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Appendix B: Key policy and funding connections
A wide range of policies, programmes and funding streams have a direct or indirect impact on regeneration. Some of the most important are outlined below.
Land-use planning
Land-use planning is central to delivering development that promotes regeneration. It is a tool for stimulating economic growth and opportunity, creating mixed communities and aiding the creation and maintenance of pleasant, healthy, safe and crime-free environments. Development Plans have a key role to play in setting out policies and proposals to bring forward the development of sites for regeneration and to engage with local people and others on these proposals. They also identify the standards that must be met, for example on design, open space and access by different modes of transport.
Our ongoing work on Modernising the Planning System and the next National Planning Framework will therefore be critical in supporting future approaches to regeneration.
Petershill Community Initiative - Pooling resources |
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 Petershill Junior Football Team is one of Scotland's oldest junior teams, based in the Springburn area of Glasgow. Regeneration of the local area is using the development of a purpose-built stadium for the Petershill Juniors as a focus to link to wider benefits for the local community.
Local housing improvements will be complemented by providing a multi-function community sports, training and leisure facility, a business centre, five-a-side football pitches plus an outdoor play area. The Petershill Community Initiative is a partnership between North Glasgow Housing Association, Glasgow City Council, Glasgow North Limited, Petershill Junior Football Club and North Glasgow College. Funding of £5.6m has been secured by the Initiative by pooling resources across a broad and diverse range of agencies, including sportscotland, Glasgow City Council, Communities Scotland, the European Regional Development Fund, North Glasgow Social Inclusion Partnership and the Clydesdale Bank. |
Transport
The National Transport Strategy, to be finalised in 2006, will give a long-term framework to all Scottish transport developments. It will build on the Transport White Paper, Scotland's Transport Future, by showing how transport will contribute to five key priorities (economy; environment; social inclusion; safety; and integration) over the medium to long term.
New regional transport partnerships, bringing together local authorities and other key stakeholders, will soon be working on statutory regional transport strategies for completion by April 2007. Each strategy will make provision for improvements to transport that support the wider needs of the region and the wider economic, social and environmental objectives of the Executive. Strategies will guide and co-ordinate the transport activities of councils and others and will make the case for investment in infrastructure and services.
We are already working on the delivery of a number of initiatives aimed at providing a transport system that supports economic growth whilst at the same time providing opportunities for all and being user-friendly. By 2007-08 transport funding in Scotland will rise to almost £1.4 billion per year. This will enable substantially increased investment in transport infrastructure - in improved public transport (buses, rail, and trams) and in targeted improvements to the trunk road network. This will include new airport rail links to Edinburgh and Glasgow and a £40m programme of improvements for rail passengers across Scotland throughout the seven years of the new First ScotRail franchise. Furthermore, our planned investment of £3 billion on transport capital infrastructure projects over a 10 year period will bring our roads and railways up to expected standards, and will allow us to maintain the emphasis on major projects.
Water infrastructure
Although some capacity already exists within the current water and wastewater system to accommodate new development or housing, decisions to build new housing and commercial development may give rise to requirements for additional investment. Since 1996, around £4.5 billion has been invested in improving and upgrading our water infrastructure. The current investment programme, which covers the period 2002-06, amounts to some £2 billion and requires Scottish Water to deliver one of the largest water investment programmes in the UK. This programme is, however, mainly focused on meeting environmental and drinking water legislation.
Future investment in the water industry will continue to drive improvements in drinking water quality, the quality of the environment and customer service. It will also address capacity issues which can prevent housing and commercial development proceeding and impact adversely upon regeneration. Indeed, in setting Scottish Water's objectives for 2006 to 2014 the Executive has set Scottish Water a specific objective of providing sufficient strategic capacity to meet the requirements of all estimated new development. Funding has been provided for Scottish Water to deliver this objective in the Water Industry Commission's charges determination 2006-10. This has been accepted by Scottish Water. Should revision of either the objective or funding be required, arrangements exist under Scottish Water's regulatory framework to take this forward.
In taking forward this objective, Scottish Water is required to deliver investment in accordance with: the need to meet European statutory requirements for the environment and drinking water; the spatial priorities identified in the National Planning Framework; population movements; and the emerging development priorities of local authorities. The 5-yearly updating of development plans will help ensure these priorities are clearer and kept up to date.
Historically, Scottish Water has been expected to fund all the infrastructure requirements arising from new development. This has meant that Scottish Water has not always been able to provide developers with the access to the public water network as quickly as they would like. The Scottish Executive's policy from April 2006 is that Scottish Water will be responsible for the removal of constraints caused by lack of capacity at a strategic level and, where a particular development requires additional local capacity which is not being addressed by other areas of Scottish Water's investment programme, the cost of providing this will be met by the developer(s). Scottish Water is now therefore introducing arrangements to improve the planning and delivery of new strategic capacity in the public system.
Closing the Opportunity Gap and Community Regeneration
Closing the Opportunity Gap is about working across the Executive and its agencies to prevent individuals or families from falling into poverty; to provide routes out of poverty for individuals and families; and to sustain individuals or families in a lifestyle free from poverty.
In 2004 we set six objectives, underpinned by 10 targets, which focus on the most important issues that the Executive needs to tackle to overcome poverty in Scotland. Further information on these objectives and targets is available at www.scotland.gov.uk/closingtheopportunitygap . Effective regeneration can make an important contribution to all these objectives and targets.
As part of our approach to Closing the Opportunity Gap we have set a specific target of promoting the community regeneration of the most deprived neighbourhoods, through improvements by 2008 in employability, education, health, access to local services, and quality of the local environment.
Our policy approach to this target focuses on putting community regeneration at the heart of the community planning process; getting the core budgets and services of local authorities, the NHS, the police and other public agencies to work better for the most deprived communities; and on linking opportunities and need - so that the most deprived communities benefit from the creation of economic opportunities. It has supported the development and delivery of Regeneration Outcome Agreements ( ROAs) by all 32 Community Planning Partnerships ( CPPs) and associated Community Regeneration Funding of £318 million (2005-08) aimed at improving outcomes and generating the more effective use of other resources for deprived communities.
Education, Learning and Employability
Regeneration is fundamentally about improving outcomes for our most disadvantaged people and communities. Closing the opportunity gap and enabling people in deprived areas to compete for, and benefit from, economic opportunities is critical if we are to achieve sustainable regeneration. Tackling low educational attainment, skills, qualifications and job-readiness is therefore a central plank of regeneration policy: it is critical to linking opportunity with need.
We know that deprivation and low achievement are inextricably linked and that this link persists over time and across generations. So it is absolutely essential that our policies focus on the needs of young people and their families, and that we continue to target resources where they are most needed.
We have already taken a number of important steps: Ambitious, Excellent Schools sets out a range of measures designed to raise the ambitions of schools, instil belief and ambition in pupils, extend their opportunities and transform their life chances; roll-out of the Additional Support for Learning Act is a powerful driver for change for children at risk of missing out and dropping out; A Curriculum for Excellence and Determined to Succeed will help prepare young people more effectively for life after school.
Later in 2006 we will finalise, with the UK Government, our plans to drive forward more employment opportunities for disadvantaged people, including those living in the local authority areas with the highest level of welfare benefit claims. Our Employability Framework will set out how local partnerships will make better use of the significant resources (estimated as at least £500 million a year) available to help support people into work, and will target these resources to achieve significant improvements in the number of people benefiting from work and contributing to the economy.
We will also publish an associated strategy for reducing 16-19 year olds not in education, employment or training ( NEET). This will take as its starting point the fact that the proportion of 16-19 year olds NEET in Scotland has not changed in a decade; and, in NEETs we often see the product of earlier disadvantage - and the workless adult of tomorrow. The forthcoming strategy will make clear that achieving a sustainable reduction in NEETs across Scotland requires (a) preventing young people becoming NEET in the first place and (b) helping young people already NEET progress towards the labour market.
Edinburgh Development & Investment ( EDI) - a company approach |
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 The EDI Group Ltd is a private limited company which was established in 1988 by the City of Edinburgh Council to carry out the development of Edinburgh Park, described as one of the best business parks in Europe by the British Council of Offices.
EDI works alone and in partnership with both the public and private sectors on specific economic development projects. EDI brings the relative autonomy, but discipline, of a company approach, combined with private sector expertise, into the public sector which can help raise investor confidence and facilitate effective joint working with other parts of the private sector. For example, EDI has formed a Joint Venture Company ( PARC) with the City of Edinburgh Council to deliver the long-term strategic regeneration of Craigmillar. The company is responsible for the creation of 2,200 new homes, one new secondary and three new primary schools, a new town centre with 300,000 square feet of retail, leisure and office space, a new library and community and lifelong learning facilities. PARC is also responsible for ensuring delivery of appropriate infrastructure for the area, the integration of existing public and local authority provision and the creation of new landscaping, major public parks and civic spaces over a 15-year programme, together with raising the private funding (circa £160m) to carry it out and recycling a large part of the profit into the social infrastructure for Craigmillar. |
Finance
The policies outlined in this statement and above are supported by a wide range of specific funding programmes, by funding for agencies such as Communities Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and by funding for local government, Health Boards and other organisations. We estimate that over the three years (2005-08) we will invest around £2.4 billion in a variety of programmes which support regeneration. This includes the Enterprise Networks' investment of over £200 million in competitive place along with other elements of their spending, such as growing businesses, skills and international operations, which also support regeneration. It also includes £123 million through the Cities Growth Fund aimed at raising the competitiveness of our cities and £318 million for the CRF to improve our most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Although this is a huge amount of investment there is greater potential to deliver benefits and add value from this investment at the local level, especially where investment is in, or near, deprived communities.
Aligning funding streams
We recognise that our funding streams sometimes overlap, are often targeted and phased in different ways and subject to different accountability arrangements. We have made some progress in addressing these issues by, for example, bringing together three previous funding streams (Social Inclusion Partnerships, Better Neighbourhood Services and Tackling Drug Misuse programmes), to form a single Community Regeneration Fund ( CRF). Nevertheless, we can still do much more to better coordinate and simplify funding for regeneration, to align investment streams and to ensure objectives and targets are more closely aligned with regeneration. Similarly, only a few funding streams, such as the CRF and Housing Investment Programme, are actively managed or coordinated in a way that explicitly factors in their contribution to, or impact on, regeneration. We can therefore do more to ensure that other funding streams, including European funding, take greater account of their contribution to, or impact on, regeneration.
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