THE REGIONAL REVIEW
CONTENTS
REDISCOVERING THE GRASSROOTS IN URBAN
AND REGIONAL REGENERATION?
Graham Haughton
Page
2–4
CREDIT UNION DEVELOPMENT IN
KINGSTON UPON HULL
Duncan Fuller
5–6
COMMUNITY BENEFITS FROM SPORT?
Jonathon Long and Ian Sanderson
7–8
POLICY TRANSFER IN REGIONAL ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF SME POLICY
Ken Dyson
Page
KINGSTON UPON HULL
ON YOUR MARKS FOR THE DEEP?
Derek Spooner
9–10
CITY FOCUS
SHEFFIELD
SHEFFIELD SUPERTRAM: ONLINE PROBLEMS
Gwyn Rowley
11
BRADFORD
INTEGRATED REGENERATION IN BRADFORD
David Moss
12
13
WHAT’S HAPPENING IN OUR TOWN CENTRES?
John Lockwood
14–15
ON YER BIKE? THE JOB SEARCH AND
MIGRATION EXPERIENCES OF EX-MINERS
Emma Hollywood
15–16
NATIONAL LOTTERY FUNDS:
THE REGIONAL DIMENSION
Christopher Law
17–18
INWARD INVESTMENT IN YORKSHIRE
AND HUMBERSIDE
Jayne Crosse
19–20
REGULATING INDUSTRIAL WASTES
IN THE HUMBER REGION
Sarah Nicholson
21–22
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
22
EDITORIAL
The theme for the first issue of The Regional Review in 1997 is
focused around ideas about scales of development and recent
paradigm shifts in the field of regional and urban regeneration
policy. Community economic development (CED) is a phrase that
has recently established a wide currency, and is linked to a renewed
interest in ‘bottom-up’ development and grassroots approaches.
Two decades after the eclipse of the Community Development
Projects, of which this region’s famous exemplar was Batley, a
community-centred approach is returning to political respectability.
We might see this as evolution of the partnerships concept - with
a new and much wider range of partner groups being drawn into the
policy process.
At the same time, the interest in the role of small and medium
enterprises (SMEs) as crucial ingredients in a successful ‘flexible’
regional economy, provides another dimension of the reappraisal
that has taken place. Community, partnerships, networks,
empowerment... these are some of the key words in the new lexicon
of development. Perhaps small really is beautiful after all?
Two papers in this issue provide critical insights into these
important (if perhaps fragile) shifts in policy motifs. Graham
Haughton, drawing on the results of recent research for the
European Commission, explores the growth of community
economic development initiatives, including a regional case study,
while Ken Dyson’s regular European commentary examines the
way in which policy has been reconceptualised on the road to the
‘partnership state’, based in part upon received wisdom about how
regional economic development has functioned in some of Europe’s
most successful regions.
While these two papers provide an overview, some others pick
up the experience of CED and SMEs in a variety of contexts. For
example, the tentative development of credit unions in Hull is
described by Duncan Fuller, while SMEs feature in articles on
environmental regulation by Sarah Nicholson and inward
investment by Jayne Crosse. But perhaps a word of caution is
needed here about SMEs – medium sized enterprises may be
multimillion pound businesses and employ 200 people. This is still
a world away from the grassroots community initiatives in places
like Sheffield’s Manor Ward.
1
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
Rediscovering the grassroots
in urban and regional
regeneration?
Recent research for the European Commission on the process of community economic
development provides the basis for this review, which includes a case study of the Manor
initiative in Sheffield.
Suddenly
community
economic
development (CED) has re-emerged as a
favoured policy direction in urban and
regional regeneration. After over a decade
of funding preference for top-down, large
scale, flagship developments in urban
regeneration and large infrastructure project
bias in regional development, renewed
attempts are being made by major funding
bodies to ensure that projects are better
linked to local communities.
The irony of this will not be lost on those
local authorities which sought to pursue
bottom-up approaches during the 1970s
and 1980s, only to be driven by grant regimes
such as City Grant towards private sectordominated projects, whilst funding was
withdrawn from the Urban Programme and
Community Programme. It is not that the
community approach disappeared, it just
became marginalised as funding was
withdrawn.
Top-down to bottom-up in small steps
But now, government bodies at all levels
are anxiously rediscovering the role of
grassroots approaches in regeneration, from
improved consultation to attempts to
encourage projects devised by, run by and
accountable to community groups
(Henderson, 1991; DoE, 1995; Lloyd et al.,
1996; OECD, 1996).
In Yorkshire and Humberside, the
Government Office has recently turned to
the Community Development Foundation
for advice on how to engage with local
communities in regeneration schemes,
whilst local authorities have faced fresh
challenges to assumptions that they alone
best represent communities. In practice,
what we are seeing ranges from improved
consultation with community groups about
standard regeneration schemes to attempts
to engage strategically with communitybased groups in, for instance, establishing
credit unions, local exchange and trading
systems (LETS), development trusts and
community enterprises.
Such projects usually attempt to meet
local needs, provide jobs and training for
local people, build local physical asset bases
(such as community workspaces), develop
local strategic and project implementation
capacity amongst helpers and workers, and
are locally accountable. They are normally
non-profit organisations which plough
surpluses back into either expansion or
other community initiatives, although they
may well help support the launch of small
businesses as private enterprises.
Most community economic development
will need some form of state support as they
typically operate in areas, sectors and ways
which are marginal in formal market terms
(that is with low or no profits), for instance
providing local services which the private
sector has not moved into (stereotypically,
a community enterprise running a
launderette on an outer estate, with an
attached training scheme).
Somewhere between and beyond the
private and public sectors lies the ‘third
sector’, operating in the interstices of the
formal and informal sectors of the economy,
sometimes seeking to link the two. Such
approaches require a fine balancing act in
seeking to develop local markets whilst
linking communities to mainstream
economies, and in developing tailored
schemes which reach out to marginalised
groups whilst avoiding stigmatisation for
those who aspire to mainstream economy
jobs.
The major recent turning point in favour
of community regeneration was perhaps
City Challenge, with its emphasis on
building community support mechanisms.
In turn, Single Regeneration Budget (SRB)
funding sought to foster community-based
‘ownership’ of programmes, although in
2
reality this has been rather patchy, reflecting
the inconsistent approach of central
government which wanted community
involvement, but also insisted that project
bids were produced to tight deadlines and
new criteria, as SRB replaced City
Challenge. The two requirements were
clearly incompatible, limiting genuine
community engagement. Whilst it is
possible for consultations to begin before
formal calls for proposals are announced,
this remains a risky strategy given that
governments tend to change the rules
suddenly and seemingly at political whim.
Objective 2 funding and CED
Another major driver of change has been
the emergence of a strong communitycentred approach for European Structural
Funds. This has been notable in some of the
Community Initiative funds such as
RECHAR and URBAN, where capacity
building and grassroots initiatives have
become virtually essential to achieving
funding success.
But perhaps the most significant change
has been in the much larger Objective 2
funding programmes, where, since 1994,
the Commission has been keen to ensure
that a separate spending priority for
community economic development was
inserted into programmes. This required
considerable re-negotiation of the draft
strategies which more or less conformed to
a national blueprint, showing the dead hand
of the Department of Trade and Industry.
This initial stifling of any regional
innovation and conformity to the funding
preferences of national government
departments, was very much apparent in all
the initial Objective 2 plans for the UK.
The drive to insert CED into regional
funding programmes appeared to take most
Government Offices and many regional
partners by surprise. Indeed, in most regions
there was what can be best described as
passive resistance to these changes and an
initial reluctance to run wholeheartedly with
the new opportunities which this change in
spending emphasis required.
Yorkshire and Humberside, ever close to
the national average in regional performance
tables, true to form took the middle route of
gradual acceptance, followed by some signs
of enthusiasm. It should be stressed that it is
not simply a case of Government Office
intransigence. Many local authorities and
other key partners had over the years come
to a comfortable mutual accommodation
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
over the carve up of European regional
funds, and mostly remained wedded to the
traditional spending areas of large scale
infrastructure development (canal
improvements, industrial estate access,
supertram), technology transfer, SME
support, training, and tourism.
Breaking out from this mindset clearly
took some time. Or to put it another way,
perhaps we had simply forgotten how to
engage in CED on anything but a small
scale – the prospect of it becoming part of
the mainstream, a major initiative in its own
right, took some time to take root in people’s
minds.
The lack of innovation, the slowness of
uptake and the seeming inability to grasp
the challenge which had been handed to
regional partners to re-orientate their
Objective 2 programmes began to cause
some consternation in the Commission,
which had been hoping to extend CED not
only into the next funding round, but also to
other countries, notably France and
Germany.
In an attempt to help chart a way out of the
apparent impasse at the regional level, the
Commission funded a major project to
identify how progress might be improved.
The research was undertaken on a national
scale, trying to identify where the process
was working, where it was not, and why,
and to suggest ways forward. I took
particular responsibility for examining
progress in Yorkshire and Humberside, the
North East and the North West. The resulting
report (Lloyd et al., 1996) was published in
September 1996 and widely circulated to
regional partners in Britain and other parts
of Europe.
Following Commission guidelines, CED
spending is spatially targeted to the most
deprived parts of Objective 2 areas, focused
at ward level on areas with major economic
problems. To attract funding, local strategies
are required, though this is interpreted
differently between regions: in one region,
a City Challenge was deemed to have
already provided a suitable community
consultation process, an SRB area was not,
whilst others were funded to develop their
own strategies.
In Yorkshire and Humberside, the need
to produce local strategies appears to have
been liberally interpreted. Yet even with
this loose interpretation, in the early years
of the funding programme there was a dearth
of suitable projects being put forward for
funding, in part reflecting confusion over
the Commission’s rules and the Regional
Partnership’s interpretation of them, but
also reflecting a lack of suitable projects to
build from. Indeed, what was surprising
was how very few substantial projects
existed in the eligible parts of the region. I
was quickly pointed to the Manor Initiative
in Sheffield (see below), and then suddenly
the suggestions petered out. Maybe this
should not be too surprising, since by their
very nature, most grassroots economic
development initiatives will be small in
scale. Yet in Scotland, where a more
supportive funding regime has existed over
a number of years, there is a much stronger
base of such initiatives, particularly
community enterprises.
This links to one of the main concerns of
the report for the EU, that some areas were
much more advanced than others in terms
of their existing capacity for communitybased regeneration. In the advanced areas,
it was possible to proceed quickly to develop
or help expand existing ventures such as
development trusts or community
enterprises, whilst in other areas it was
essential to start from a different base of
building up community capacity,
developing project ideas, and test-bedding
smaller scale ventures. I came to the
conclusion that virtually the whole of the
eligible parts of Yorkshire and Humberside
was closer to the latter stage than the former.
Whilst there are plenty of small LETS and
credit unions, they are rarely linked into a
community economic development strategy
- although this is rapidly changing.
The Manor Project, Sheffield
The Manor ward in Sheffield has around
12,000 inhabitants, high unemployment,
and predominantly local authority housing
stock. It is located around two miles from
the city centre and for many years suffered
from poor local services, particularly
retailing, plus recurrent negative media
exposure. Yet it has also been the site of one
of the most long-term community
regeneration initiatives in the region, which,
after over 15 years of determined
groundwork, has a highly creditable rollcall of achievements.
The roots of the current suite of ‘Manor’
projects can be traced to the Manor
Employment Project (MEP) in the early
1980s, providing community workspaces
for small social businesses, based in a former
public works depot. This gradually
developed to a stage where 10 businesses
3
employed 50 staff, supported by four project
staff and a full-time nursery.
Following some concern about enterprises
failing to develop and whether providing
advice and support as part of a propertycentred initiative were the best means to
achieving sustainable regeneration (Bruce
and Clarson, 1991), in 1987 the emphasis
was shifted to training, leading to the
winding up of the MEP and the creation of
MaTReC, the Manor Training and Resource
Centre. This provides a range of training
courses, both in a main building and at
satellite centres, such as community centres,
church halls and primary schools (Bruce
and Clarson, 1993). It currently has around
400 students registered on 25 vocational
training courses. In addition, MaTReC has
hosted an Employment Service Job Club
and community job centre, as part of its
efforts to help local people access
information about jobs and training.
MaTReC has been a central part of a
network of inter-linked CED initiatives, for
instance playing a leading role in
establishing the independent, locally-owned
Manor Development Company, which has
built 16,000 square feet of local workspaces
in the Manor Development Centre, funded
by a combination of Urban Programme and
ERDF monies. Less than two years after
opening the Centre was already fully let,
hosting a business support service plus over
150 people employed in 27 businesses; a
new phase of development is being planned.
Other related initiatives include the Manor
Community Nursery, and the Manor Advice
Centre, which, though independent of
MaTReC, rents its premises from them on
favourable terms. The main community
organisations have all maintained a strong
emphasis on local recruitment policies and
also on campaigning on behalf of the local
community, to counter negative stereotyping.
Particularly interesting has been the
emergence of the Manor Assembly, a
community forum which acts as a
mechanism for ‘sharing and solving
problems,’ developing local control and
engagement, with monthly meetings
typically attracting 50 people. The Assembly
plays a key role in nominating local members
of boards for the various community
companies being set up in the Manor.
In October 1994, a Manor conference set
about establishing a new vehicle, the Manor
Initiative, which is aimed at developing
new projects and also providing support
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
and consultancy for other organisations
wishing to work in similar ways. Although
this has suffered from various funding
problems, its early work has been promising,
including the development of a Manor
Strategic Plan, issued in November 1995
(Manor Initiative, 1995).
In developing the Plan, four guiding
principles were adopted from a previous
piece of work by the Manor Assembly:
young people to be included in all initiatives,
accountability to the Assembly and the
wider community, local ownership by
creating community-owned projects and
local employment by seeking to recruit
local people.
The overall strategy emphasises five key
themes: accessibility (‘partnership of
equals’), accountability, communication,
research and evaluation. From these
foundations, the Strategy then sets out a
series of ‘practical objectives’ which would
not go amiss in any similar local strategy:
training and education, employment,
childcare, health, housing, business, young
people, environment, leisure and recreation,
and transport.
As local capacity has grown, outside
agencies have started to show an increased
willingness to invest in the area, including
the local authority, private sector house
builders, housing associations and English
Partnerships. Other work includes a
Community Safety Project, funded by the
local police authority, and a variety of youth
projects, supported by the local authority
and others, including a local church and the
local MP.
The importance of all this is that it is not
just CED on its own, but part of a broader
set of regeneration initiatives linked into
both community accountability structures
(community ownership and the Manor
Assembly) and local democratic structures.
If all this sounds too good to be true, well,
in some respects it is. Progress has been
made both because of, and in spite of, two
of the major funders, with a catalogue of
delays, waivering commitment and other
uncertainties, all part of the unpleasant
reality of attempting sustainable community
regeneration whilst still being reliant on
government bodies or quangos themselves
facing continuous funding squeezes and
uncertainties. In this boom and bust cycle,
it is never clear when the next emergency
will emerge, or who suffer until the next
solution is found.
What we learn from this experience is
that building CED initiatives is a long-term
process, growing incrementally, building
local support and seeking to direct external
funding into the area, both from state and
private sector sources.
Future of CED
So how rosy is the future for CED? To be
honest, it is difficult to say. The track record
of state bodies in supporting such initiatives
is at best patchy, at worst destructive. I have
walked away from some interviews with
leading activists angered and saddened by
their treatment by funders, who have
seemingly regarded local community
groups as a convenient, politically
acceptable, palliative and legitimatory
device for their other, top-down initiatives.
Community initiatives are apparently
ones which can be taken up and discarded at
will, rather than nurtured and developed
towards a sustainable financial position. I
fear that when the political tide changes,
community initiatives will be left to sink
once again. Unfortunately, this is also the
perception of many activists, which is why
so many have treated the new funding
opportunities with enormous caution,
frequently reluctant to apply for funding
which is surrounded by bureaucratic
obstacles unsuited to small groups.
But change is in the air and it would seem
that at both regional and local level funding
regimes are gradually being re-worked to
favour more community-based approaches.
Yorkshire and Humberside is far from in
the lead in this respect. Regionally, we need
to consider how we make the transition
from laggards to leaders in promoting CED
initiatives. The recently published
Government Office regional strategy for
competitiveness has little or nothing to say
about CED, just one sentence on community
engagement in regeneration schemes.
More promising are the plans of the Forum
for the Future, working with CUDEM at
Leeds Metropolitan University, to use West
Yorkshire as a ‘crucible’ for testing out
alternative forms of local CED. Genuine
CED will take risks and it will push officials
into policy areas with which they are
unfamiliar and uncomfortable; it will also
have its failures as well as its successes. Do
we have the political guts to accept and
embrace the challenges involved? If we do,
then maybe we can become a pioneering
region; if not, we will remain firmly
entrenched in the national middle ground,
not a failure, but not a success. And that
4
surely just is not good enough.
Graham Haughton, Leeds Metropolitan
University
References
Bruce, A. and Clarson, D. (1991)
Addressing the problems of training
provision in urban areas: a locality-based
response, Local Economy, 6, 2, 172-6.
Bruce, A. and Clarson, D. (1993) The role
of information in effective local training
provision: the MaTReC initiative, Regional
Studies, 27, 7, 692-96.
Henderson, P. (ed.) (1991) Signposts to
Community Economic Development,
Community Development Foundation,
London/Centre for Local Economic
Strategies, Manchester.
Department of Environment (1995)
Involving Communities in Urban and
Regional Regeneration: A guide for
Practitioners, DoE, London.
Lloyd, P. et al. (1996) Social and Economic
Inclusion through Regional Development:
the Community Economic Development
Priority in European Structural Fund
Programmes in Great Britain, European
Commission, Brussels.
Manor Initiative (1995) Making the Manor
a Place to Live and Work: A Vision for the
Future, Manor Initiative, Sheffield.
OECD (eds) (1996) Reconciling Economy
and Society: Towards a Plural Economy,
OECD, Paris.
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
Credit union
development
in Kingston
upon Hull
Credit unions are potentially a key component
in community-based economic development,
but have been neglected by researchers,
several years after the comprehensive work
of Berthoud and Hinton (1989). Many
academic analyses have treated credit unions
as uncontested spaces of largely economic
considerations, belying, underestimating, or
simply ignoring their chaotic, grassrootsbased genesis. This paper provides a brief
re-introduction to credit unions, and the
birth-pangs in their development, largely
through the author’s interaction with credit
union development within the city of Kingston
upon Hull.
First developed in Germany and Italy in the
1850s and 1860s, a credit union is a mutual
financial co-operative which provides
convenient and accessible savings and loans
to its members (National Consumer Council,
1994). Such unions are formed by people
with a common interest or bond, whether
occupational, associational, residential, or
living or working in an area, and who agree
to save regularly (often in small amounts)
in order to build up funds from which loans
can be made at favourable rates of interest.
A recent study by Pratt, Leyshon and
Thrift (1996) has noted that 26 per cent of
the UK’s population are currently without
access to mainstream financial services
(either as a result of being rejected, or by
excluding themselves for whatever reason).
One effect of the financial exclusion debate
has been increased awareness (both in the
US and the UK) of what Gunn and Gunn
(1991) have termed alternative institutions
of accumulation, which incorporate a range
of institutions such as rotating savings and
credit associations (ROSCAs), community
development banks, local exchange and
trading systems (LETS), as well as credit
unions.
However, the lack of attention paid to
credit unions currently reflects their still
embryonic nature within the UK. Despite
around 30 years history in this country,
credit unions are still a minority interest.
Latest estimates suggest the registration of
just over 500 in the UK. Whilst it should be
acknowledged that “credit unions are
clearly incapable of solving all the problems
caused by financial exclusion”, and neither
are they a direct response to it in many
cases, “they are certainly a means by which
savings can be pooled and then distributed
in line with local needs, and may even help
to stem the process of financial dynamics
which would otherwise recycle funds from
poorer to richer areas” (Leyshon and Thrift,
1995). Indeed, credit unions in particular
may have the ability, if developed to the
fullest extent (as in Ireland) to rival bank
and building society dominance (or at least
make them think).
Credit unions in Hull
Hull currently possesses one fullydeveloped and registered credit union, three
established study groups, and three groups
attempting to compose study groups (by
attaining more members). In addition, Hull
City Council had, until recently, employed
two part-time credit union development
workers, and there is a Credit Union Forum,
which is a strategic body comprised of
representatives from all the groups within
the city who are either working towards, or
have already attained, registration by the
Registry of Friendly Societies.
The difficulties that groups in Hull have
faced, in terms of reaching satisfactory
numbers to form a study group, can be
classified as general national barriers that
operate throughout the credit union
movement, alongside barriers that are specific
to the locale of Hull (Fuller, 1997).
This article illustrates the efforts of one
group in particular, the proposed Hull Central
and West Credit Union Working Group
(hereafter Central and West), to mobilise
enough support within their common bond
area, in order initially to compile an effective
working group, whose ultimate aim is to
attain registration as a fully fledged credit
union. Through documentation of their
efforts, the importance of local financial and
ideological support for credit union
development, principally from local
government, is stressed.
Volunteer recruitment
The Central and West area has been targeted
for credit union development since 1995,
5
when the Council had pump-primed its
development through a £1,700 allocation
from its anti-poverty budget. However,
despite strenuous efforts on behalf of a few
committed individuals within the area, this
strategy failed to generate enough
immediate enthusiasm within the
community for the project to be sustained at
any length, and more particularly, for the
formation of a working group to be
developed.
My first contact with one of the prime
movers within the area came in April 1996,
over a year after the original publicity
meeting had been held. At that time, it was
said that although there were a number of
enthusiastic people expressing an interest
in getting involved, it was felt there were
pressures preventing them from
participating. As one enthusiast argued: “I
don’t know – I don’t think it’s general
apathy – I think a lot of it as well is especially
credit unions. People look at the posters
and think ‘what the hell is a credit union,
don’t know what that is’, and can’t be
bothered.”
In addition to a number of problems
relating to credit union image, the
demarcation of the common bond area,
publicity production and targeting, there is
a strong reliance within credit union
development on the work undertaken by
paid and knowledgeable credit union
development workers, alongside the nonpaid volunteers. Although the existence of
the former is by no means a guarantor of the
proliferation of the latter, the support
provided through the role of the credit union
development worker can be critical to the
success of recruitment and development.
The last National Association of Credit
Union Workers (NACUW) Annual General
Meeting identified a number of problems of
volunteer recruitment which need to be
tackled, such as a lack of recognition, a fear
of handling money, the ‘I can’t do that’
syndrome, and that people just want to be
service users, not providers. Methods used
for recruiting volunteers for participation
in credit union development vary between
the groups in Hull, with some groups
adopting a hard-sell approach in terms of
high levels of publicity in local areas and
others effectively hand-picking volunteers
through knowledge of their local
communities.
It was six months after my initial contact
before credit union development started to
gain momentum in Central and West again.
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
Initially this momentum was as a result of
the role played by an officer from a local
community development organisation.
The recruitment process began with an
introductory meeting held at one of the
community centres to the west of the city
centre, which was attended by 10 people.
Central and West’s strategy then developed
in conjunction with its core group of local
members and input from one of the credit
union development workers, firstly with
meetings at a community centre at the
eastern end of the common bond, and
subsequently developed into a monthly
‘tour’ of the various community centres
within the area.
However attendance at each meeting was
limited, firstly, by the fact that it soon became
apparent that each community centre area
was characterised as having its own
‘territory’, with members from outside these
areas unlikely to attend, and that, secondly,
these meetings were targeted specifically at
recruiting new members, with the same key
information being presented at each venue,
leading to few people coming to more than
one meeting, and a few to lose interest.
After a four-month period of holding
meetings in each of the community centres,
therefore, it was recently decided by the
core group of members that the recruitment
had progressed sufficiently via this tour,
and via personal networks, to warrant
collecting all the interested prospective
volunteers from the different meetings, and
setting up an official working group. Use of
the personal networks of the core group had
allowed the recruitment of a number of
interested recruits who were already active
within other community organisations
within the area. This critical step from an
interested group to official working group
status now allows applications for funding
to be submitted (both locally and nationally),
increased publicity opportunities, alongside
the development of an official training
scheme and initiation of a savings club
along credit union best practice lines.
Official encouragement?
This recruitment strategy had developed
out of the group’s acknowledgement that
there was a need to use the community
centre networks as a means of spreading the
word and contacting those people already
active in the local communities, or those
who would be more likely to develop an
interest. However, the community
development worker argued that such a
strategy went against the traditional view
(and according to the worker, the councilheld view) of not really allowing the
community centres to be a source of
empowerment, or focus for conference. The
officer noted that it was a common-held
view that effectively the Council was “trying
to launch a double-decker bus when they’ve
got a Rolls Royce”.
In addition, the role of the community
development officer has been under close
scrutiny, regarding the apparent fine line
between the officer facilitating this form of
local empowerment and actually crossing a
perceived line of acceptable behaviour within
the officer’s job description and becoming
‘involved’ in the credit union development
process as defined instead as a form of
economic community development.
Such views are inextricably linked to the
persistence of a paternalistic brand of
socialism within the city. As a consequence
of this political climate, there remains a lack,
at the grassroots level, of people experienced
in developing and running community-led
organisations. One of the local Labour
councillors argued that within the city there
are around two to three hundred people who
in his terms “run the city”, and of those,
thirty or forty who “wield any real power”.
He argued that a situation exists today
within Hull, whereby citizens have
effectively become a dependent culture,
with the Council being perceived as the
great benefactor. He noted that he had seen
this feature at first hand within his own
ward, where three years ago a vacuum had
existed in terms of community activism,
with a great deal of apathy concerning the
ability of local residents to change things.
However, he argued that these attitudes
had been attacked in his area over the past
three years, with the local population being
empowered mainly through the
development of a number of residents’
associations (and other active bodies), and
that his area was now buzzing. Crucially, he
expressed concern over the results of this
exercise, largely voiced in terms of a
wariness of people being “taken away on a
wave of activism” as he argued that such
people often ended up turning into Liberal
Democrats.
Conclusions
Gunn and Gunn (1991) have argued that
part of the task of building an alternative or
third sector of the economy entails
development of institutions of support
6
necessary to promote its growth and foster
its development; “alternatives can become
the norm only to the extent that they develop
in conjunction with a set of symbiotic
institutions, patterns of behaviour, and
values in society”.
Within Hull currently, such a situation
does not exist with regards to the development
of credit unions. Notions of community
empowerment are effectively treated with a
degree of distrust for the outcomes they can
engender. In addition there is a lack of cooperation between the community
organisations themselves, and between them
and the City Council, so that a clear direction
for action is far from visible. Support from a
financially stricken City Council is
voluminous in word, but lacking in practice,
as exemplified by the recent loss of one (if
not both) of the credit union development
workers posts, at a time when more input
was desperately needed, not less.
As Haughton notes elsewhere in this issue,
the encouragement is there nationally, but
within Hull, a lack of financial and ideological
support is threatening to undo the efforts that
have led to the city being on the brink of a
community-based, economic success story.
Duncan Fuller, University of Hull
References
Berthoud, R. and Hinton, T. (1989) Credit
Unions in the United Kingdom, Policy
Studies Institute, London.
Fuller, D. (1997) Credit Union
Development: Fincancial Inclusion and
Esclusion, Geoforum, forthcoming.
Gunn, C. and Gunn, H.D. (1991) Reclaiming
Capital, Cornell University Press, London.
Leyshon, A. and Thrift, N. (1995)
Geographies of financial exclusion financial abandonment in Britain and the
United States, Transactions of the Institute
of British Geographers, 20, 3, 312-341.
National Consumer Council (1994) Saving
for Credit: The Future for Credit Unions in
Britain, NCC Publications, London.
Pratt, D.J., Leyshon, A., and Thrift, N.
(1996) Financial exclusion in the 1990s:
the changing geography of UK retail
financial services, Working Paper on
Producer Services 34, University of
Birmingham and University of Bristol.
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
Community
benefits from
sport?
The incorporation of community-based
sports and leisure development in
regeneration strategies has considerable
potential. This article looks at the experience
in this region and elsewhere and the
evidence for impact on social welfare.
Sport and social benefits
There is a widespread belief that sport is
good for you (sporting injuries
notwithstanding), but there is also a
dimension of public policy founded upon
the conviction that benefits accrue beyond
the individual.
Over the past three decades one of the
recurring rationales attached to the support
for sport has been its role in promoting
social welfare (Table 1). This derives from
the externalities or social benefits that may
accrue from sports provision.
Arguably, ideas of social welfare and
community benefit have been less prominent
in the minds of policymakers in recent
years, overtaken by the themes of ‘civic
boosterism’, prestige, and regeneration. Just
as with other leisure-related initiatives like
the garden festivals, the European City of
Culture (Glasgow), and a host of other large
scale arts festivals, interest in sport has
secured the hosting of the Commonwealth
Games, the World Student Games and the
European [soccer] Championships as well
as bids to host the Olympic and
Commonwealth Games, and most recently
the World Cup (again).
Whether or not being European City of
Culture had any lasting benefits for Glasgow
has been the subject of fierce debate, and the
fact that the garden festivals have been
discontinued suggests that decisionmakers
were not persuaded of their regenerative
powers. While enjoying the World Student
Games in Sheffield and the associated cultural
activity, Critcher (1992) concluded that their
regenerative function is open to question.
Bottom-up approaches
However, there are still many initiatives
wedded to the idea of using sport as an
Table 1: Some of the benefits attributed to sports initiatives
Top down (‘prestige’)
Provide prestige facilities and events
Improve environment
Generate employment and income
Enhance city image
Attract visitors and relocating companies
Encourage civic pride
element in bottom up approaches to local
regeneration. Pack (1989) argued that sport
“...can, in conjunction with other social
and economic policies, make a positive
contribution to urban regeneration.” This
conviction is evident in many Single
Regeneration Budget (SRB) initiatives
which incorporate community-based sports
development as an element of a broader
economic, social and environmental
strategy. There is widespread commitment
to the notion that sport can play a key role
in community development, in giving power
to local community groups and giving
participants a say in how local opportunities
are managed.
Reporting elsewhere (Long and
Sanderson, 1996) on the responses of sports
development officers and sports centre
managers, we noted that while all our
respondents were able to cite a range of
benefits to individuals: “...they found it
harder to identify those occurring at the
community level, and when addressing the
contribution to regeneration, were more
likely to return to high level sport – prestige
facilities and elite performance (cups and
Olympic medals). The responses relating
to community development clustered
strongly around interaction/cohesion/
community spirit, whereas those relating
to urban regeneration tended to focus on
civic pride and improving the profile of the
city.”
Although our local authority respondents
talked a good case, they lacked any definitive
evidence in support of their claims. This is
something they share with the rapidly
expanding literature on sport and leisure.
However, many respondents referred to
experiential evidence arising from their own
participation in sport or direct observation
in the course of their daily work. Although
econometric models have been developed
to try to estimate the impacts of major
sporting events or new facilities, the
7
Bottom up (‘community’)
Enhance confidence and self-esteem
Improve employment prospects
Reduce crime, vandalism and delinquency
Increase social integration and cooperation, promoting a collective identity
Increase productivity with a fit and
healthy workforce
Improve health
production of any ‘hard’ evidence in this
area is problematic. So we wondered if it
might be possible to engage in a more
formal documentation of that experiential
evidence to help to clarify the situation and
identify the kinds of processes that work.
A sports centre case study
Part of an attempt to do this included a case
study at ‘Walston’ Sports Centre (fictitious
name). This is one of few facilities on one
of those estates labelled as ‘inner city’
without being anywhere near the city centre.
The youngsters causing problems around
the estate were causing problems at the
centre as well.
The centre was actually contributing to
the problem, offering another area of
authority to be targeted. This reflects
polarised positions – ‘not part of us, so we
attack it’. So the centre staff worked in
conjunction with the local youth workers to
set up a programme for the youngsters to
get something from the centre and recognise
that it is not a negative place to be. A
weights room was set-up which was led by
them and they actually raised three quarters
of the funding. It is now well used.
The first changes were only small – the
centre itself did cease to be a target (they
even get on well with the security guard
now). However, it did signal an altered state
of mind and persuade other customers it
was all right to return so that they were
allowed once again to do what elsewhere
would be a normal part of everyday life, and
the attendance figures rose.
But the centre staff did not think this had
led to a general improvement in the area.
On the other hand they did argue that
“...they’re not out there doing damage
...they’ve changed their attitude”. And there
is the potential for education – the role of
sport in developing self-discipline. It tends
to be the (male) youth that is most commonly
associated with ‘problems’, but they are not
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
alone in experiencing the problems of life
on the estate. The centre does provide for
other groups as well, like the young at heart
women’s group “...who wouldn’t normally
be doing activities, they’d stop at home, so
at least they’re coming out and getting
involved with other people”. Thus, the
socialisation functions of many such
programmes are likely to be as important as
any health benefits.
Community-based sports development
Broadening the focus, there are numerous
examples throughout Yorkshire and
Humberside of community-based sports
development. Basically, community
development approaches aim to mobilise
local people and resources by enabling
individuals and groups to develop through
participation in sporting activity, which is
therefore seen as playing a role in developing
community identity and capacity to take
action and change. A major theme in
community sports development is the
training of community members as sports
leaders and this approach has been
promoted, for example, in Sheffield and
Hull. In Sheffield, ‘Women Leading the
Way’ is a partnership community-based
training programme for women sports
leaders aimed at increasing sporting
opportunities for young people.
As indicated earlier, many SRB projects
in the region have included sports
development as an integral component of
broader regeneration strategies for localities.
An example is provided by Hull CityVision
which includes initiatives to encourage
participation within localities in active and
healthy lifestyles and development of the
range and quality of recreation and leisure
facilities serving local communities.
Sport and crime
An important recurring theme of community
sports development is its potential role in
diverting young people from crime and
drugs. Hull and Kirklees provide examples
of summer holiday activity programmes
for young people of school age delivered in
partnership with the police. Here again,
though, there is a lack of evidence indicating
the effectiveness of sports programmes in
reducing crime.
However, a recent evaluation of the West
Yorkshire Sports Counselling project,
established in 1991 with the aim of using
sport to reduce rates of re-offending by
Probation Service clients, found that those
who completed eight weeks or more of their
sports counselling programme were
significantly less likely to be re-convicted
than a control group. It was the length of the
programme combined with voluntary
involvement and one-to-one counselling
that proved to be important in helping
participants gain in self-esteem and
perceptions of their own fitness. Participants
were also introduced to new social networks,
role models and opportunities.
As with the efforts at the Walston Centre,
the number of people involved has been
relatively small; 46 in 1994 and 40 in 1995
completed a programme that by then
covered all five districts of West Yorkshire.
In an apparent effort to increase
‘throughput’, the current phase of the project
is based around four week programmes,
even though the research found that these
benefits were not evident among those who
took part for less than eight weeks (Nichols
and Taylor, 1996).
Recent research in New Zealand has cast
doubt on the effectiveness of sport as a
means of diverting young people from anti
social activities. Indeed, it was concluded
that involvement in sport encourages
aggressiveness and even cheating and 15year olds with high sporting levels were
twice as likely as their less sporty
counterparts to be delinquent at the age of
18 (Guardian, 12th December, 1996).
Prospects
Although there is now considerable
experience among local authorities and their
partners of community-based sport and
recreation development, there is still a lack
of hard evidence on the impact of such
initiatives. Allison and Coalter (1996)
caution against over-optimism: “The lesson
from Action Sport is that the shift from
attempting to provide sporting opportunities
at a local level for disadvantaged groups to
the instrumental use of sport within
community development programmes is
fraught with dangers.”
Part of the problem is a general tendency
in local government to give a low priority to
evaluation; the focus is on action, often
driven by political commitment in a context
of constrained resources (Sanderson and
Bovaird, 1996). Moreover, many of the
claimed economic and social impacts of
sport are difficult to measure and attribute
to particular initiatives; evaluation research
in such a context is technically difficult and
can be expensive. And, although many
8
initiatives are of short-term duration, their
broader impacts may take a long time to
materialise; “fabric renewal can be
accomplished quickly. But social renewal
takes a long time” (Davies, 1989).
There is clearly a need for careful
evaluation research to investigate the
potential role of community-based sport in
social renewal. Such research should be
focused on local schemes, involving initial
baselining, tracking of effects over an
extended time period, coupled with in-depth
qualitative investigation and informed by a
broad conceptual framework of the potential
economic and social benefits from sport.
Over time this would provide a firmer basis
for developing local policies for community
sport and leisure in the context of broader
regeneration strategies.
Jonathan Long and Ian Sanderson, Leeds
Metropolitan University
References
Allison, M. and Coalter, F. (1996) Sport
and Community Development, Scottish
Sports Council, Edinburgh.
Critcher, C. (1992) Sporting civic pride:
Sheffield and the World Student Games of
1991, in Sugden, J. and Knox, C. (eds)
Leisure in the 1990s: Rolling Back the
Welfare State, Leisure Studies Association,
Eastbourne, 193-204.
Davies, I. (1989) A tale of two cities, Sport
and Leisure, October, 10-13.
Long, J. and Sanderson, I. (1996) Sport and
social integration: the potential for
community-based approaches to
regeneration, in Hardy, S. Malbon, B. and
Taverner, C. (eds) The Role of Art and
Sport in Local and Regional Economic
Development,
Regional
Studies
Association, London, 28-33.
Nichols, G. and Taylor, P. (1996) West
Yorkshire Sports Counselling: Final
Evaluation, West Yorkshire Sports
Counselling Association, Halifax.
Pack, C. (1989) New cities for old, Sport
and Leisure, May-June, 26-28.
Sanderson, I. and Bovaird, A. (1996)
Evaluation in local government: the key to
better ‘value’ for citizens, Municipal
Journal, 13th September.
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
Policy transfer in regional
economic development: the
case of SME policy
The state’s role in regional economic development has been reconceptualised, with a shift
from organiser to enabler. Case studies of Baden-Wurttemberg and Emilia-Romagna
provide models of this successful policy transfer in the field of ‘community-based’
economic development and support for SMEs.
Our fascination with electoral politics and
the alternation of political parties in
government disposes us to exaggerate the
degree to which policy change is a ‘topdown’ process driven by ideology and
partisan self-interest. There is another
dynamic of policy change at work whose
significance has been strengthened by the
larger processes of globalisation and
Europeanisation.
‘Policy transfer’ refers to processes of
cognitive change as policy makers learn
from others in practical engagement with
policy and its effects. They come to
‘reframe’ problems and their solutions.
There emerges within specific policy areas
a set of evolving beliefs about what
constitutes ‘best practice’ as measured by
performance, and identified through a
process of inquiry rather than derived from
certain first principles. They come to
represent a shared body of knowledge that
underpins and informs policy development
in different national settings.
The impact and limitations of this process
of policy transfer are strikingly exhibited in
the case of regional economic development
policy, and in particular with respect to
‘community-based’ approaches and the role
of small and medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs). In this policy area two agencies of
policy transfer are discernible.
Firstly, there is a structure of international
knowledge to which policy practitioners
and analysts have contributed. This literature
focuses on the shared characteristics of
successful regional economies, notably in
the USA and Europe, as well as on evaluation
of the efforts to rejuvenate problem regional
economies. In consequence, policy transfer
has flowed from certain ‘probed’ beliefs
about how regional development has
functioned in Massachusetts, BadenWurttemberg or Emilia-Romagna.
Secondly, the EU’s institutional structures,
notably the Commission, have served to
strengthen this activity by taking up these
‘probed’ beliefs and using them to carve out
and legitimate a role in regional economic
development. In particular, the Commission
has been able to transform involvement by
local, regional and national actors in regional
economic development from simply a
resource-bidding exercise based on acquiring
regional ‘hardware’ (like transport
infrastructure) to a policy-transfer exercise
at the level of ‘software’ (ideas and practices).
Policy beliefs and the role of the state
In the field of regional economic
development the EU’s policy transfer role
has involved the following ‘probed’ beliefs:
❐ that in an increasingly ‘knowledgeintensive’ economy, capacity for
networking is decisive;
❐ in the importance of the scale and density
of regional and local networks and of
certain companies being prepared to
play a strategic role in their support;
❐ that such networks should be tied into
strong cross-national networks,
embracing other regions with high
innovative capacity;
❐ that regional regeneration requires a
‘bottom-up’ approach based on
mobilising social and economic interests
around a regional vision and exploiting
endogenous development potential; and
❐ that the guiding philosophy behind
action on unemployment, business startups and firm expansion should be
empowerment: giving people the
incentives to better their position.
9
Behind these specific concepts can be
identified a deeper policy paradigm: of the
post-Fordist economy, based on smaller
scale, more flexible and more specialized
production. In such an economy the role of
the state is transformed. From organizer of
regional development it becomes a
facilitator and enabler, focused on reducing
transaction costs facing employers and
workers. Its core functions are to set in
place the organisational structures through
which technology transfer, business support
services and vocational education and
training can be effectively delivered. The
design and delivery of these services serves
the purpose of mobilising local and regional
interests, including high-tech companies,
universities, research institutes and trade
unions. The image of the sovereign state
cedes place to that of the ‘partnership’ state
sharing power not just with social and
economic interests but also with various
levels of government. Clearly such a
conception of the state is very appealing to
interests within the Commission who seek
to circumvent the restrictions imposed by
the notion of sovereign states.
This reconceptualisation of regional
economic development – and its embedding
in a new theory of the state as pragmatic
problem-solver – has been made possible
because the conditions have been in place to
facilitate policy transfer. These conditions
include the presence of powerful regional
political structures, mounting evidence of
policy failure and the threat of political ‘kickbacks’, and the political flexibility to probe
the factors behind regional success, to identify
those elements in one’s own political belief
system that are consistent with these factors,
and to ‘reframe’ those beliefs.
In this article we explore two case studies
of how and why the regions of BadenWurttemberg and Emilia-Romagna have
followed this route of policy change to
become models of successful policy transfer
in the field of ‘community-based’ economic
development and SME support.
Baden-Wurttemberg
Policy makers in Baden-Wurttemberg have
been driven to a pragmatic, globally oriented
perspective on regional economic
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
development by the presence of a powerful
structure of multinational companies located
in the state: notably, Audi, Bosch, MercedesBenz and Porsche. Against a background of
increasing globalisation of production by
German companies the state government
was encouraged to reflect on the adequacy
of its regional development policy.
This multinational presence has presented
two challenges: firstly, to ensure that these
companies are provided with world-class
infrastructure so that they have no incentive
to relocate; secondly, to exploit the
companies’ large purchasing power to
stimulate regional development, notably
the consolidation of a strong and modern
structure of SMEs. Hence a key plank of
regional development policy became the
maximisation of the benefits from a shift to
‘lean’ production by these large firms.
Regional policy had to ensure that SMEs
were well-positioned to take advantage of
this shift, thereby further tying these large
firms into the regional economy.
This belief in maximising the regional
benefits from ‘lean’ production took root
by means of policy transfer from the US
and Japan during the 1980s. It was, of
course, premised on already having a
powerful presence of large multinationals:
a condition that is not readily reproducible
elsewhere.
The state government has been able to
use instruments that were already available
in the form of dense networks of support
for innovation in technology transfer and
training. These have been mobilised for the
purpose of economic modernisation,
drawing on state-of-the-art policy ideas from
the USA. These instruments include:
❐ the role of the chambers of commerce in
coordinating technical vocational
training, in particular to strengthen the
base of IT skills;
❐ the 120 Steinbeis Technology Centres
specialising in technology transfer
(massively subsidised by the state
government); and
❐ large-scale financial support for R & D
activities by the nine universities and 64
research institutes.
Not least, the state government has
emerged as an active marketer of the region
at the international level, promoting crossnational regional collaboration with other
successful regions in Europe and North
America.
During the 1980s the state government
‘reframed’ its view of economic
development to embrace facilitation,
enabling, mobilisation and marketing as
organising concepts. A key factor was the
presence in power of the Christian Democrat
Party. Its dominant ideology fused together
market and social frames on regional
development, with which the emerging
beliefs about successful economic
development strategy could be made readily
consistent. ‘Reframing’ focused on the new
global competition and the need to marry
regional political tradition to forces for
change. But we should not forget other
aspects of the German context, in particular
the powerful regional political structure.
Emilia-Romagna
Emilia-Romagna offers a contrast in terms
both of political tradition and government
ideology and of economic structure.
Politically, this state has a powerful leftwing tradition; economically, it does not
possess the density of multinational
companies available to the state government
of Baden-Wurttemberg. But it has two
powerful resources: a strong SME structure
characterised by flexible specialisation and
high skills levels; and a tradition of
cooperation within this economic structure,
especially in financing and marketing. Interfirm cooperation has built on the craft
traditions of the main cities and towns.
Left-wing governments have made
flexible use of this inheritance to establish
a new political frame for regional
development policy. Trade union
cooperation in a strategy of industrial
adjustment has been secured by the state
developing a new role as ‘orchestrator’ of
regional economic development. This role
has focused around the Regional Board for
Economic Development as a means of
bringing together a range of social and
economic interests into what is conceived
as a ‘bottom-up’ approach. This Board has
created centres at the sectoral level to provide
comprehensive support services to SMEs
ranging from technology transfer to
vocational training and quality control.
This structure of decentralised and
participatory service provision at the sectoral
level is complemented by the other roles of
the state in improving infrastructure:
notably, educational provision, cultural
facilities and environmental improvements.
10
Conclusion
The two case studies illustrate how policy
transfer has worked and how regional
governments have come to reconceptualise
their role in economic development. Both
benefited from a shared starting point: they
inherited a strong SME structure with
traditions of cooperation. BadenWurttemberg had the further advantage of
an inheritance of powerful multinational
companies.
Though they began with different political
traditions, what was striking was their
capability to ‘reframe’ those traditions in
terms of the global economy and to establish
a consensus on the ends and means of regional
economic development. Each was given a
different flavour by its point of political
departure. But a process of policy transfer,
prompted by a political will and capability to
reflect on inherited beliefs and their
consistency with economic performance, had
produced striking similarities so that one
could speak of a ‘state-of-the-art’ in regional
development policy that transcended leftright political categories.
Lessons for Yorkshire and Humberside
What lessons can we draw for Yorkshire and
Humberside? The weakest link in effective
policy transfer is the absence of a strong
regional political structure. Hence the urgent
need is to strengthen the coalition of support
for such a structure and to begin the process
of inventorising regional strengths and
building of networks in advance of the reality
of regional political power. For Yorkshire
and Humberside the crucial requirement is
to use policy transfer to inform the design of
regional government from the outset.
More promisingly, the political context
of regional policy has changed. New Labour
has gone through a process of ‘reframing’
its views on economic development in terms
of globalisation. That process has involved
probing best practice elsewhere and putting
policy in the dual frames of welfare and
market. Policy makers may be faced with a
new window of opportunity in 1997-98
when the proces of policy transfer can be
better activated. That process would reject
the notion of the state as aloof and sovereign,
leaving adjustment simply to the market, in
favour of the ‘partnership’ state as facilitator
and mobiliser. But, ultimately, that
partnership rests on empowerment of the
regions.
Kenneth Dyson, University of Bradford
CITYREGIONAL
FOCUS: SHEFFIELD
THE
REVIEW
Sheffield Supertram: online
problems
The final section of the South Yorkshire Supertram was opened to the public on 23 October
1995. This article reviews the context for the Supertram’s development and indicates
several of the continuing problems within the operation that point to future uncertainties.
Controversy and acrimony characterised
the construction period of the South
Yorkshire Supertram, particularly due to
disruptions in traffic and business
operations. Now the system is up and
running and major problems remain. These
relate to the viability of the Supertram
network, various safety matters concerning
its operation, and the base question of
whether Supertram will complement or
compete with the buses and the wider
Greater Sheffield public transport system.
Background
The Bill for Supertram received its Royal
Assent in October 1988. The Department
of Transport (DOT) confirmed (19 June
1989) that a Section 56 Grant had been
approved for the South Yorkshire Supertram
project at a cost of £240 million with the
bulk of the project’s costs to be borne from
resources allocated by the DOT.
A brief comparison of Supertram with
Manchester’s Metrolink provides some
interesting pointers (Rowley, 1995).
Metrolink runs largely on pre-existing
railway track, although separate tracks were
constructed through the city centre where
Metrolink is given signal priority. The
present Metrolink operation between Bury
in the north and Altrincham in the south is
just under 31km. Although this is slightly
longer than Sheffield’s 29km, it has cost
only £120 million, about half the cost of
Supertram, particularly because of its use
of 27km of pre-existing rail network. By
comparison, over 16km of the Supertram
track is on unsegregated urban roads.
Network viability
Perusal of Figure 1, showing the Supertram
network within its wider city framework,
serves to isolate one crucial aspect:
Supertram only serves some 20 per cent of
Sheffield’s population of c.500,000; it does
not reach key places like the Royal
Hallamshire Hospital, nor the more affluent
west and south-western parts of the city,
and there is a mismatch between Supertram
and various potential transport interchanges,
as for example the inconvenience and
considerable distance at the Sheffield
Midland railway station and the Central
Bus Station at Pond Street. The development
of considered integrative strategies remains
crucial for any viable Supertram operation.
Supertram passenger numbers remain
well below optimum requirements.
Particularly because of its limited reach and
a base failure to integrate into the wider city
public transport system, Supertram has been
operating at well below capacity and is
losing over £500,000 a month.
Figure 1: The Sheffield Supertram within
its wider city context
1
2
3
4
Stocksbridge
Chapel Green
Netherthorpe
Park
Intake
Firth Park
Nethershire
Brightside
Owlerton Southey
Green
MEADOWHALL
INTERCHANGE
4
Hillsborough
South Wortley
MIDDLEWOOD
MALIN BRIDGE
Walkley
Burngreave
Darnall
1
Broomhill
Sharrow
Nether
Edge
Hallam
Castle
Manor
2
Handsworth
3
Heeley
Ecclesall
Birley
HERDINGS
Beauchief
Dore
Mosborough
Norton
0
HALFWAY
1
2
3
km
4
5
Safety
The on-street Supertram routeways have
been criticised in a recent report from the
Transport Research Laboratory, published
in February 1997. It appears that the smooth
concrete surfaces between and alongside
the Supertram tracks are unsafe for cars,
with specific skidding problems evident in
wet conditions. Possible remedial action
would appear to be both very expensive and
disruptive. The report identifies other
possibly hazardous features of the
Supertram network, particularly several
severe bends that can give rise to
11
derailments, and imprecise track elevations
along its on-street sections. It is unclear as
to who would have to cover the potentially
considerable costs of any remedial
treatments.
Finance
The Supertram operation has to be passed
over to the private sector during 1997, and
there is a deal of hesitancy from would-be
operators due to the uncertainties of base
financial returns and liabilities for
improvements arising from improved safety
standards, alluded to above.
Relating to costs, South Yorkshire council
leaders are understandably concerned about
the rising level of Supertram debts, which
already total some £45 million, particularly
as it appears that Government is insisting
that Supertram debts are the responsibility
of the South Yorkshire councils as members
of South Yorkshire Passenger Transport
Authority.
Meanwhile, as a stop-gap, Government
in February 1997 has offered a £20 million
loan facility which singularly fails to deal
either with the mounting debt or with the
base liability matters relating to any possible
system improvements.
Conclusion
This note has pointed to some of the
worrisome features of the present Supertram
operation.
There is a base need for an integration of
public transport services within the city to
incorporate Supertram, the buses and rail
services into a city-servicing facility; a need
now forcefully re-emphasised in predictions
of dire traffic road congestion and gridlocking in the city within the next ten years.
Will Supertram provide Sheffield with
the basis for the development of a modern
integrated urban transport system or will it
continue as an expensive and unco-ordinated
white elephant?
Gwyn Rowley, University of Sheffield
References
Rowley, G. (1993) The Sheffield Supertram:
Potential Effects upon Retail-Commercial
Centres, Department of Town and Regional
Planning Occasional Papers 117,
University of Sheffield, Sheffield.
Rowley, G. (1995) The Sheffield Supertram
and urban redevelopment, The East Midland
Geographer, 18, 1, 25-38.
CITYREGIONAL
FOCUS: BRADFORD
THE
REVIEW
Integrated regeneration in
Bradford
Since 1979, the Bradford District has received almost £92 million from Europe. This
article identifies the need for increased integration and partnership and examines the
projects behind the District’s latest £21.5 million bid success.
In the past, European investment has helped
fund major developments in Bradford such
as the city’s new ring road network, the
development of the National Museum of
Photography, Film and Television, three
business centres for small firms and scores
of job training schemes.
Today the focus is more defined, with
integrated funding strategies and enhanced
public/private sector partnerships forming
the basis of the Council’s regeneration
strategy. Generating high levels of private
sector investment has become a priority as
is maximising funding through other
agencies and bodies to support matched
funding initiatives.
Bradford’s main European support comes
from its Objective 2 status which provides
grants of up to 50 per cent towards economic
projects in areas which qualify as suffering
from the effects of industrial decline. Funds
have been made available through two
funding blocks at a regional level covering
three year periods from 1994 -1999 (each
with up to two years to spend the approved
grants). These programmes provide support
through projects and programmes at
regional, sub-regional and local level.
Bradford is able to identify grant benefits of
£21.5 million from the first three year period.
A new Regional Plan for 1997-1999 is
currently being finalised in Brussels.
The current £21.5 million European grant
is contributing to a total estimated
investment of £60 million, whilst other
recent EU funded initiatives, such as
investment in the city centre, have provided
a major catalyst for investment now running
at £180 million.
Maximising the initiatives
Integrating projects and initiatives has been
vital in addressing economic problems and
attracting high levels of funding. There are
now five key categories in Bradford’s
strategy. The first category is business
support services and assistance for new or
growing companies which links in closely
with the second category of business
training and labour market support. Both
aim to support business growth and tackle
skills needs to enhance company
development and economic prosperity and
are supported by category three, information
society.
Information society has attracted grants
worth £2.9 million and focuses on building
up the technological infrastructure in the
district and the region through the
development of training and information
access, services and networks and
introducing new technology to companies.
Linked closely with the development of
technology based sectors such as media and
multi-media industries, access to
information and training for new businesses,
examples of projects include a Bradford
Virtual College sponsored by Bradford and
Ilkley Community College and Diginet, a
council scheme to use Internet technologies
to provide a local area network and high
quality information service for local SMEs.
Category four emphasises infrastructure
and marketing and concentrates on
improvements which directly affect the
ability to generate investment and attract
companies and people to Bradford through
improvements to business premises, tourism
facilities and key parts of town centres in
addition to supporting marketing and events
in the District.
Grants received total £7.4 million but in
most cases these are much larger projects
where public matching investment is
required in order to generate spin off benefits
over a longer period. The strategy has been
to use European grants as a catalyst to other
public investment such as lottery cash,
English Partnerships funds and other non
local resources. An example of this in
practice is the National Museum expansion
project which has been granted £3.5 million,
helping to draw down £5.5 million lottery
plus private and Museum money.
12
The final category has been community
economic development (CED) with grants
totalling £5.8 million. Bradford has perhaps
performed better than in any other category
in this area with over 60 projects of varying
sizes being supported across voluntary,
community and public organisations.
Funding has been secured for developing
local communities from within through
training for the unemployed, services to
disadvantaged areas which lead towards
employment or self employment and
environmental projects in the community.
Examples in this area include a grant of
£58,136 for Hanover Square Environmental
Improvements which will improve land
within a horseshoe-shaped terrace of 50
Grade II listed houses with assistance from
English Partnerships, and £528,696 for
Bradford Foyer Project which will build and
staff a training/education facility for young
people providing supported accommodation
whilst they train or seek employment.
The way forward
The introduction of Action Plans makes the
integration and close focus of future bids
ever more important. Bradford, like some
other cities, is already working towards a
strategic partnership based solution with
the aim of developing and submitting a
single Action Plan which will dovetail
priorities and actions even more precisely,
allowing the network of initiatives already
in place to support and underpin a continued
commitment to integrated regeneration.
David Moss, City of Bradford Metropolitan
District Council
QUALITY OF LIFE
A recent report states that:
❐ Bradford is ranked 116th of 189 towns
and cities in Britain;
❐ York (13), Beverley (42), Scarborough
(76), Huddersfield (84), Rotherham (107)
and Doncaster (113) have higher ratings;
❐ Harrogate (120), Sheffield (121),
Wakefield (156), Leeds (169), Barnsley
(173) and Hull (188) have lower
rankings.
Source: Rogerson, R. (1997) Quality of Life
in Britain, Department of Geography,
University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, G1 1XN
CITY THE
FOCUS:
KINGSTON
UPON HULL
REGIONAL
REVIEW
On your
marks for the
Deep?
During the last decade Hull’s waterfront
has witnessed some major transformations.
The process of recycling the older structures
is however far from complete. Two
ambitious projects awaiting decisions in
1997 could provide Hull with potent symbols
for its aspirations.
Over the last decade a series of projects
have converted much of Hull’s abandoned
dockland to new uses, with a shift to
consumption-oriented shopping, leisure and
residential development. While Hull’s
working port continues to expand vigorously
in the eastern part of the city (symbolised
by the re-opening of Alexandra Dock in
1992), the central and western waterfronts
have witnessed some quite different
developments. Victoria Dock (closed in
1970) is now the site of Victoria Dock
village, a massive housing project developed
by a public-private partnership; Princes
Dock (closed 1968) is the site of a major intown shopping complex, Princes Quay
(opened 1991), while Humber and Railway
Docks house a flourishing marina, flanked
by warehouse conversions, hotel and
restaurants, housing and offices.
Further west however, St. Andrews Dock
former home of the fishing fleet, (closed
1975), has only been partly redeveloped for
shopping and leisure and derelict structures
are all too visible still alongside the A63
(part of the Limerick-St. Petersburg E20)
as it rolls into the city parallel to the Humber
bank. Still further west the major swathe of
land vacated by the railway as Hull’s railbased trade declined, remains relatively
undeveloped, despite the hype about Priory
Park straddling the city boundary, although
there has been considerable investment
recently (mainly in East Yorkshire).
Elsewhere the city has begun to turn its
attention to its other waterfront – the River
Hull – with plans to revamp this northsouth corridor of chaotic industrial and
commercial
development
which
increasingly separates the main residential
areas. A recent bid for Single Regeneration
Budget (SRB) funding for this ‘heartlands’
area has been successful.
Lacking the major impetus of an
Enterprise Zone or an Urban Development
Corporation, the city has had to work hard
to assemble the funding for these projects.
In 1987 the city’s vision for the
redevelopment of its four and a half mile
dockland strip was pulled together in an
integrated strategy, but implementation has
been erratic.
Flagship projects
Although the owners of Princes Quay might
argue otherwise, absent so far has been the
development of a distinctive visitor attraction,
and arguably the city might gain from a
‘flagship project’ that would provide a visible
physical symbol of renaissance, and help to
overcome the anonymous, neutral image of
the city identified in a recent study (Spooner,
1996). With fishing heritage catered for by
Grimsby, other aspects of the maritime
association have had to be considered as the
‘signature’ development.
The Deep
Closest to the concept of a flagship project
to emerge has been ‘the Deep’, a partnership
project between the City Council, Hull
University, the Natural History Museum (a
major catch) and Deep Sea Leisure plc. An
eyetaking hull-shaped structure at Sammy’s
Point at the mouth of the River Hull would
exploit the marine association through a
series of different media presentations. This
imaginative £31.6m project has been
shortlisted recently by the Millenium
Commission, who might provide half the
funding. It links marine and environmental
research, education and entertainment.
Although a location at St. Andrews Quay
might be more visible and accessible, the
proposed location at Sammy’s Point does
provide a powerful focus for the River Hull
corridor redevelopment, where a distinctive
business and cultural heart for the city is
sought.
Priory Park
Much more controversial is a very different
flagship project, the proposal by Marks and
Spencer to build a 70,000 sq ft £21m
superstore (claiming to create 250 jobs) at
the city’s western entrance, not far from the
Humber Bridge, at the Priory Business Park.
This is a highly visible site, earmarked as a
strategic business and industrial location,
and not intended for retailing in structure
13
and local plans. So far it has failed to attract
a major industrial client, and the
development has been mainly in the retailing
and office sector, alongside the established
Sainsburys store. Although Aldi has opened,
Burger King has recently closed its outlet
here. Two planned advance factories for
English Partnerships have been deferred
because of the Marks and Spencer proposal.
The proposal has created a substantial
dilemma for the city. Economic
development officers are supportive,
anxious to secure a prestige project which
might kickstart development of Priory Park
and provide a showpiece on the approaches
to the city. City centre retailers see a threat
to a city centre which is hardly strong, and
already facing competition from a ring of
out-of-town stores and discount warehouses,
not to mention more distant magnets like
York, Beverley and Meadowhall.
Planners find the proposal at odds with
the Department of Environment’s new
guidance on out-of-town development
(PPG6) (1996) and its emphasis upon
protecting existing centres, not to mention
the conclusions of the recent Hillier Parker
study of retailing in the city, which advocates
strict restraint on new out-of-centre retailing.
PPG 13 is also relevant, with its call for
closer co-ordination between land use and
transport provision and reduced reliance
upon travel by private cars, although Marks
and Spencer have offered park and ride
access to the city centre.
In November 1996 the City Council
approved the proposal, opting to promote
new investment rather than protect existing
interests, but the planning application has
been called in by the Secretary of State, and
a public inquiry will take place. Such an
inquiry might be seen as a test case for the
Government’s new policy; in the local
context it will have major implications for
the development of Hull’s western
approaches and arguably for its image.
Whether the development of a major retail
presence at Priory Park will provide the
catalyst for non-retail development remains
an open question, but there is no doubting
that this high quality retail development
would be a major attraction in its own right.
Derek Spooner, University of Hull
Reference
Spooner, D. (1996) Kingston upon Hull:
countering the stereotypes. The Regional
Review, 6, 2, 11.
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
What’s
happening in
our town
centres?
This paper reports on the findings of a 1995
survey of the impact of Town Centre
Management schemes (TCM) in Britain,
based upon a sample of 46 towns, including
three in Yorkshire. With many town centres
facing severe competition from out-of-town
developments, TCM appears to offer them
some prospect of fighting back.
The 1990s have seen a proliferation of
TCM schemes both in the region and
throughout the UK. This is a phenomenon
which stems from economic, social and
environmental factors and from the desire
to emulate the success of purpose designed
out-of-town shopping centres. These
facilities demonstrate that management can
create a high quality shopping environment
which gives consumers what they want.
TCM appears to be an idea whose time
has come. Key retailers are committed to it,
local authority interest is growing strongly,
and the Parliamentary Select Committee on
the Environment endorsed the concept in
1994. Government backing came in the
1996 revision of Planning Policy Guidance
Note No. 6.
Will it become a permanent and essential
feature linking town centre planning and
business activity – or is it likely to be a
passing fad to which due lip-service will be
paid in local planning policy statements?
There are indications that TCM schemes
which involve all stakeholders will prove
their worth and become key factors
determining the viability of town centres.
This will be due largely to their ability to be
responsive to consumer expectations and to
attract custom through place marketing.
Aims and early beginnings
The principal aims of TCM are to improve
the quality of the urban experience and to
encourage people to use and enjoy our town
centres. Experience in the USA with the
‘Main Street’ and ‘Downtown’ programmes
shows that successful schemes affect the
retail mix and improve the viability of shops
and other businesses. Although TCM is a
relatively new activity in the UK, there are
schemes which have existed long enough
for an evaluation of their impact to be made
and in particular to examine whether trading
conditions have improved in the centres in
which they operate.
An early scheme which began as an
economic regeneration initiative started in
Halifax in 1985. The Calderdale
Inheritance Project was a public/private
sector partnership programme which used
promotion
and
environmental
improvements with the aim of reversing
the decline in the fortunes of the retail
centre of the town and stimulating
confidence in the area as a whole. In 1993,
to test whether the programme had made
any impact seven national retailers
cooperated in providing sales data for their
stores in Halifax, Huddersfield and
Bradford. The data focused on the
percentage change in the gross takings
achieved by each store over a six year
period (1987-93). The results showed that
in every case the Halifax stores had
performed better than their counterparts in
the nearby towns and in some instances by
a very significant margin.
1995 survey
Twenty two of the country’s principal high
street retailers cooperated in a survey to
look at how the takings of town centre
stores changed between 1990 and 1995.
Data was provided by national chains such
as: Boots, Burton, Marks and Spencer,
Sainsbury, WHSmith, Woolworth and
household names such as Dixons, Dolcis,
Milletts, Miss Selfridge, Olympus,
Superdrug and Tandy. Altogether data for
323 stores in 46 towns were provided.
Seventeen of the selected towns had TCM
schemes in operation for at least two years;
the remainder were chosen as controls.
It was necessary to be sure that TCM
rather than local factors was responsible for
variations in business performance. In order
to find out, Marks and Spencer and Boots
store managers in the selected towns
completed a qualitative questionnaire in
which they were asked a range of questions
e.g. had there been significant growth or
decline in employment? What was the
impact on sales of out-of-town and edgeof-town shopping? Were there other local
factors that had benefited trade?
14
Regional differences in trading conditions
Over 60 per cent of stores in the total
sample failed to record sales growth above
the rate of inflation during the period
between 1990 and 1995 and actual takings
in almost one quarter of stores were less in
1994-95 than in 1990-91. Takings of stores
in towns in the South East and to the north
and west of London slumped. In these
areas the percentage of stores not keeping
pace with inflation ranged from 73 per
cent to as high as 96 per cent. The South
East was worst affected; takings fell by at
least 20 per cent in almost 50 per cent of
stores.
Stores in the Scottish towns did
considerably better than stores in towns
elsewhere in the UK: two-thirds of Scottish
stores recorded takings above the rate of
inflation. One-third achieved 10 per cent or
more above inflation.
Stores in Yorkshire and Lancashire towns
covered by the survey came third in the
ranking of towns by region with 42 per cent
recording sales growth in excess of inflation.
Impact of TCM on store performance
Boots and Marks and Spencer store
managers said that trading conditions
would have been significantly worse in
more than two-thirds of the TCM towns if
a management scheme had not been
created. Sales data from the 22 companies
bears this out: stores in eight out of 14
TCM centres performed moderately or
significantly better than those in
neighbouring control towns; 71 per cent of
stores in towns with an effective TCM
scheme achieved higher takings than the
stores in the control towns.
Even in the few TCM towns that did not
perform well there is evidence that in some
TCM made a valuable contribution. One
manager commented “Without the TCM
scheme trading conditions would have been
dire”. The content of TCM programmes
varies considerably from town to town but
overall it appears that greatest priority is
being given to improving the environment,
pedestrianisation and streetscape and to
promotional activities.
TCM centres which performed best gave
priority to, and reported no significant
problems with, access and parking.
However, looking at the 46 centres as a
whole, store managers reported that store
takings in one third of centres are being
damaged by access problems and parking
charges and controls.
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
The effectiveness of most of the TCM
schemes is inhibited by lack of funding and
a low level of support from local businesses:
only three TCM schemes had ‘signed up’
50 per cent of local businesses. Many
schemes have less than 20 per cent of traders
supporting them. Also, there is evidence
that the impact of out-of-town competition
on store takings has been significantly
underestimated. While deflection of trade
usually takes place gradually and is difficult
to quantify the survey provides evidence
that the true impact is much greater than
had been thought.
Conclusions
Trading conditions in many parts of the UK
have been very difficult during the period
of the survey with nearly two thirds of
stores failing to keep pace with inflation.
Also the extent of the effect of out- and
edge-of-town development on High Street
shopping appears to be more marked than
previously estimated. On the other hand
there is evidence that a number of TCM
schemes have had success in minimising
the effects of out- and edge-of-town
development and in reinvigorating the town
centre.
The takings of stores in a significant
proportion of TCM towns were better than
their control counterparts and store
managers reported that TCM was important
even in towns which performed badly.
However, TCM effectiveness in many of
the schemes is limited by lack of
commitment from local businesses.
TCM is focusing local government and
business attention on the need to develop
jointly programmes which address town
centre consumer issues. However to be
effective, greater commitment and funding
is required which will enable the key issues
to be tackled.
The study provided important evidence
that retail trade is likely to be better in towns
where local authorities and businesses set
up schemes to manage and promote the
town centre and the findings also provided
a rare insight into the gap in trading
performance which exists between towns
in the north and south of the country.
However, the survey highlights the need
for further hard data on which the
effectiveness of TCM and health of town
centres can be judged.
John Lockwood, Urban Management
Initiatives
On yer bike? The job search
and migration experiences of
ex-miners
Since the 1920s, when over one million men were employed in the mining industry, pit
closures have been a common feature of coalfield life. However, in Yorkshire it has been
the wholesale pit closures of recent years that have had the greatest impact on mining
communities, very often leaving them with little or no alternative employment. In the past
when pits closed down miners and their families could move to other pits or even into other
industries. However, with the virtual destruction of the mining industry and the decline
in traditional manual occupations in general, this is no longer a viable alternative.
The impact of pit closures in the decade
since the miners’ strike has been nowhere
more apparent than in Yorkshire, part of the
main coal producing area of Britain in the
post war period. The coal industry in
Yorkshire was a major employer, and in
many communities the only significant
employer. Consequently the pit closures
have had a major impact on employment
prospects. When combined with the decline
of other traditional industries, the lack of
alternative employment is further
compounded. According to discourses of
the new right, individuals living in areas of
high unemployment, such as the coalfields,
should be prepared to move to other areas in
search of work.
However, recent evidence has shown that
coalfields are not experiencing high levels
of out-migration (Owen and Green, 1991;
Green, 1994). One of the main reasons
suggested for this immobility is the lack of
job opportunities elsewhere. Indeed, miners'
experience of the job market after leaving
the mining industry is a key element in
understanding their immobility.
Experiences of unemployment
Using data from the 1991 Census Sample
of Anonymised Records (SARs), which are
individual records from a 2 per cent sample
of the population, it is possible to examine
the employment prospects of ex-miners.
Table 1 compares the employment status of
a sample of miners of working age (16-65)
living in the region in 1991 with a similar
sample of the rest of the working age
population in Yorkshire and Humberside.
The table shows that miners had virtually
double the unemployment rate of the total
population; 14.4 per cent compared with
only 7.4 per cent. In addition, miners are far
15
more likely to have retired early, reflecting
that for older miners taking early retirement
is perhaps the most logical option. Miners
are also less likely to have returned to
education or to have taken up Government
training schemes. Clearly miners are
experiencing disproportionately higher
levels of unemployment and early retirement
than others in the region.
Table 1: Employment status of individuals
of working age, Yorkshire and Humberside,
1991
Employment
status
Miners
(%)
Remainder
of working
population (%)
63.0
Employed
52.2
Government
scheme/Student 0.9
7.7
Unemployed
14.4
7.4
Inactive/Sick
14.8
16.7
Retired
17.7
5.3
Source: SARs Crown Copyright
Although informative about levels of
unemployment among miners, these figures
give little indication of the experiences of
finding work as perceived by miners
themselves. Interviews carried out with exminers have given a richer source of
information than could be obtained from
the census. The interviews, carried out
between March and November 1996 with
20 ex-miners living in the Barnsley area,
showed the lack of opportunity in the job
market and the difficulty of finding work.
The following extract is from Jack, who
has worked in various temporary jobs since
leaving the coal industry in 1992. When
asked about his experiences of finding work,
he stated:
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
“within three months I applied for seventy
jobs... I started off picking certain jobs that
was within my capability, might have been
a furniture factory, various things like that.
And then I found that I was just getting no
reply, so what I started doing was going for
any job... It was ridiculous jobs and there
was I think just under seventy and I never
received a reply.”
This is in contrast to experiences of work
in the mining industry, where many had
walked straight into a job they considered
to be for life, in a relatively well-paid
occupation. This was a situation shared by
many respondents, for example, John:
“I applied to this place, that place,
wherever; you name it, I applied for it. I got
made redundant not through my own fault,
I got made redundant through Government
policy and I know there are people out there
similar to myself... I don't want to be on the
dole but it’s the situation I find myself in. I
want to work and I can't get a job...”
Again, John highlighted the large number
of jobs he had to apply for and his lack of
success. Like other respondents he felt that
it was not his fault; being unemployed, he
displayed a sense of frustration at the
situation he finds himself in, and at the lack
of power he now feels he has in the job
market. Another respondent, Alex, also
highlights the same problems in the
recognition of skills he gained in the coal
industry. When asked about his experiences
of finding work he stated:
“Extremely difficult ... you find that the
qualifications that you gain once you come
outside the coal industry are not worth the
paper they are written on. Really. And an
awful lot of electricians and that who have
found that difficult. They’ve found they've
had to do extra qualifications to make them
really valid outside the industry.”
Running through these extracts and others
is a sense of powerlessness and frustration
in the job market. This is centred around
difficulties getting work, lack of recognition
from employers and a general scepticism
about the prospects in the job market as it is.
Attitudes to migration
According to free-market theorists it is
precisely such negative feelings that should
motivate such individuals to relocate to
more prosperous job markets. However,
miners have a lower rate of migration than
the rest of the population – 5 per cent
compared with 11.1 per cent.
More interesting are the differences in
distance moved (Table 2). For both miners
and the rest of the population short distance
moves dominate, but it is in the long distance
moves of over 50 km that the principal
difference arises. For the rest of the
population in Yorkshire and Humberside
21.5 per cent of moves were over 50 km
while for miners only 2.4 per cent of moves
were long distance. This indicates, both
that miners are not moving out of the
coalfields in great numbers and that when
they do move, they are far less likely to
move over long distances than the rest of
the population.
difficulty selling their house. A slightly
different view of moving away is taken by
Alex, who had considered moving, but felt
restricted by attachments to his family which
restricted him in where he looked for work;
“Yes I had looked seriously at moving. I
think one of the reasons when I look back is
I didn't move is because I'd be near to me
kids. So that's again probably stopped me
getting a job because I didn't look to move
very far and because of having access to the
kids. I mean now, everybody is smart after
the facts, maybe I should have moved, but I
didn't.”
Table 2: Migration distances of miners,
Yorkshire and Humberside, 1991
Conclusion
The evidence presented here suggests that
the labour market experiences of ex-miners
in Yorkshire and Humberside are marked
by unemployment and lack of opportunity.
Miners' experiences of unemployment are
those of frustration and powerlessness in a
job market that is unable to provide the
wages and security they once found in the
coal industry. The response to the situation
is not to move away to more prosperous
labour markets, because miners do not
believe that moving away would provide
the secure job and wages they feel they
would need to compensate for leaving their
home. In addition, most did not even
consider moving because of the importance
of family, friends and home over finding
employment. Despite lack of economic
opportunity in former mining areas, exminers are choosing to remain there.
Migration
Miners Population
distance (km)
(%)
(%)
0–4
66.6
53.1
5–49
31.0
25.4
50+
2.4
21.5
Source: SARs Crown Copyright
However, such figures do not indicate the
reason for immobility. In the interviews,
many reasons were cited, indicating the
complexity of the issue. For example,
moving away to find work was not seen as
a viable or desirable option. However, very
few miners were frustrated about not being
able to move to the job markets of the south.
This was reflected in a lack of desire to
relocate and the belief that things would
probably not improve for them if they did.
When I asked Mike about moving to find
work he said:
“You see if you're going to move, where
you going to move?... what area are you
going to, are you going to move into
something that is exactly the same, another
area that is exactly the same? I mean to do
it you've got to get a job first...”
Mike did not see moving as an
advantageous option; he did not see that
moving would change his situation. A
similar position was taken by Jim:
“That's very hard that you know...
everybody's got their own home, bought
their own home you see, they've bought
they're own home from pit. So there's like
selling up and moving, if anybody'd buy
them... I mean this is it, if you moves from
your house you're not sure of a job, are
you? Especially at that particular time...”
Many of the interviewees stated that even
if they wanted to or could move away it
would prove very difficult because of
16
Emma Hollywood, University of Sheffield
References
Green, A. (1994) The role of migration in
labour market adjustment: The British
experience in the 1990s, Environment and
Planning A, 1563-1577.
Owen, D.W. and Green, A. (1991) Local
labour supply and demand interactions in
Britain in the 1980s, Regional Studies, 25.4,
295-314.
Acknowledgements
This work is based on the SARs provided
through the Census Microdata Unit of the
University of Manchester with the support
of the ESRC/JISC.
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
National Lottery funds: the
regional dimension
The National Lottery has a regional dimension and may effect a spatial redistribution of
resources. This paper looks at the early evidence with reference to Yorkshire and
Humberside.
Since its establishment in November 1994,
the National Lottery has rarely been out of
the news. A wide range of issues have been
raised including whether it will increase
gambling in society, the size of the jackpots,
and the good causes to which the money
raised should be distributed. Not least among
the issues raised are those concerning the
spatial impacts: is money being redistributed
from one part of the country to another? Is
London gaining too large a share of the
awards? What will be the (local) economic
impacts of Lottery funded projects?
Income and allocation
The National Lottery was launched with
the aims of raising money for a variety of
good causes and thereby benefiting the
public and enhancing the quality of life
(HM Treasury, 1996). It has proved very
successful whether measured in terms of
expectations or in comparisons with other
national lotteries. During 1995 it had an
income of around £5 billion including
scratch cards, but in 1996 sales fell, which
is one reason why Camelot, the operators,
recently introduced a mid-week version.
Table 1 shows where Lottery money is
raised by region. Unfortunately there is not
a great deal of precision in the use of regional
boundaries, so that the figures should be
used with care. However it does appear that
sales are concentrated in urban areas and
that sales per head are higher in parts of the
north such as Yorkshire and Humberside
and North East.
One half of Lottery income goes on prizes
divided about equally between large
(jackpots) and small sums. It can be assumed
that the many small prizes are distributed
more or less in proportion to sales by area.
With respect to the large prizes, it appears
that some regions have done better than
others, including Yorkshire and Humberside
which had 10.2 per cent of the jackpots.
However these prizes may not be spent in
the region. Winners may spend on holidays,
the purchase of goods from outside the
region, or investments at the national level.
The 12 per cent Betting Duty which the
Government collects and the 5 per cent
taken by Camelot will also be allocated
across the regions.
Most interest in the National Lottery has
focused on the 28 per cent given to good
causes. The Government designated five
types of good cause with organisations
responsible for the allocation: Arts Council,
National Heritage Memorial Fund, Sports
Council, Millenium Commission, Charities
Board. Key criteria for the early awards for
the first four of these causes were that
awards could only be used for capital
projects, that there must be matching funds
(although this varied from one cause to
another) and that the awards could only go
to non-profit organisations.
Table 1: National Lottery sales 1995-96
TV
Households Sales Average
region
(%) (%) spend (£)
Tyne-Tees
5.2
5.4
3.15
Border
1.1
1.0
2.75
Ulster
2.2
2.0
2.73
Yorkshire
10.0
9.4
2.67
Anglia
6.9
6.0
2.67
Wales
7.7
7.4
2.53
Granada
11.4 11.5
2.50
Scottish
6.1
5.6
2.47
Grampian
2.1
2.0
2.38
Central
15.8 16.0
2.33
London
19.3 22.3
2.33
South
9.3
8.1
2.27
West Country 2.9
2.7
2.03
UK
100.0 100.0
2.48
Source: Camelot
These conditions raised several concerns.
The first was that projects would be
completed without having adequate revenue
support, which might be necessary in some
cases or become necessary later.
The second concern was that the ability
17
to raise matching funds would vary from
one project to another, and perhaps from
one region to another, without reflecting
the value of the project. For instance it
might be easier to get private donations in
the richer South East than elsewhere in the
country. On the other hand, Assisted Areas
can use English Partnerships and European
Union support as matching funds, a
possibility denied to many areas. An allied
concern is that if the public sector provides
the matching funds these will be at the
expense of funding for other services.
Lottery awards
By the end of July 1996, over £2 billion had
been allocated to the good causes and it was
claimed that of the 10,000 awards made, 40
per cent were for figures of less than £25,000.
The 18 projects which received the largest
amounts together received £672 million, or
a third of the distribution. Further, the 42
projects on single locations which each
received at least £5 million accounted for
£915 million, or approximately 45 per cent
of the total.
It is this small minority of projects
receiving large amounts which have been
given much press coverage, and which have
created the impression that there is a bias
towards London (Table 2). These large
awards cover a variety of projects. Some
are for completely new facilities, but most
are concerned with enhancing existing ones,
falling into three broad types: museums and
art galleries, theatres and performing art
centres and sports facilities.
There has been much interest in the
economic impact of these awards,
particularly for the new facilities. Indeed it
is quite common for press releases at the
time of these awards to detail what these
economic impacts are. In the short term
there will be construction jobs. For the
longer term there are the jobs in the facilities
plus any other impacts.
Many of these facilities can be classified
as visitor attractions, which draw people
into the area as tourists. Their spending
outside the facility will obviously have an
economic impact. A more difficult subject
to evaluate is the stimulus which a new
facility may give to other developments. A
flagship project in an area needing
regeneration may be the catalyst which sets
the process in motion.
But how much of the success is due to the
project and how much to other factors such
as infrastructure spending, grants and so
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
Table 2: Regional distribution of Lottery
awards to 8 November 1996
Government
Awards Population
regions
(%)
(%)
London
28.6
11.9
South East
9.1
13.3
South West
6.8
8.2
Eastern
4.3
8.9
West Midlands
5.3
9.1
East Midlands
2.7
7.0
Yorks and Humbs 7.2
8.6
North West
9.1
9.4
Merseyside
1.8
2.5
North East
5.0
4.5
Wales
8.2
5.0
Scotland
10.2
8.8
N. Ireland
2.2
2.8
Note: excludes multi-region awards
Source: Department of National Heritage
on? Whilst there can be debate about the
scale of economic impact, many local
authorities are now developing plans using
Lottery funding as a way of stimulating
urban regeneration.
Yorkshire and Humberside
The discussion has shown that the region
has higher Lottery sales per head than the
national average but is under represented in
its share of awards by value. The latter may
reflect less bidding so far. As elsewhere,
there are many bids in the pipeline including
one for the £50m White Rose Stadium for
the Yorkshire Cricket Club at Wakefield
requiring £28 million Lottery funding and
another for the planned £30 million Marine
Life Discovery Centre in Hull.
Of the 50 constituencies in the region
only 22 made it into the top half of the
league table of 652 constituencies (Table
3), again illustrating the poor success that
the region has had. Only six of these,
including notably the Don Valley, have
received more than £5 million. Of the
region’s towns and cities, Bradford received
£13.3 million, Leeds £11.3 million,
Huddersfield £8.7 million, Sheffield £7.8
million, Barnsley £6 million and Hull £3
million.
The major awards to the end of 1996 are
listed in Table 4, where it can be seen that
the £50 million award to the Earth Centre at
Conisbrough accounts for the position of
the Don Valley constituency in the league
table. The National Music Centre in
Sheffield has won £11 million in total and
Bradford’s National Museum of
Photography, £7.5 million. As at the national
level, a relatively small number of projects
account for a high proportion of the total
awards by value in Yorkshire and
Humberside.
The economic impact of the projects will
vary but is likely to be greatest for large new
projects where there is a tourism dimension.
If the Earth Centre can raise the matching
funds and complete the project it is estimated
that it will create 350 jobs. The Sheffield
National Music Centre will also be a tourist
attraction and could create 85 jobs attracting
400,000 visitors a year. The Thackray
Medical Museum in Leeds is likely to have
a smaller impact attracting only 200,000
visitors a year.
Conclusion
It may be too early in the history of the
National Lottery to make any conclusions
about its regional impacts. As of late 1996,
it would appear that Yorkshire has been a
net loser with higher sales but fewer awards
than could be expected. Does this represent
a lack of imagination, a lack of enterprise,
a lack of ability to make successful
application, or merely a slowness to get the
process going? At this time after less than
two years of awards it is probably too early
to make a judgement.
Of the cities in the region, Bradford,
Table 3: Awards by constituency to 30
September 1996
UK rank
4
29
34
41
46
50
121
123
140
146
147
199
245
253
257
259
269
271
278
294
296
322
Constituency Award (£m)
Don Valley
50.8
Bradford West
10.2
Huddersfield
8.2
Leeds Central
6.1
Barnsley Central
5.5
Sheffield Central
5.2
Boothferry
2.6
Leeds North East
2.6
Kingston upon Hull (W) 2.3
Richmond (Yorks)
2.2
Doncaster Central
2.0
Leeds North West
1.5
Ryedale
1.2
Harrogate
1.2
Batley and Spen
1.1
Calder Valley
1.1
Bradford North
1.1
York
1.1
Bridlington
1.0
Selby
1.0
Dewsbury
1.0
Wakefield
0.9
18
Table 4: Major Lottery awards in Yorkshire
and Humberside, 1995-96
Arts
Award (£m)
National Music Centre, Sheffield 9.5
Bradford and Ilkley
Community Centre
2.8
National Music Centre
(Planning) Sheffield
1.1
Northern School of
Contemporary Dance, Leeds
1.7
National Museum of
Photography, Bradford
1.6
Scarborough Theatre
Development Trust
1.5
Darts – Doncaster
Community Centre, Doncaster
1.1
Public Arts, Wakefield
1.0
Sheffield Recreation Band
1.0
Kirklees Theatre Trust,
Huddersfield
1.0
Heritage
National Museum of
Photography, Bradford
Thackray Medical
Museum, Leeds
York Minster Library
Millenium
Earth Centre, Conisbrough
Huddersfield Narrow
Canal (Linear project)
Yorkshire Dales
Environment (Various sites)
Rothwell Colliery
6.0
3.0
1.0
50.0
15.0
4.0
1.4
Sports
National Ice Centre, Sheffield
12.5
Kirklees Stadium Developments,
Huddersfield
5.2
Dearne Valley Sports Centre
4.5
Leeds, Sheffield and Huddersfield have so
far made a significant effort to gain awards
for capital projects. As the Lottery evolves,
the way in which the funds are distributed
may change, both from public demand,
which wants more given to charities, and
from politicians who may have different
preferences. This will affect both the
opportunities which places have to gain
funds and the redistributional consequences.
Christopher Law, University of Salford
Reference
HM Treasury (1996) Economic Briefing
No 9, London.
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
Inward
investment in
Yorkshire
and
Humberside
This paper reviews recent trends in inward
investment into the region with particular
emphasis upon the increasing role of SMEs.
Trends in inward investment
Over the past 10-15 years, global patterns
of foreign direct investment (FDI) have
changed significantly with the emergence
of new investors in the international market
place: Japan in the 1980s and S. Korea and
Taiwan in the 1990s. The growth of
competition between countries trying to
attract investment has intensified and
become more widespread with eastern
European countries competing against
western European, and the developing
economies against the developed.
There has been a sectoral diversification
of foreign investment away from resourcebased manufacturing towards the service
sector and technology-intensive
manufacturing, and a shift in emphasis away
from greenfield investment towards mergers
and acquisitions, joint ventures and
expansions or reinvestments.
Against this background, inward
investment into Yorkshire and Humberside
has increased, following broadly the same
global patterns, with new countries investing
in the region, an increase in the number of
mergers, acquisitions and reinvestments and
an increasing number of service sector
investments.
Historically most foreign investment in
Yorkshire and Humberside has been from
the US, Germany and Scandinavia (Figure
1). The region saw its first Japanese
investment with Citizen UK in Scunthorpe
in 1987; there are now some 30 Japanese
owned companies. More recently Korean
companies began investing in the region
with Samsung Heavy Industries in 1994,
and a further three Korean companies
investing in the Dearne Valley in 1995.
Over this period investment has come from
amongst others Australia, Hong Kong,
Ireland, India and Turkey. The region
attracted the UK’s first Turkish
manufacturing investment, Exsa, in 1991.
The origins of FDI in the 1990s are illustrated
in Figure 2.
Foreign owned companies have become
an increasingly important part of the
region’s economic base, with over 102,000
people now employed by more than 740
foreign owned companies based in
Yorkshire and Humberside. This has
increased steadily over the past decade. In
1985, over 35,000 people were employed
in foreign owned manufacturing
companies, a decade later the figure had
risen to over 53,000. Together they
contribute £1.7 million to the region’s net
manufacturing output and have a net capital
expenditure of £3.3 million, 8.6 per cent
of the UK’s total net capital expenditure
by foreign-owned companies in the
manufacturing sector.
Most foreign owned companies in the
region are found in the engineering sector,
followed by the plastics and food sectors.
The region has a high concentration of
companies involved in automotive
components manufacture (everything from
car radiators to electronic switches,
suspension springs and plastic gears).
More recently, investments have
diversified, with foreign owned firms using
the region to manufacture electronic
components, textiles and pharmaceuticals.
Since 1990, 72 per cent of all foreign
investment has been in the manufacturing
sector compared to 25 per cent in the
Figure 1: Foreign ownership in Yorkshire
and Humberside
Asia Pacific
(5%) Netherlands
(6%)
North
America
(38%)
Switzerland
(6%)
France
(8%)
Scandinavia
(11%)
Other
(11%)
Germany
(15%)
Source: Yorkshire and Humberside
Development Agency (YHDA)
19
Figure 2: Sources of foreign investment,
1990-96
Australia Korea
(2%) (4%) Sweden
(4%)
Switzerland
(6%)
North
America
(33%)
Japan
(7%)
Germany
(14%)
Other
(30%)
Source: YHDA
service sector and 3 per cent in R&D.
Service sector investments have increased
over the past five years, with investments,
for example, from German and French
mail order businesses, foreign banks, call
centres, cable and computer software
companies.
Since 1990 Yorkshire and Humberside
has attracted over 11,600 jobs through
foreign investment (Table 1). Most of this
investment has come from the US, followed
by Germany.
As with the UK as a whole, reinvestment
by existing companies has been the most
important source of investment over the
past five years, accounting for 48 per cent
of all foreign investment in the region.
Table 1: New jobs from FDI, 1990-96
1990-91 1,260
1991-92 1,656
1992-93 1,286
Source: YHDA
1993-94
1994-95
1995-96
2,329
3,153
2,004
SMEs as inward investors
Over the past five years or so, there has
been a noticeable change in the size of
potential inward investors. This change is a
reflection of the stage of internationalisation
of the various economies around the world.
As globalisation of the world economy
has progressed, more and more companies
have looked outside their home economies.
FDI as a strategy for servicing foreign
markets as opposed to exporting, or
manufacturing under licence, has become a
major part of small and medium enterprises
(SMEs), as well as multinational, corporate
strategies.
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
The bulk of FDI in the region, particularly
US and German investment, has been in the
form of SMEs. The majority of investments,
68 per cent, has been in companies
employing 50 or less, with a quarter of all
new investments in companies employing
between 50 and 250 (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Employment size bands of new
FDI in Yorkshire and Humberside 1990-96
70
67
%
60
50
40
30
20
16
9
10
4
4
0
500+
251–500 101–250
51–100
0–50
Source: YHDA
Historically the region has always
attracted SMEs from northern Europe
because of the traditional trading links with
the area. During the late 1980s, the average
size of US investors began to decline with
SME investment being driven by expanding
markets in Europe and the desire of SMEs
to improve their competitive position by
being closer to their customers. A good
example of this in the region is Paramount
Packaging, a US based company with less
than 500 employees, which invested in the
region in 1992 in order to supply the large
Kimberly Clark plant in Glanford.
Although Yorkshire and Humberside has
to some extent missed out on the second
and third tier Japanese SME investors
coming to the UK to supply the existing
major investors, particularly in the car and
electronics industries, at least by comparison
to regions like the North East and Wales,
the region is well placed to capitalise on this
pattern of investment in the new FDI growth
markets, in particular Korea.
Motivated by the desire to supply
Samsung Electronics in the North East and
to gain access to the wider European market,
three Korean SMEs, Sung Kwang, Fine
Electronechanics and Poong Juen,
established themselves in the Dearne Valley
in 1995. These investments are notable for
two reasons. Firstly, they represented a
significant influx of Korean capital into the
region, and secondly, they are evidence of
a new trend of smaller Korean investors
following in the footsteps of the major
Chaebol, mirroring the pattern of Japanese
investment in the 1980s and 1990s.
Foreign owned SMEs as part of the
industrial base
Inward investment has had a significant
impact on the region’s SME base. Most of
the existing investors, whether they invested
recently or are long established companies,
are SMEs. Over 90 per cent employ less
than 500 people, with more than 80 per cent
employing less than 250 people (Figure 4).
The impact of FDI on regional and local
economies is well documented (Leigh,
1995) with economic benefits being gained
in the labour market, via direct employment
and indirect employment in suppliers and
service providers and advances in the skills
base; other benefits in the technological
base through technology transfer and
innovation and the economic effect on
performance in the corporate base through
supplier chains and networks, as well as the
wider effects on the UK’s balance of
payments, trade and exports.
Many of these benefits have added to the
competitiveness of Yorkshire and
Humberside’s SME base. Companies such
as Swiss owned Mikron, based in
Huddersfield, and German owned LUK
based in Sheffield, have made significant
advances in their quality systems. Mikron
has invested heavily in total quality
management (TQM) and in Investors in
People.
Figure 4: Employment size bands in foreign
owned companies in Yorkshire and
Humberside
58
60
%
50
40
Conclusion
The trend in SME investment from the
UK’s major FDI markets looks set to
continue. This is good news for the region
and the UK as a whole. Smaller sized
companies often have a large capacity for
growth and expansion. Over the past five
years, over 100 foreign owned companies
have re-invested in the region either through
expanding their existing premises,
introducing new product lines or
manufacturing processes. Together these
SMEs have created more than 6,000 new
direct jobs throughout Yorkshire and
Humberside.
Jayne Crosse, Yorkshire and Humberside
Development Agency
30
20
16
13
10
LUK, who export 70 per cent of their
output to markets in Europe, Australia and
Japan, were recently presented with an
award for supplier performance from one
of their major customers, Nissan. US owned
Case UK in Doncaster won a Manufacturing
Excellence award in October last year in
recognition of the company’s performance
in turning the plant’s fortunes around.
Norwegian owned Henry Clark was
awarded the Queens Award for Export
Achievement.
Often inward investors have explicit
strategies for supplier development, most
of them aimed at improving quality and
reducing costs. Key impacts on suppliers
are in production processes, quality
assurance systems, delivery methods and
product development activities. These are
all positive benefits for the region’s
indigenous companies. Following Samsung
Heavy Industries’ investment in North
Yorkshire, a number of regional and
nationally based companies have benefited
and will be benefiting from new business,
including: BT, SW Whiteleys, Coopers &
Lybrand, The Hyder Group, Ford & Warren,
Les Brown Executive Recruitment, Midland
Bank, Nidd Vale Motors, Northern Electric,
Trafalgar House Construction, Turner &
Townsend, and Yorkshire Water.
8
5
0
500+
251–500 101–250
Source: YHDA
20
51–100
0–50
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
Regulating industrial wastes
in the Humber region
A research programme on pollution and waste regulation is in progress in the Humber
region, focusing on the impacts on small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The
research indicates that many companies are unaware of relevant environmental regulations
and are unaware of the quantity and composition of their waste streams.
Recent and forthcoming environmental
legislation, coupled with rising waste
disposal costs, are putting increasing
pressure upon industry to minimise all waste
streams and to reduce their environmental
impacts. If companies appreciate the
implications of the legislation and take stock
of all wastes, they may be able to realise
opportunities to minimise wastes. This
potentially offers benefits to both business
and the environment through improved
efficiency and reduced environmental
impacts.
A research programme is in progress in
the Humber region to investigate how local
companies are affected by pollution and
waste regulation and to gauge their
opinions and approach to the regulations
and associated environmental management
issues. This paper reports key findings
from a written questionnaire survey which
was carried out during the first half of
1996.
Questionnaire survey
The questionnaire was sent to 743
manufacturing and processing companies
located in Objective 2 areas of the Humber
region. This covers most of the area within
the following local authority boundaries:
North Lincolnshire, North East
Lincolnshire, Kingston upon Hull City, and
the East Riding of Yorkshire, (but excluding
Holderness).
Of the companies which were sent a
questionnaire, 516 were SMEs (companies
with 250 employees or less), and 227 were
large companies. The overall response rate
was 37 per cent; 32 per cent from SMEs and
47 per cent from large companies.
Awareness of wastes regulations
Responses indicated that many companies
were unaware of the implications of
relevant regulations. For example, the law
on the Duty of Care for wastes, as set out
in the Environmental Protection Act (1990)
and the Duty of Care Regulations (1991),
applies to practically all businesses.
However, 63 per cent of SME respondents
(and 35 per cent of large companies)
indicated that they did not fill in
descriptions of wastes on the waste transfer
notes required by these regulations, and
only 6 per cent of SMEs (and 35 per cent
of large companies) fully appreciated their
legal responsibilities with respect to their
wastes.
Initial results from telephone surveys and
visits to SMEs suggest that SMEs are
generally not well informed about the
implications of relevant regulations, as
illustrated by the following examples:
❐ Landfill tax: Many SMEs were unaware
of the implications of the landfill tax
until they were notified of increased
disposal charges by their wastes
management contractors, and they had
taken no action to prepare for the
introduction of this tax.
❐ Urban Waste Water Treatment
Directive: By the end of the year 2000,
effluent will have to be given primary
and secondary treatment prior to
discharge to the Humber. This will result
in increased trade effluent bills for
companies in Hull and Grimsby as they
will have to pay the cost of their effluent
treatment. The fees charged for trade
effluent disposal will depend upon the
quantity and quality of the effluent.
However, many SMEs were unaware of
this and were not yet taking any action
to offset the environmental and financial
costs associated with the discharge of
trade effluent.
❐ Producer responsibility regulations for
packaging wastes: Whilst many of the
SMEs were unlikely to be directly
21
subject to these regulations, it is likely
that some companies may be affected
indirectly through the supply chain.
Apart from some companies in the
packaging sector, SMEs were largely
unaware of the forthcoming regulations.
Awareness of wastes
Companies were asked to indicate the
disposal routes for all the wastes produced
by the company. Results indicated that 47
per cent of SME respondents (and 22 per
cent of large companies) did not monitor
the quantities of any of their wastes streams,
(i.e. did not measure how much waste is
disposed of to land, discharged to air or
water, nor how much is recycled or re-used)
and 57 per cent of SME respondents (and
31 per cent of large companies) did not
monitor the composition of any of their
wastes streams.
Companies were asked to indicate average
amounts of solid wastes removed from their
premises by placing their average within a
given range of values, rather than by giving
precise figures. Nevertheless, 22 per cent of
SME respondents (and 10 per cent of large
companies) were unable to indicate the
quantity of solid wastes disposed of. Many
respondents were also unaware of the fate
of their wastes: 61 per cent of SME
respondents (and 36 per cent large
companies) indicated that their wastes were
taken by a waste management contractor
but that they did not know what happened
to them. This is also a further indication of
their lack of awareness of the Duty of Care
Regulations.
These responses suggest that many
companies do not know what happens to
their wastes and they do not know what
they are throwing away. It follows that if
companies do not know what wastes they
are disposing of, they are also unaware of
the true economic costs and environmental
impacts of such wastes. The costs incurred
may include, not only the costs of disposal,
but also the costs of wasted raw materials,
energy and labour.
Waste Minimisation
More than half of the replies, from both
SMEs and large companies, indicated that
some of their wastes were recycled or reused. Although there is room for
improvement, many companies were
unconvinced of the opportunities to reduce
costs and environmental impacts through
the pursuit of waste minimisation and
THE REGIONAL REVIEW
recovery options where possible, in
preference to disposal to land or discharge
to air or water. SMEs lag behind the large
companies in taking up waste minimisation
opportunities, 25 per cent of SME
respondents (and 54 per cent of large
companies) indicated that they had explored
and/or realised waste minimisation
opportunities.
Environmental improvements
It is perhaps more encouraging to note that
70 per cent of SME respondents (and 90 per
cent of large companies) indicated that they
had already taken some positive action to
reduce their environmental effects.
When considering how to encourage
companies to make further environmental
improvements, it is useful to address the
factors which motivate companies to take
positive action. Companies were asked what
the most important stimuli were for
encouraging them to make environmental
improvements. The most commonly cited
stimulus was compliance with
environmental regulation (59 per cent
SMEs, 82 per cent large companies).
Other commonly cited motivating factors
included good neighbourliness or public
concern (47 per cent of SMEs, 60 per cent
of large companies), personal concern for
the environment (46 per cent of SMEs, 49
per cent of large companies), and potential
to increase profits by reducing costs (41 per
cent of SMEs, 67 per cent of large
companies).
It is interesting to compare these
responses to those given for questions
relating to the perceived financial
implications of actively managing
environmental issues. Although 41 per
cent of SME respondents (and 67 per cent
of large companies) indicated that the
potential to increase profits by reducing
costs acted as a stimulus to make
environmental improvements, only 14 per
cent of SMEs (and 32 per cent of large
companies) felt that active management of
environmental issues would actually result
in increased future profitability. This could
imply that companies would improve if
there was a potential to increase profits but
few believe that such profit increases are
likely. Financial benefits are amongst the
major justifications given by those who
seek to encourage companies to improve
their environmental management, but these
results suggest that the majority of SMEs
are unconvinced of such financial benefits.
Conclusions
There have been many changes and
additions to environmental laws in recent
years, and further changes are imminent. If
companies are to thrive and plan adequately
for the future, it is vital that they are well
informed about the implications of relevant
legislation. If companies make
improvements to their environmental
management they will be more likely to
ensure compliance with legislation, reduce
their environmental impacts, and may also
increase business efficiency through waste
minimisation.
However, these questionnaire results
indicate that many companies in the Humber
region (especially SMEs) were unaware of
relevant environmental regulations and their
implications, unaware of the quantity and
composition of their waste streams, unaware
of their own environmental effects, and that
they spent very little time dealing with
environmental issues. Some similar
conclusions have been drawn from research
carried out on behalf of Groundwork (1995).
Their results suggested that many SMEs
from a wide range of sectors throughout
England and Wales lacked awareness of
legislation, and were unconvinced of the
potential cost savings and market
opportunities to be gained through improved
environmental performance.
In considering factors which could
motivate companies in the Humber region
to make environmental improvements,
responses indicated that compliance with
legislation was the most commonly given
reason for making improvements. Research
carried out by the British Chambers of
Commerce (1994), Hill (1995) and the
Environmental Technology Best Practice
Programme (1996) also found that
environmental legislation was the most
common factor influencing companies from
a wide range of sectors and locations to
make environmental improvements. Efforts
to promote awareness of the implications of
existing and forthcoming regulations might
therefore be effective in encouraging more
companies to make improvements to their
environmental management.
Promotion of the benefits to business,
such as cost savings through waste
minimisation, might also encourage
companies to consider making
improvements. Companies may be
unwilling to invest their time and money in
the management of environmental issues,
unless they are convinced of the benefits to
business which improved environmental
performance may bring.
Sarah Nicholson, University of Hull
References
Groundwork (1995) Small Firms and the
Environment, Birmingham, pp 12.
British Chambers of Commerce Small Firms
Survey (1994) Environment: The View of
the Small Firm, British Chambers of
Commerce, London, pp 48.
Hill, K. E. (1995) Environmental pressures
and the response of manufacturers in
Yorkshire and Humberside, The Regional
Review, 5, 1, 6–7.
Environmental Technology Best Practice
Programme (1996) Attitudes and Barriers
to Improved Environmental Performance:
Cross-sectoral Analysis, Environmental
Technology Best Practice Programme
Publications, ETSU, Oxfordshire, pp 29.
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