Scottish Government

Background

This briefing paper captures messages relating to the two main priorities agreed for the Town Centres and Local High Streets Learning Network:

• town centre and whole town strategies
• performance management of town centres

It draws from SCR publications which describe in more detail the main issues and lessons learned from the learning network programme during 2009-2011.

It is intended primarily to provide feedback to policy colleagues in government. It highlights major issues facing practitioners and shares the main lessons and learning which can help inform policy decision making and continue to improve practice.

Learning network priorities

From the initial stakeholder discussions and the network launch event in February 2009, those interested in joining or working with the learning network identified two key priorities:

1. A need for strategies for towns and town centres that take a holistic approach to regenerating and managing town centres. This was seen as vital given that retail was no longer seen as the only function of a town centre and that wider strategies and approaches, involving new stakeholders, were needed. Of particular importance, was the need to learn about new approaches including Renaissance Towns and Whole Town Strategies, encouraging towns to make the most of their cultural, historic and tourist assets, and bring new stakeholders into local partnerships, including social enterprises and small family businesses.
2. A need to reach a consensus on and develop a related suite of indicators that can be applied in a consistent fashion to measure performance and progress of towns and town centres. There was broad agreement that whilst diverse approaches to regenerating towns were to be welcomed, the lack of consistency in defining and applying a core set of indicators was hampering the sharing of what interventions worked, hindering the pursuit of new approaches and making it difficult to build up collective knowledge across Scotland on a new role for towns.

1. About town centre/whole town strategies

What are the issues?

• Town centre regeneration cannot be solely based upon retail. Retail services are core to towns but they are not the whole story. Regeneration of town centres/towns needs to focus on distinctiveness, strengthen the identity of place and improve the retail and visitor offer. The challenge is to work with all relevant stakeholders, including local communities, to develop strategies that pay closer attention to the complex dynamics of an area and build on its distinctiveness, whether this is physical, social, economic or environmental.
• Spatial definition is an issue. The definition of a 'small town' varies across the country both in terms of population size and legal status. Of growing importance is the need to see town centres in the context of a 'whole town' and the surrounding communities they serve. But there is a perceived policy gap in relation to small towns: larger urban centres are covered, as are rural areas.
• There is no consistency across Scotland in the type or focus of strategies. Town strategies are already being used across Scotland. More than 80% of local authorities have strategies in place for town centres but covering only 59 towns. And there is wide variation in the focus/scope of such strategies and no clear definition or consensus about 'whole town' approaches.
• Town centres must look to more mixed use in their high streets to compete. New consumer spending patterns such as 'out of town' shopping and internet shopping are growing challenges to town centres. There needs to be a shift away from purely a physical regeneration focus to more systematic consideration of the wider and more diverse role of town centres to include other services and cultural and civic functions.
• Government could also help the delivery of more effective strategies by pursuing a number of related policy/legislative measures including:
• Review the current position concerning placing legal burdens on land/buildings through housing and building acts in order to enable local authorities to more efficiently address defective buildings.
• Enable local authorities to levy out-of-town car parking charges to level the playing field between towns and their competition and to enable funding to be recycled to improve the quality of town centres.
• Lobby the UK Government to simplify VAT regime and encourage building refurbishment on a regular basis.
• The Town Centre Regeneration Fund ( TCRF) was a welcome stimulus in 2009-10 to supporting towns but suffered from perceived inherent weaknesses including: short timescales both for bidding and delivery, capital only eligibility criteria and an inefficient challenge fund system. In spite of these issues, there should continue to be a dedicated fund or a stronger drive from government to encourage funds to be channeled towards supporting town centres.

What can be done?

• Successful town strategies should identify appropriate economic sustainable interventions. There should be a range of plans that meet the needs of local people over the long-term. This means looking beyond the physical fabric and infrastructure, so as to consider wider needs such as housing, transport, education, health provision, leisure and business development, as well as looking at how a town is marketed, branded and how events are delivered.
• Successful town centre regeneration involves effective partnerships and in most cases a clear vision, strategy and action plan but these components are often loosely defined and their effectiveness difficult to prove.
• Practitioners do not necessarily want to see formal guidance on developing strategies for towns from the Scottish Government. They would prefer more systematic practical support to be provided to help practitioners share experience and more regular dialogue between policy makers and practitioners.

2. About improving our knowledge of how well towns are performing

What are the issues?

• There is no consistent pattern or coherence in how local authorities approach data management issues for towns. The variety of people who collect data and the different spatial levels they collect it for, often leads to inconsistencies between towns, making benchmarking problematic if not impossible. For local authorities, there are technical challenges in gathering data, as well as resource and other costs involved. And it is not always clear if data is being used to inform and/or monitor and evaluate town strategies, or if data collection should be about more about 'management of place' than town centre management.
• Occupiers and potential inward investors want and need evidence of a town's performance but this is largely unfulfilled. Businesses in particular need clear economic data - both quantitative and qualitative - about an area in order to help them decide whether to invest.

The Scottish Small Towns Task Group in particular has advocated for:

• National research into the position and condition of Scotland's Towns. This should examine and explain their needs, problems, economic, social trends and potential, and the role that towns play particularly in supporting rural communities. Such research should include an analysis of health and wellbeing in Scotland's towns, identify areas of health inequality, and the reasons for these situations.
• There is the need for an ongoing independent research resource. This could provide evidence-based information on Scotland's towns, improve the collection of relevant time-series and vitality data, share best practice on performance standards and outcomes in relation to towns and identify and support opportunities for co-operation and joint working between towns.
• There is a need for a towns 'quality of life' set of indicators for use within the Statistical Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). This could form part of the small area (750 homes) assessment. This could help to develop baseline assessments against which progress over time might be assessed as part of Single Outcome Agreements and further the use of town health checks and town strategies/action plans. This would however require consensus amongst local authorities as to what type/scope of indicators would be useful and support from central Government.

What can be done?

• Better intelligence about trends in performance is crucial. At present attribution is particularly difficult because of the complexity in measuring impacts but all the more so when there is no consensus about what indicators are important, the most appropriate spatial level at which they should be applied and the frequency with which they should be collected.
• Regenerating and ensuring the continued vitality and viability of a town centre is not just about town centre management. It is about the overall management of a place, which requires good partnership working, with input from many stakeholders.
• There needs to be greater consensus about, and consistency in application, of town/town centre performance indicators. This would enable more effective management and assessment of the performance of towns and town centres.
• Promoting private sector investment requires strong negotiation skills and flexible ways of working. This is especially the case for local councils and their public sector partners. There is a need to provide practical support and build the skills and capacity of staff in local authorities to work in this way and much more effectively. Elected members can have significant influence and may also require training and support.

Scottish Centre for Regeneration

This document 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

What have we been doing during 2009-2011?

During the last two years, SCR through the Town Centres and Local High Streets Learning Network, has organised a series of events and activities to help practitioners share good practice and learn from others.

Some of the events have been large scale (as in the launch event) but most have been smaller, focusing on creating greater opportunities for learning network members to actively participate in debate and engage with others from different backgrounds and settings.

Of particular note has been the creation of four action learning sets operating over a six month period which allowed participants to focus on their own individual issues and challenges but work in a small group setting, with expert facilitation, and share lessons and learning as they attempt to put new ideas into practice.

In support of the activities organised we have published a range of documents, as outlined above, and also used our website to act as a knowledge portal by linking to other agencies' publications. And we have encouraged network members and others to keep in touch by subscribing to our e-bulletin and taking part in our on-line forum.

What next?

SCR will be organising an event in March 2011 to review the activities and achievements of the learning network since its launch. The event will provide academics, policy makers, practitioners and those directly involved in delivering town centre regeneration with the opportunity to hear more about and explore the above issues in detail.

It will also involve practitioners from within and outside Scotland speaking about their experience and comparing lessons and learning. And it will debate the way forward for the network and consider whether the current priorities are the right ones for the next two - three years or if the focus or emphasis should change.

Contact us

Learning Network Coordinator: Yvonne Gavan
Tel: 0141 271 3734
www.partnersinregeneration.com