Analysing the difficulties is the way to overcome them, and that is the key process that we need to be involved in.
Ms L MacHugh:
One of the key strategies that we need to be aware of is the regional development strategy, which identifies Belfast and Derry/Londonderry as the two major urban centres. Beneath them, in the hierarchy, are other subregional economic hubs, and below them are the secondary towns. In all that we do, we must bear in mind that there is a regional development strategy that sets all of those towns in context.
Ms Lo:
I sat on the South Belfast Partnership Board for some years. During the development of the Gasworks site, some communities from the Markets area and from Donegall Pass, in particular, were disappointed that they did not benefit much from the development. You said that city development training is now being put in place in east and west Belfast, but you did not mention south Belfast. Is there anything planned for south Belfast?
Mr McGrath:
It is not a huge scheme. A great deal of work has been done in the Laganside area, such as the introduction of the Gasworks employment matching service (GEMS) initiative, which tries to link opportunities in those areas to deprived areas. When we promote any development, a constant part of our work involves linking opportunities to disadvantaged areas. That is a constant theme that we pursue. Sometimes it works, and sometimes we do not get a response.
There were attempts to develop initiatives with local communities at the time of major hotel developments in Belfast, but there was no take-up. However, we have learnt from that. When the Victoria Square development opens, many of those retail jobs will replace many of the traditional industries in Belfast. We will want to link the inner-city ring round Belfast from the Shankill Road, Newtownards Road, Crumlin Road and Falls Road to the significant expansion of quality retail jobs that will happen in the Victoria Square development and in subsequent developments, because that is a major driver.
We try to get private-sector investment to link to jobs in those areas by providing pre-employment training and developing linkages by getting developers and retailers to go the extra mile and put something in. There are examples of such linkages. When Debenhams opened in CastleCourt, links to north and west Belfast were developed. We always try to develop links, but we must try to push them a little further.
Call centres and offices are based on the Gasworks site, so perhaps such jobs could not have been linked to people who are economically inactive. We would be happy to come back to the Committee to discuss our work on Victoria Square, in particular. We are embarking on a major initiative to link those jobs to all the disadvantaged communities in the greater Belfast area.
The Chairperson:
You said in your opening remarks that requirements for regeneration vary between towns, so measuring outputs from regeneration is preferable to an overall evaluation of policy impact. How would you carry out that sort of evaluation?
Mr McGrath:
It is more appropriate if we examine individual schemes at town level and discuss their impact, because each scheme has been different. It is difficult to evaluate the overall programme in a quantitative way. It is done in a qualitative way by working out that some towns are more vibrant than they used to be. However, if we thought that we had carried out improvements in Carrickfergus, for example, but they had not worked their way across the wider town, it would be difficult to number crunch that at a strategic level.
The Chairperson:
How do you assess whether a town’s economic vibrancy has been the direct result of one of the schemes?
Mr McGrath:
Increasingly, we have been carrying out a needs analysis first. Ideally, we would like to make a diagnosis, by posing certain questions. What are the problems in the town? Is the lack of footfall to blame, or the lack of permeability? Is there little retail on offer? Is it the physical structure of the town, or the lack of opportunities? Then we try to promote it, or to link up with the private sector to develop a scheme that will tackle those problems. After a couple of years of trading, we conduct counts, including the number of shoppers — the footfall —visiting the town. That results in a quantitative analysis, linking back to the problem that we were trying to fix in the first place.
Mr Snowden:
Depending on the size and nature of it, more effort is put into a bigger scheme than a smaller one. If we were carrying out an environmental improvement scheme, we might ask how people feel about the aesthetic appearance of the town centre, how they feel about its safety and what impact that has had on footfall and, therefore, on trade.
Over the past three or four years, we have had a very successful example of that in Banbridge, where the environmental improvement scheme, which cost around £1 million, has succeeded in reducing the vacancy rates of commercial properties on the main street to zero. There had been several vacant properties on the street before that. That is one clear example of a scheme that has delivered a successful output for the town.
The Chairperson:
Did the decision on rating vacant commercial premises have any impact on that?
Mr Snowden:
That is one of the things that I wanted to talk about. It takes several years to implement such a complicated scheme in a town centre. It is difficult — almost impossible — to establish the counterfactual situation with any degree of accuracy. As far as possible, we must establish the current baseline position; decide whether we can discern any trends over a period of time; try to establish how things might be if left to their own course, with economic conditions progressing as you would normally expect; and, when the scheme is finished, determine its impact.
I am currently working on an evaluation of Coleraine. A detailed set of regeneration objectives were established for Coleraine before we embarked on the two development schemes. We take each of those regeneration objectives and try to establish which indicators will tell us what impact we are having. We build a system whereby we can gather information now, so that in five years’ time we can assess what impact there has been. To pick up on one of the themes we have discussed already, if we increase retail space in Coleraine town centre by 21%, in five years’ time will it have a detrimental effect on another part of the town? We attempt to find a way to track that over a period of time.
The Chairperson:
There are some people who believe that the same thing is happening in Ballymena, where there has been a displacement of retail from the lower, town hall end of the town to the upper end, where significant development has taken place. Is that the sort of thing that you are talking about — within a confined town area?
Mr Snowden:
Yes.
The Chairperson:
We are pushed for time, members. There are no further questions. Thank you very much, Mr McGrath, Ms MacHugh and Mr Snowden.