Scottish Government

What are case studies?

Case studies share what people and organisations have learned from delivering or developing a project or programme. They can help you to see what has worked on the ground and give you ideas about how to tackle problems. They can also signpost you to people and organisations you may want to talk to.

Key contact

Andrew Irvine
Belfast City Centre Management Company
Tel: 028 9024 2111
Email: a.irvine@belfastcentre.com

In a nutshell

This case study is based on a visit to Belfast by the Town Centres and Local High Streets learning network in March 2010. It was organised by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration and the Association of Town Centre Management as part of the 'Performance Management in Town Centres' learning programme.

About Belfast city centre

Belfast is the capital city of Northern Ireland and the second largest city in the whole of Ireland. The city centre has a unique role to play within this context as its economic health and vitality is a major determinant of the economic health, not just of the Belfast urban area, but also of the whole of the Northern Ireland region.

The city has experienced a decline in traditional manufacturing industries, offset to some extent by a considerable increase in service sector employment.

It has seen significant population decline since the early 1970's from 416,000 to 267,000 in 2008 - although the rate of decline has slowed in recent years, reflecting an improved quality of life in the city.

During the last ten years, there has been considerable growth in economic activity and a reduction in employment, with Northern Ireland being the UK's fastest growing region during the 1990's, so that today Belfast displays a renewed optimism.

There is a belief in the city that there is now a 'window of opportunity' for Belfast to shine. The political developments of recent years have also provided a favourable climate for further regeneration and development.

Consequently, the management of Belfast City Centre has taken on important significance in the context of economic development for the entire region. An essential part of this is to monitor performance through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Over time, the trends revealed by KPIs will dictate strategic planning and encourage appropriate inward investment.

About the Belfast City Centre Management Company

The management of Belfast city centre is complex. In statutory terms Belfast City Council (BCC) has responsibility for environmental health, street cleansing and waste management, economic development, tourism promotion and some other minor functions. The Department of Social Development (DSD) has responsibility for urban regeneration and maintaining the public realm while the Department of Regional Development (DRD), through the Roads Service has responsibility for traffic and road and pavement maintenance. The Department of Environment (DoE) is the planning authority in terms of planning control, while the strategic planning for the development and the region is the responsibility of DRD. It was in this context that BCCM was established in 2000 as a public/private partnership with core funding provided by BCC, DSD and the Belfast Chamber of Trade and Commerce (BCTC) with the following mission statement:

"BCCM will seek to make Belfast City Centre an area of excellence for retail business, arts and culture, leisure and entertainment and to provide a clean, safe, accessible and attractive environment for all its users and visitors."

The rationale for a healthcheck

In order for BCCM to make the city centre the area of excellence its strives for, it needs as much information as possible on the city centre's performance. This information can be used in order to develop strategy, co-ordinate the partnership effectively, devise marketing activities and foster an environment worthy of investment.

The monitoring of city centre performance is also encouraged through public policy. Planning Policy Statement 5: Retailing and Town Centres and Commercial Leisure Developments emphasises the importance of maintaining a healthy town/city centre. It states that healthchecks should be carried out to identify any early signs of decline in the centre and take appropriate remedial action to address the problem of decline and provide a basis for enhancement of the centre's potential as a location for other suitable town centre uses.

As an important function of the partnership, BCCM appointed DTZ in April 2007 to produce the sixth in a series of city centre Healthchecks and Benchmarking Reports for Belfast. The purpose of the Belfast Healthcheck is therefore to:

• review factors contributing to Belfast city centre vitality and viability
• serve as a baseline study of retail provision in Belfast as of 2007
• show progress of Belfast city cover time
• demonstrate progress against other comparator cities in the UK
• highlight areas of strength and weakness within the city centre and the emerging regeneration and major development schemes in Belfast city centre
• identify areas for action to further improve performance
• take account of BCCM's core objectives, reflect priorities of the 2005-2008 Corporate Plan and assist BCCM with future business planning
• provide salient information to city centre stakeholders, businesses, policy makers, investors and members of BCCM and Belfast Chamber of Trade and Commerce (BCTC) about Belfast

Developing an appropriate methodology

The Belfast Healthcheck draws from a number of different sources to compile a picture of city centre performance. In the process of developing an appropriate methodology, BCCM

• defined the parameters of the study;
• reviewed the strengths and weaknesses of available sources (both secondary and primary); and
• ensured where possible that data sources allow for comparisons with other centres across the UK through benchmarking.

Defining the parameters of the study

For a study of this type, which involves an annual update and analysis, it is vital to establish a definitive city centre boundary that remains constant throughout the monitoring process and to ensure the results are consistent. This consideration is universally applicable wherever a performance monitoring study takes place.

The definition adopted by the Belfast Healthcheck is taken from the document Belfast City Centre - Vision for the Future. Thus, the city centre boundary is defined as:

"..the area bounded by the Westlink, Dock Street and Prince's Dock Street to the north and west, the River Lagan to the east and the Belfast-Lisburn railway line to the south. The core area is that portion of the City Centre that lies within the Inner Ring Road."

While every effort has been made to collate information which is compatible with the boundary, there are inevitably some variations due to the availability or configuration of particular data sets. While it is expected that many other TCM schemes will have similar problems in getting consistency for geographic boundaries, it is important the differences are acknowledged and taken into account when using the data.

Secondary data

Secondary data relates to information being collected by TCM schemes second hand, whether it is available for free or at a cost. This may be desk research or information purchased from data providers. It is more cost effective than collecting primary data because there are no costs associated with undertaking physical research 'in the field'. The downside is, that secondary data will not be tailored to the scope of your study and therefore may not analyse the specific performance indicators you require most, or may not correlate to a consistent geographic boundary. However, secondary data should always be a starting point to any research exercise and should be fully exhausted before plans for the collection of primary data are drawn up. BCCM have demonstrated this, using secondary data extensively to provide an overview of city centre performance with the following as sources:

• Experian GOAD - GOAD provides plans and data about the nature and location of retail and office facilities across the UK and Ireland including details on occupiers, activities, floorspace figures and vacancy rates.
• PMA Promis - Promis is an online database for the property market sector providing data on retail rankings, retailer demand, retail yields and retail rents.
• Focus - This is an online information source of available retail, office and industrial property. It provides information on properties to let, recent transactions and deals, town reports and building reports.
• DTZ's in-house data - This includes Zone A Rental data, retail yields, office floorspace and demand, office rental data and development pipeline.
• Northern Ireland Employment Census - This provides an employment profile for Belfast provided by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in 2005.
• Belfast Metropolitan Area Plan 2004 - The Area Plan provides BCCM with important detail on market size and geography.
• CACI Retail Footprint Ireland 2007 - This is the only retail ranking based on comparison expenditure, ie money spent on items other than food, such as clothing, furniture etc using debit and credit card transactions to validate the model and ensure it represents real shopper trends.
• Venue Data - The level of use for key venues of business, cultural and leisure importance is an indication of the attraction of the town and city centre. BCCM collected statistics provided by the Waterfront Hall, Ulster Hall and Grand Opera House to ascertain what type of pull Belfast has.
• Northern Ireland Tourism Board - The Tourist Board have helped BCCM build a profile on visitors to Belfast City Centre whether for leisure or business purposes.
• Translink - BCCM have been able to introduce statistics on public transport usage into the Healthcheck through Translink, including bus information and annual passenger carryings.
• Police Service for Northern Ireland (PSNI) - The PSNI are able to provide data on the rate of crime in the city centre building picture of the safety for city centre users.

Primary data

Not all the data needed can be collected second hand. In BCCM's case, it is not just the statistics and figures that are important, but also how users feel about the town centre in a less tangible sense. Therefore, precise and up-to-date information on perceptions are also required. This is where collecting first hand, or primary data becomes a useful method. This data is collected either directly by the TCM scheme or by researchers contracted by the TCM scheme.

It may be more expensive and time consuming because of the labour costs involved, but these costs are kept down because primary data is only required where gaps in the secondary data exist. Furthermore, such research exercises can be tailored specifically to the scope of the town centre partnership. BCCM undertook the following exercises first hand:

• Customer Perception Surveys - These were designed to find out consumer perceptions of shopping in and attraction to Belfast City Centre. Qualitative issues (ie how people feel when they are in the city) are important to the overall success of the centre but are often difficult to quantify. The surveys addressed issues such as perception of shopping, shopping trends, car parking, the appearance of the main street, cultural experiences, the evening economy and service provision. They also explored people's perceptions of Belfast as a city centre, a place to live in, and issues that can be difficult to quantify but important to gauge, such as people's pride in their city.
• Business Perception Surveys - Designed to reveal information on business performance and employers opinions on aspects of the city, the business perception surveys have also informed the Healthcheck. The surveys covered issues such as business performance and operation of pedestrianised areas. If repeated on a regular basis, they can provide important measures of the success or decline of a location over time from an employers perspective.
• BCCM Pedestrian Count Survey - Footfall counts are a key indication of the activity in a city centre and can be used as a tool to measure both the vitality and viability of the city centre as they paint a firm picture of those streets and areas most or least visited. Crucially, they allow us to understand the numbers of customers or potential customers for city centre businesses and identify the main areas in which these are concentrated. Compiled over a series of time periods, the counts can reflect the success or otherwise of a city and of its retail and business offering.

As with previous years, in 2007 10 count points throughout the central Belfast core area were monitored at five minute counts throughout five set periods over a number of days. In addition, three extra counts were taken on Saturday evening in anticipation of higher pedestrian numbers normally experienced as a result of Saturday night activity in cities and towns. An analysis of these counts provides a representative idea of pedestrian movements at set times and locations across the city and can be a useful tool in identifying areas of the city that require initiatives to increase their attraction.

Benchmarking

Where possible, BCCM has brought together comparable data from a number of other cities into the Belfast Healthcheck. This allows BCCM to understand Belfast's performance within the context of national trends which all of the UK's major towns and cities may be exposed to. This also allows BCCM to understand Belfast city centre's strengths and weaknesses in relation to other key cities within the UK an important step when considering Belfast's stature as a capital city and tourist destination.

Some of the cities taken into consideration are:

• Glasgow
• Nottingham
• Bristol
• Leeds
• Edinburgh
• Bristol
• Sheffield
• Manchester

BCCM has also taken into consideration other town and cities within the region, such as Bangor and Lisburn, as these help to define the characteristics of the catchment for Belfast. The size and offer of other neighbouring towns and cities has helped BCCM to understand where it can expect its local market to come from.

Application of research

By combining the secondary and primary data, BCCM have been able to provide a wealth of knowledge on Belfast city centre. This knowledge is not just a snapshot of the current picture. As this is the sixth Healthcheck it provides an assessment of how the city centre is evolving, revealing important trends which help to manage the town appropriately. This knowledge can then be used to develop and refine BCCM's strategy.

For the purposes of this case study, it is not so much the results of this research that are important. It is how the information has been applied to the activities of BCCM that are considered here.

Retail planning

There has been a decline of retail floorspace in Belfast city centre compared with previous years. This is offset by an apparent increase in the number of service units when compared with figures from 2005 and 2006. The figures suggest the city centre, particularly in peripheral areas, may be going through a period of transition from retail to service uses. Acknowledging the development of a café culture within the city centre helps BCCM and the relevant authorities plan for supplementary retail space which will ensure Belfast retains a focus on shopping as complementary services.

This provides a context for the Victoria Square retail development - a scheme which now covers an extensive site between Chichester Street and Victoria Street with linkages through to Ann Street and the Cornmarket. The property provides a new multilevel pedestrianised streetscape with 800,000 sq ft of retail and leisure space and approximately 1,000 basement car park spaces.

It also provides a focus for the £300 million Royal Exchange development in the North East Quarter of Belfast city centre. The retail-led mixed-use scheme has a total floor area of 792,271 sq ft, which includes 417,611 sq ft of retail. Royal Exchange would include land bounded by North Street and Donegall Street, with a frontage opposite the entrance to Castle Court, and would accommodate a 100,000 sq ft anchor store.

Understanding pedestrian movements and footfall

An analysis of the BCCM pedestrian counts has provide a representative idea of pedestrian movements at set times and locations across the city and can be a useful tool in identifying areas of Belfast that require initiatives to increase their attraction.

It was revealed that during weekdays, Royal Avenue South, Donegall Place, and Chichester Street all recorded considerably higher pedestrian levels than during the Saturday count. This is assumed to be because of the high presence of offices in these areas. Each of the other streets monitored - Royal Avenue North, Castle Street, Wellington Place, Great Victoria Street, Dublin Road, May Street and High Street - recorded higher or similar footfall levels on Saturday when compared with weekday counts. These latter streets are likely to contain a greater retail element hence their increased activity on Saturdays.

Through the use of pedestrian counts, BCCM has been able to establish just how successful initiatives like late night shopping are, and what forms of businesses are key footfall generators during specific days and times. Such data is invaluable when planning the type of services which should be offered to town centre users.

Encouraging city centre living

There is a perception that for a capital city, Belfast has not been able to attract the level of young, professional city centre residents that a city of its stature should. This is being rectified with residential developments in the Titanic Quarter, Cathedral Quarter and Victoria Square. Through the Healthcheck, it has been important for BCCM to discover what other aspects of Belfast need to be improved to encourage city centre living.

Through the perception survey BCCM has found that high quality green spaces has emerged as the key requirement for the most respondents ahead of public transport and accessibility and high quality apartments. This information can be fed into future strategy and planning for BCCM who can alter their focus accordingly to improve the city centre in line with the needs of users and potential users.

Lessons learned from Belfast

What can be taken from this BCCM case study is that identifying credible sources of information and gathering the data is only part of the process. It is important to ensure that these isolated strands of data do not remain isolated, and are merged together to provide a full and comprehensive overview of a town's or city's performance. This takes an acknowledgment of the strengths and weaknesses of data strands.

It is just as important to ensure consistency across the data strands where possible. This has also been demonstrated by BCCM, expressing caution over the city centre boundaries which have been used by the providers of commercial data and being explicit in what these boundaries should be.

Blending data

In trying to determine the demand for investing and shopping in Belfast, BCCM made the decision not to rely solely on secondary data provided by commercial providers despite how extensive it may have appeared. This commercial data was complemented by perception surveys of business and consumers which add a critical dimension to understanding the performance of Belfast city centre.

As the primary method of data collection on perceptions was through a survey, there was still a potential for knowledge gaps to emerge. Through a survey it is always more difficult to guarantee the participation of visitors to the town centre in comparison to regular users who provide a greater opportunity engagement. Yet, if Belfast is to fulfil its ambition of being a key destination for business and leisure for people across the UK, then the perceptions of visitors are no less important. To fill any potential knowledge gap that may arise, BCCM used data provided by the Northern Ireland Tourism Board who were better positioned to collect such information. This blending of information is well thought through and provides as complete a picture as possible on the volume of investment and shopping in Belfast and the capacity for this to increase in the future depending on the needs of users.

Blending data was also demonstrated when building a picture of safety and security in Belfast. BCCM worked with the PSNI to gather statistics on the actual crime rate in the city centre. However, the actual occurrence of crime is not the only aspect a TCM scheme should be concerned with, but also the perception of crime. Again, BCCM used the perception survey to fill the gap and provide a more complete picture.

Ensuring consistency

BCCM realised at an early stage that data providers did not always conform to the same city centre boundaries. The first step, as already noted, was to be explicit over what it thought the city centre boundaries should be. More importantly, this offered BCCM a platform for comparing different sets of data from commercial providers, using good judgement to determine where inconsistencies with geography may skew findings. The most notable demonstration of this was BCCM's insight into why GOAD and Promis provided a different calculation on Belfast's retail floorpsace. By checking the scope of the data it was discovered that GOAD utilises a tighter city centre boundary than Promis which led to the discrepancy. Only by getting insight into these differences can BCCM be confident about the retail planning decisions which will shape the future of Belfast city centre.

Further information

The Town Centres and Local High Streets learning network supports organisations and individuals to improve the way that Scottish towns are made more vital, vibrant and fit for purpose to meet the needs of the local communities they serve. It is led by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration and links up with the learning promoted by other parts of the Scottish Government.

The learning network provides support and helps people to exchange information and ideas. Activities include events to share good practice information; identifying and publishing case studies; and developing other opportunities for sharing good practice through study visits and long term working groups.

The learning network has two key priorities over the next year:

• performance management in towns - helping practitioners to understand how to effectively monitor and evaluate the vitality and viability of towns.
• developing strategies for towns - supporting practitioners to develop and implement town centre and whole town strategies that look beyond the all important retail core of a town and take a holistic approach to regeneration.

You can join the learning network by visiting by contacting Yvonne Gavan (Network Coordinator) on 0141 271 3734.

Scottish Centre for Regeneration

This case study is published by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration, which is part of the Scottish Government. We support our public, private and voluntary sector delivery partners to become more effective at:

• regenerating communities and tackling poverty
• developing more successful town centres and local high streets
• creating and managing mixed and sustainable communities
• making housing more energy efficient
• managing housing more efficiently and effectively

We do this through:

• coordinating learning networks which bring people together to identify the challenges they face and to support them to tackle these through events, networking and capacity building programmes
• identifying and sharing innovation and practice through publishing documents detailing examples of projects and programmes and highlighting lessons learned
• developing partnerships with key players in the housing and regeneration sector to ensure that our activities meet their needs and support their work

Scottish Centre for Regeneration
Scottish Government
Highlander House
58 Waterloo Street
Glasgow
G2 7DA
Tel: 0141 271 3736
Email: contactscr@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.partnersinregeneration.com

The views expressed in this case study is not necessarily shared by the Scottish Government.