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Building Better Cities: Delivering Growth and Opportunities
MAKING A DIFFERENCE FOR PEOPLE
The Scottish Budget, announced in September, sets out the Executive's spending plans over the next 3 years and includes major announcements which benefited our cities. The contributive to going for growth, building opportunites and securing sustainability.
The Executive is also responding to the policy challenges facing our Cities through two new funding allocations.
Investing in growth
Each of our cities are responding to the pressures of change, and the challenges of economic growth. While these challenges vary in each city and city-region, targeted action can help to ease the transitions. The City Growth Fund will address these pressures. The Fund is to be spent on physical infrastructure, including transport infrastructure, the public realm, physical improvement of sites, and facilities for businesses.
The city authorities will receive the funding directly. However, the Fund is intended to benefit not simply residents of the cities, but the city-region as a whole. The problems to be addressed are beyond the ability of the city authorities alone to solve.
Close consultation will be required with neighbouring local authorities, other public agencies, and the private sector, working through the existing Community Planning Partnerships wherever possible. Close and co-operative partnership working with the private sector will be particularly important if we are to maximise the impact of the funding stream. Proposals for spending the City Growth Fund should be closely tied to planned outcomes, to guide delivery and enable monitoring of success. Guidance is being published separately.
Tackling the legacy of dereliction
The legacy of the past can blight local environments and inhibit regeneration and renewal. The presence of vacant and derelict land around them significantly impacts on the quality of life of some of our most disadvantaged communities. Reclaiming that land, so improving the quality of the local environment, can often provide a vital stimulus for the renewal of communities.
The "stock" of vacant and derelict land in Glasgow, currently 1,400 hectares of brownfield land, includes many sites which have remained vacant or derelict for considerable periods of time. Dundee and especially Glasgow have extensive areas of brownfield land. Elsewhere, North Lanarkshire experiences problems on a national scale, together with a very limited part of South Lanarkshire.
Progress has been made, but a step change in activity is required which will require a clear policy framework, together with an improved delivery.
The supply of brownfield land far exceeds anticipated demand in the foreseeable future, suggesting "greening" not just as a medium-term option but also as a long-term solution. "Greened sites" contribute to environmental justice targets and promote investment on adjacent sites.
Not least of the issues involved will be how developments in Glasgow will be related to proposals for regeneration of the Clyde corridor and the M74 extension corridor, where a substantial share of vacant land in the city lies.
The Executive is determined to ensure that the extra money being made available is combined with better delivery on the ground. A partnership team will devise improved delivery mechanisms for the additional resources. This will be led by the Executive, involving key agencies and the private sector. Delivery needs to take place in the context of a long-term strategy for regeneration, focusing on priority areas, delivery and outcomes and, if successful, will lay the basis for a further programme of improvements over future spending review periods.
Innovative delivery vehicles
The Executive will consult in the New Year on the scope for introducing Urban Regeneration Companies in Scotland, as a joint initiative by Communities Scotland, the Enterprise Network and Local Authorities. Urban Regeneration Companies have been introduced elsewhere and we can build on these lessons to potentially bring a greater degree of strategic co-ordination of economic and community regeneration in our Cities.
The evidence in the cities review report suggests that investment in our city centres is less than it probably should be due to the lack of any systematic mechanism for ensuring investments which are of benefit to the business, and the wider, community are completed. Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), common in the United States, but still untried in the UK, could potentially provide a vehicle for raising collective resources for additional infrastructure, maintenance or other services in the city, tailored according to local circumstances. BIDs are arguably a form of community budgeting, a locally managed multi-purpose budget targeted on the city centre.
The Executive will consult further on the scope for using these innovative delivery vehicles in a Scottish context, as part of Community Planning.
Boundaries
A recurring theme in the review was that of local government and NDPB boundaries. In many cases they do not fit well, and act as an additional burden on partners at local level in drawing together strategies and implementing them. Nonetheless, the solution is better partnership working amongst local authorities and the public sector.
City of Dundee have made a strong case for change to their boundary in the Monifieth and Invergowrie area. The evidence suggests that joint working in terms of strategy development and implementation with adjacent Councils is not working as well as it should. It so happens that this is also the only part of the country not currently covered by a voluntary regional transport partnership, which is the vehicle used by local authorities to develop Joint Transport Strategies as envisaged by the Transport (Scotland) Act 2001. Dundee, Perth & Kinross and Angus Councils need to give greater attention to effective joint working, as part of the development of the Vision for the City and its implementation. The case for a boundary review will be considered in the light of progress made by the Councils next year.
KEY COMMITMENTS FOR SCOTLAND'S CITIES IN BUILDING A BETTER SCOTLAND
- INVESTMENT IN INFRASTRUCTURE 1 - to support successful and dynamic city-regions;
Spend: 20/30/40m for the six cities.
- Increased resources to TACKLE VACANT AND DERELICT LAND in Glasgow, North Lanarkshire and Dundee - removing a blight on our urban communities;
Spend: 0/8/12m.
- FUNDING FOR LOCAL AUTHORITIES TO IMPROVE QUALITY OF LIFE - making our communities better places to live, by addressing the problems that matter locally;
Spend: 180m over 3 years, nationally.
- TACKLING UNEMPLOYMENT IN DEPRIVED AREAS
Spend: For instance 0/10/10m for childcare to help people get back into work.
- INNOVATION AND SCIENCE - supporting business growth and jobs;
Spend: 0/25/35m for science in Higher Education, focused mainly on universities in the six cities.
- ADDRESSING THE SKILLS GAP in our cities through increased support for lifelong learning;
Spend: 34m on Educational Maintenance Allowances;
25m on Modern Apprenticeships;
121m on Further Education.
- A MAJOR EVENTS STRATEGY to exploit the potential of Scotland as a location for high profile "must see" sporting and cultural events - with our cities at the heart of many of these;
Spend: 2/3/5m.
- Alternative accommodation and support services to REPLACE OUTDATED HOMELESS HOSTELS in Glasgow;
Spend: 7/20/20m extra.
Source: Building a Better Scotland
1 New announcement - fund not separately identified in the Scottish Budget document.
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