The Scottish Government

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Successful regeneration - the lasting transformation for the better of places and communities - is central to achieving the Executive's main goal of sustainable economic growth.

1. Introduction - defining the challenge

Successful regeneration - the lasting transformation for the better of places and communities - is central to achieving the Executive's main goal of sustainable economic growth. It lies at the heart of our programme to build a better Scotland. And, by generating growth and employment, it has a real contribution to make to tackling the poverty and disadvantage that blights our most deprived communities and thus our commitment to Closing the Opportunity Gap.

We are therefore committed to maximising Scotland's potential for regeneration, and to making it work for the benefit of Scotland's people. This policy statement outlines our approach to this task. It:

• Defines the regeneration challenge;
• Highlights the scale and scope of the Executive's investment in transforming Scotland since devolution; and
• Looks at the experience of regeneration in Scotland and the rest of the UK, and identifies some of the critical success factors.
• It also sets out the new approach we intend to take, to:
• Improve the alignment of key private and public sector players;
• Maximise the impact of public and private sector investment in specific places;
• Focus our efforts on a small number of strategic geographic priorities;
• Support tightly targeted action to regenerate our most deprived neighbourhoods;
• Tackle land issues which can inhibit regeneration; and
• Create mixed and vibrant communities.

In doing this, we acknowledge that the Executive and its agencies can and should do more to facilitate regeneration, and to engage with others to promote it. But we recognise the breadth and variety of regeneration activity that is already happening right across Scotland. This activity demonstrates that financial institutions, developers and others in the private sector are taking opportunities and risks to invest in the transformation of places across the country. It is also testament to the commitment of the public, private and voluntary sectors, and of communities themselves, to maximising the economic potential of place and to tackling poverty and disadvantage. We want to draw and build on this activity, and that commitment, in setting out a framework for the future. We want to take a strategic and integrated approach to regeneration across Scotland, that takes full account of the connections between different parts of the country and between areas of economic opportunity and disadvantaged areas. And we want to engage with key players in the public and private sectors across Scotland in developing our approach as we go forward.

Regeneration is a very broad term. A wide range of activities can be described as regeneration initiatives. But the fact that the Executive and others - whether in the public or private sector - have a series of policies, programmes and services aimed at bringing about economic, social or physical change in particular areas does not necessarily mean that these are all in themselves 'regeneration' initiatives.

For us, regeneration is about the sustainable transformation of specific places for the better.

This transformation has economic, physical, social and environmental aspects. And while there are different opportunities and problems in different places, this transformation can be seen in a range of outcomes, including:

• Improved business confidence;
• Increased economic activity and employment, and lower unemployment;
• Higher incomes, and less reliance on benefits;
• More effective public services;
• Improved educational outcomes and a higher skills base:
• Higher land and housing values;
• Improved community confidence;
• An improved, and better designed, built environment; and
• An enhanced natural environment, including access to quality greenspace.

The Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics programme is a key tool for monitoring such outcomes at different geographic levels.

The extent and pace of change across these outcomes will vary from place to place. But it is clear that over time all the outcomes need to be achieved if change is to be sustained. Put another way, regeneration is about achieving outcomes for businesses, people and communities. It is about taking an approach which ensures these outcomes work together and reinforce each other to generate economic growth and an improved quality of life for people and communities.

This policy statement is principally concerned with our approach to, and our support for, national and regional regeneration priorities. However, many of the actions stemming from the statement will benefit regeneration across the whole of Scotland; and we will continue to work with Community Planning Partnerships and provide targeted funding, such as the Community Regeneration Fund ( CRF), to support regeneration at a more local level.

The economic drivers

Our view of regeneration is informed in part by the UK Treasury's analysis of drivers of economic growth and productivity at regional level, as set out in its Productivity and Regional Growth Frameworks ¹ and as reflected in our own Framework for Economic Development and A Smart, Successful Scotland. These drivers, which are skills, employment, enterprise, innovation, investment and competition, also apply in a city and city-region context.

The investment driver includes public and private investment in infrastructure, transport, housing, logistics and digital connectivity, and private investment in commercial and residential property markets. Regeneration initiatives and land use planning help to boost the investment driver. They make cities and urban areas more investor-ready and help to unlock the economic potential of existing assets.

Productivity improvements are secured where businesses find commercial advantage from sharing, in one place, a dense labour market, supply chains, key assets such as airports and universities, and access to customers, clients and advanced service providers. Regeneration initiatives can contribute to these improvements by:

• Creating the physical infrastructure platform needed for private investment in the facilities needed to house an expanded business base;
• Providing modern commercial space, such as the International Financial Services District and the Pacific Quay Digital Media Campus in Glasgow;
• Providing and maintaining a high-quality public realm to attract a quality workforce and generate increased networking among companies, to secure collaborative advantage; and
• Delivering an improved quality of living to attract an increasing population.

And through this, they can create the conditions for real and sustained growth.

The social drivers

Our view of the role and significance of regeneration is also informed by our analysis of need across Scotland. Since 1997 significant progress has been made in tackling poverty across Scotland - 630,000 people in Scotland have been lifted out of absolute poverty and the number of children in absolute poverty has halved. Scotland's employment rate is up too - up 3.7% on 1999 and, at 75%, above the UK average for the first time in a generation. Meanwhile, unemployment is down by nearly a third. But our recent Social Focus report shows that, while good progress has been made, there are still considerable differences in quality of life between the most deprived areas and the rest of Scotland - differences which compound and reinforce each other at the neighbourhood level. Against that background, regeneration can:

• Deliver economic, social and environmental improvements at the local level;
• Attract private sector investment;
• Generate economic opportunities and connect disadvantaged communities to these opportunities;
• Create more mixed, stable and sustainable communities;
• Generate renewed community confidence; and
• Promote equality for people who suffer discrimination because of age, gender, disability, race, sexual orientation, religion or belief.

And through this, it can make the difference in tackling concentrations of poverty and disadvantage.

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