Coastal Towns (Government Policy)

John Pugh Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) on starting this important debate. One of the more useful things that I did in the previous Parliament was persuade the unwilling Chairman of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government to do a report on coastal towns. I guess we could describe it as a relatively seminal report in so far as it provoked a number of other measures. We discovered, as hon. Members have already exhibited, that not all seaside towns are the same, but there is a family of problems that most of them appear to have.

One of the problems is transport. Most of the towns evolved in the age of the train; often, they have now lost the train and badly need a road now. There is a lack of quality employment, or a lack of the right mix of employment, and in many seaside towns wage levels are surprisingly low. There are the housing problems to which hon. Members have alluded, particularly in connection with HMOs. The hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) might be aware that housing legislation on HMOs has been tightened up quite recently, but councils often lack the resources to administer and police such measures. There are issues that I think will affect the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) with regard to licensing, nightlife and precisely what that does to a resort’s family environment.

In many resorts, there is clearly a severe demographic imbalance. I remember that one of the more disturbing aspects of our Select Committee inquiry was the discussions that we had with youngsters, some of whom I think lived in Kent. They were talking about leaving their resort and took that as axiomatic—when they got employment in the future, they would not work locally.

Of course, there is also the problem of coastal erosion, although coastal erosion is a mixed bag. The hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), who spoke recently about the loss of his coast, might be aware that almost on the same night that the material was lost from his coast, it appeared on mine. If any hon. Members are short of a bit of beach, please come to Southport and we might be able to help you out.

We found that lacking in many seaside resorts—this was a general conclusion—was a clear vision of where they were going and the political will to deliver on that. People ought not to underestimate the difficulties of managing change in seaside resorts with a largely elderly population. However, in the inquiry we did find many instances of genuine success and successful regeneration. I remember visiting Whitstable, where the regeneration seemed to be almost entirely based on fish, but as it is extraordinarily tasty and the restaurants are good, that seemed to be a very successful model. As I am sure many hon. Members know, Southport has become a classic resort. Other resorts were not quite certain of the direction in which they were going—an example of that was Margate: one lobby in the town wanted the old seaside environment to be recovered and restored, whereas another looked towards cultural developments associated with the artist Turner and more highbrow appeal.

Complementary to the report, and something that made an important difference to people’s thinking, was the BBC programme “Coast”. It started as an Open university, rather anoraky sort of thing, but it ended up being phenomenally successful and opened the eyes of many people to what the English coast offers.

Despite what we have heard today, the upshot all that activity was relatively positive. The Government, having first ignored the Select Committee report, came back a second time when asked to do so by a persistent Chairman and put some money on the table. I am referring to the Sea Change money, which I think amounted to a pot of £60 million. There was much activity in and around this place; there were many conferences; the relevant all-party groups sprang to life and there was much talk about the regeneration of the seaside. Then, come the election, there was even more activity. A lot of political attention is always paid to coastal towns, because for some peculiar reason, they end up being political battlegrounds. In fact, quite a few coastal towns—happily not my own—changed hands at the last election; I am thinking of Eastbourne, Hastings and others. Post-election, however, surely we have everything to gain by acting collectively over the next five years, because—strangely enough, in these dark and recession-ridden times—there is a great deal of hope around.

We are experiencing a genuine increase in inbound tourism in this country. It is a no-brainer for the Treasury that if it encourages inbound tourism, that is a win—a plausible win—in terms of the balance of payments and taxation. That is not a vain hope, because the Sheffield Hallam study, which the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness referred to, showed that in many places there is considerable scope for regeneration and genuine economic progress.

There are genuine concerns as well, though. One of the big problems for coastal towns, emphasised in the Conservative paper, “No longer the end of the line”, is transport. That is a big issue for many places—Southport, Hastings and all sorts of places. Looking at what is happening to the national budget at the moment, very few of us can be optimistic that the bypass that was always going to be built will appear soon. Also, there is the loss of the regional development agencies and the construction of the embryonic local enterprise partnerships. Those may be dominated by urban interests, and funding that might be regarded as coming our way might go elsewhere. I would welcome the Minister’s view on what will happen with the Sea Change money.

Before the election, all parties promised much. The Conservative pamphlet, “No longer the end of the line”, promised lottery funding for private piers. I think that we have to recognise that that probably will not happen, but the Conservatives did emphasise a new approach to local transport, which I think in constrained times we might want to consider. They also promised, or talked about, business rate discounts, which are certainly worthy of investigation.

The key test will be how the Government manage the reduced funds and, in particular, what happens to the Sea Change money. Those of us in a seaside community, if I can describe us in those terms, do not want to go back to square one, but at the moment it is not particularly clear what the next steps will be. The debate initiated today by the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness has done an enormously good job in focusing the Government on the fact that there needs to be a plan for the next steps. We need a degree of strategic thinking. That has gradually evolved and, in the future, it needs to be built on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Stunell]

We are, of course, having a cull of quangos. I cannot answer the hon. Gentleman’s specific point, but if he wants to draw my attention to particularly unhelpful prescriptive measures being imposed on his local area, I would be very happy to hear from him.

That leads me nicely on to the fact that we are publishing, probably in December, the localism Bill, which will devolve greater powers to councils and to neighbourhoods so that local communities can shape their own future. We want to give local communities, including those on the coast, the tools and incentives to support business growth and to create an enterprise culture. We recognise that coastal towns have unique challenges and that they need locally tailored solutions. It would be a mistake for us to say, “Here is the guide book that will apply equally to all the resorts in Britain.” That is why we are inviting local authorities and business leaders to come together to form local enterprise partnerships to replace the existing regional development agencies. The Secretaries of State for the Departments for Communities and Local Government and for Business, Innovation and Skills have already written to local councils and business leaders inviting them to come forward with proposals. I know that a number of coastal local authorities are already considering proposals that would take them into local enterprise partnerships. The list with which I have been provided includes the Fylde coast in Lancashire, which may or may not include Fleetwood—incidentally, I will not be trying whelks any time soon, given what has been said—Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset and Portsmouth, Southampton and Hampshire. I am sure that others will be doing the same. Those local enterprise partnerships will empower groups of councils and businesses working together to provide the strategic leadership that their areas need to set out local economic priorities.

[Dr Pugh]

As much as I subscribe to the doctrine of localism, there is a degree of pump priming needed. Most local authorities carry huge deadweight costs—if I can put it like that—because of their social services budget, and have little financial freedom to carry out some of the big infrastructure projects that are very much part and parcel of regeneration. That specific problem does not seem to be directly solved by the localism agenda.

[Andrew Stunell]

My hon. Friend anticipates the next paragraph of my speech, which talks about the £1 billion regional growth fund. I do not know how we do that, but there must be some kind of electricity between us. The Government intend to ensure that local areas have the capacity to deliver on their priorities. We are taking away the walls or barriers between the different funding streams that local authorities receive so that they can set their own priorities. I was astonished to find that there were 115 different income streams launched from my Department to local authorities. We are trying to break down those walls, so that the money that arrives in the vaults at the town hall can be spent in the way that the elected representatives at the town hall believe is best.

A number of other points were made, but let me reassure all hon. Members that we intend to maintain the existing co-operation between Departments and I shall look hard to see what opportunities there are to strengthen it, and the Minister with responsibility for tourism will, I am sure, do the same. We will retain the concept of drawing together all the different public service funding streams in an area, and ensure that we get the maximum value out of them.

The hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) spoke about community asset transfer, and we are keen to ensure that such capacity is there for voluntary and community groups. I believe that the localism Bill will contain specific provisions that open the door to that.

I am looking at the time; I do not have very long and I have not answered all the questions. If hon. Members want to reinforce their points by writing to me or getting in touch with me, please do so and I will do my best to give informative answers.

If we are to ensure that coastal towns have the resilience that they will need in the tough economic times that lie ahead, they must diversify their economies and widen their economic bases. That means attracting a range of employers offering jobs at different skill levels and in new sectors. We need to ensure that coastal towns become more attractive places for people of working age, so that not everybody thinks that people are only born in such towns or die there; we must show that there is something to do in between times. That is an important part of the economic thinking of coastal towns—