West Chester Regeneration Board

West Chester Regeneration Board

SRB Programme Final Evaluation

March 2004

Executive Summary

Programme Background and Description

1.1  This evaluation report considers the performance of the West Chester Single Regeneration Budget Programme between April 1998 and March 2004. 

1.2   There has been SRB funded activity in the West Chester area since April 1995 when the SRB Round One Programme (£2 million) commenced. This activity was supplemented by a further tranche of SRB (£5.2 million) grant under SRB Round Three. The Programmes were merged in 1998 under a combined Delivery Plan, and it is the merged Programme that is the subject of this evaluation.

1.3  The Programme provided for a broad based series of interventions, contributing to six of the national SRB Strategic Objectives and covering education and training, economic development, business support, environment and infrastructure improvements, crime prevention and community safety, health, and community development.

1.4  The Programme focused on the 'West Chester' wards (as defined in 1999) of Blacon Hall, College, Dee Point, Sealand, and Lache Estate. Whilst each of these wards contains distinct communities, they shared common characteristics such as higher than average unemployment, low levels of basic skills, educational under-achievement, higher than average crime rates, shortage of modern affordable housing, poor quality business premises and pockets of poor quality open space and public realm.

Programme Performance

Finance

1.5  The Programme spent its entire SRB allocation, though the pattern of expenditure across activities was significantly different to that set out at the beginning of the Programme. This was due to two factors. First, a reduced need for grant to develop the Old Port area. Secondly the restructuring of the Partnership during the lifetime of the Programme, with expenditure being diverted to developing community involvement in local governance and more emphasis on identifying and addressing community priorities.

1.6  The Programme exceeded its targets for levering in Other Public and Private investment, though only due to the very large leverage achieved by the Old Port projects, which masked underachievement in other areas. However, such underachievement is not thought to have compromised the value for money of SRB grant and in many cases demonstrated the enhanced need for the SRB grant.

Outputs

1.7  The Programme achieved or over achieved on two thirds of its output targets performance.

1.8  The pattern of achievement against targets reflects the shifting of SRB resources between objectives during the Programme.

1.9  There was no specific theme of project intervention or output type in which the Programme performed particularly well or poorly, rather the causes of variation across the outputs often related back to individual projects. This pattern was especially pronounced under SO1 (Employment, Education and Skills), where three projects in particular regularly appeared behind under performing outputs.

1.10  Our analysis indicated that under no Strategic Objective did the Programme perform poorly. The weakest performance appeared to be under SO1 (Employment, Education and Skills), where a reasonable performance overall was brought down by the poor performance of a small group of projects.  Another factor behind the relatively weak performance was perhaps the unrealistic expectations of projects succeeding in helping people into jobs.

1.11  At the project level, the majority of projects succeeded in achieving their key outputs, with community sector and Council-led projects shown to have performed particularly well under this measure of attainment.

1.12  The Programme has performed well in comparison with national SRB performance benchmarks, exceeding the benchmark for public and private leverage, and delivering the majority of outputs to a lower unit cost than the national benchmark.

Management Arrangements

1.13  The Programme was managed by a dedicated SRB Management Team, originally based within the Special Programmes Unit of Chester City Council, but latterly based in the Community Services Directorate of the City Council.

1.14   At the technical level, the Programme was run very efficiently which was recognised by the NWDA .

1.15  The Management Team was credited by stakeholders as having a sound grasp on the strategic direction of the Programme, and in steering the Programme through a restructuring of both the Programme and the Partnership, whilst still achieving the expenditure of its entire SRB allocation.

1.16   A large part of the success of the Programme related to the proactive added value management processes which included contingency project planning, a rolling annual Board programme, mini-audits of live projects and, in particular the Board Patron programme.

1.17  There were few criticisms levelled at the management of the Programme and those that were related to the Management Team's propensity to perhaps micro-manage some aspects of the Programme and some projects.

1.18  The one significant area of concern with regard to the management of the Programme is in relation to projects proceeding when it was apparent that their match funding contributions were significantly less than agreed with the Board.  In the final analysis this did not affect the overall performance of the Programme and there might have been good reason and wider benefits of continuing with some projects despite their matching funding slipping

1.19  The SRB team appears to work as an independent unit within Chester City Council, rather than being embedded with other sections involved in broader regeneration implementation.  The effectiveness of the Management Team in influencing cultural change in Neighbourhood Renewal practice in the wider City Council may have been diluted by the physically divorced relationship between the SRB Unit and officers of the rest of the Council.  This may have been a factor in the uncertainty about the longer-term sustainability of some aspects of the Programme.

Partnership Working

1.20   There was substantial and positive change in the nature of Partnership working over the lifetime of the SRB Programme.

1.21  The original bid was very much under the ownership of Chester City Council, written by a Senior Council Officer and presented to the Government through the Chester Action Partnership, a collective of 300 public, private and voluntary organisations active in Chester. Although the bid was presented through the Partnership, it could not in reality have been said to have been a product of the Partnership.

1.22  A seven member Executive Group managed the SRB Programme until 2000. This Executive had member drawn from a range of local partners but had very limited community involvement, with only one community representative from one part of the West Chester area.

1.23  Wholescale change to the governance of the Programme was implemented in 2001 with the creation of the New Approaches programme. New Approaches developed and maintained a coherent SRB Programme and neighbourhood governance structure involving the communities of West Chester, based on Neighbourhood Partnerships that fed into a broadened and enlarged Management Group - the West Chester Regeneration Board

1.24  The Neighbourhood Partnerships had a substantial impact on the direction and running of the SRB Programme.  The Partnerships had an opportunity to influence the spending priorities of the Programme, as their inception and the subsequent publishing of an Area Action Plan by each Partnership, coincided with ongoing Programme restructuring.  The opportunity was used positively to address local issues of concern, and also responsibly, with each Partnership balanced parochial concerns with an appreciation of strategic issues effecting the wider Partnership.

1.25  The Neighbourhood Partnerships were shown to be useful devices for enhancing the relationships between community members, Members of the City and County Councils, City Council Officers and other public sector agency stakeholders.  Indeed the tangible results of this co-operation included successes in applying for funding from non-SRB sources to address community priorities.

1.26   All stakeholders upheld the Neighbourhood Partnerships, and their position within the wider Partnership, as amongst the strongest legacy of the SRB Programme and aligned this with a generally strong sense of satisfaction with regard to the Partnership. Indeed, the Partnership working and structures established during the Programme will continue beyond the Programme. For example, the Neighbourhood Partnerships were the model on which the City-wide Area Committees have been based.

1.27  The partnership working, enabled through New Approaches, was perhaps most conspicuously presented in the production and implementation of the Neighbourhood Action Plans.  In Blacon, this mechanism was key to its attaining Neighbourhood Management Pathfinder status and stakeholders have vowed that lessons learnt here will influence the other Neighbourhood Partnerships. 

1.28  Comparison with other SRB Programmes nationally has shown that the West Chester SRB Programme exceeds the benchmark in relation to community participation. Whilst the weakest point of the Partnership structure, private sector involvement, is shown to be an issue of Partnerships nationally.

Programme Linkages

1.29  The Programme performed well in achieving added value through being well co-ordinated with other programmes both at the geographic and thematic levels.

1.30  In particular, the careful targeting of significant capital investment resources at tightly defined geographical areas (e.g. Brook Street and Old Port) allowed passive linkages to develop and critical mass to be achieved.

1.31  The Neighbourhood Partnerships will continue to have a crucial role in shaping the nature of investment in their respective neighbourhoods in a variety of ways.  For example, through providing a point of reference for public sector officers when seeking to consult and working with public sector officers to formulate bids to external funding bodies (e.g. using the Neighbourhood Action Plans to capture external funding.  For example, in Newtown the successful Homezones and Heritage Economic Regeneration Scheme bids).

1.32  The SRB Programme was particularly well co-ordinated with the investment Programme of the Chester Local Transport Plan, which funded complementary works at Old Port, and bent mainstream spending to implement safety and environmental schemes in Lache, Newtown and Blacon specifically because of their SRB status.

1.33 The SRB Programme was an important reference point for the emerging Blacon Neighbourhood Management Pathfinder ( BNMP ).  There are structures in place and encouraging signs that the experience of the BNMP will be referred to by Partners when seeking to build upon the legacy of SRB intervention in the other West Chester Neighbourhoods.

1.34  SRB Grant was important to the setting up of the Healthy Living Network, which will have a key role in the regeneration of the West Chester Neighbourhoods upon the cessation of the SRB Programme.  The Network is funding a broad range of interventions concerned with small scale, innovative and community-based means of primary health care (such as the Green Gyms), which lends much potential for the involvement of the Neighbourhood Partnerships in becoming involved in sponsoring and delivering interventions.

Programme Impact

Baseline Assessment

1.35   A comparison of the baseline position of the Programme with the most current statistics available shows that some positive progress has been made; though the exact impact of the SRB on such progress is impossible to define.  Positive developments included:

• A reduction in the number of income support claimants by ward with a convergence towards the regional average
• A reduction in the disparity between unemployment rates (including long term) in West Chester and the Chester average
• Improvement in the percentage of students achieving Level 4+ at Key Stage 2 with three schools scoring consistently above the English Average and improved performance at GCSE level at all High Schools serving West Chester.

Additionality, Sustainability and Value for Money

1.36  Analysis suggests that the Programme performed well, with positive impacts being achieved under each Strategic Objective and good added value shown.

1.37  The weakest achievement in this respect was under Strategic Objective One - Enhancing Employment Prospects, where project performance and sustainability were shown to be patchy.

1.38  However, this in part reflects national trends with regard to the projects supported under this Strategic Objective.  Firstly, national experience has shown that many innovative and novel SRB funded projects are vulnerable to being dropped at the end of their grant funding, as they are not easily assimilated into mainstream annual revenue budgets.  Secondly, performance targets relating to assisting long term unemployed people into jobs have tended to be over ambitious.

1.39 The outstanding performance within the Programme occurred under Strategic Objective Seven - Enhancing Quality of Life, where a new infrastructure for strong community involvement in local governance has been put in place, and notable achievements made.

Conclusion

1.40  The evaluation concludes that overall the West Chester SRB Programme can be judged a success, with particular highlights being the profound physical transformation of the Old Port area, and the development of the Neighbourhood Partnerships, which are both sustainable legacies of the Programme.

1.41  The overarching legacy of the Programme is the shift away from top down regeneration to the structure centred on the Neighbourhood Partnerships.  It is suggested that this marks a watershed in the way in which Chester City Council and its partners engage with its local communities.

Recommendations

1.42  The Evaluation closes with the following recommendations:

i.That the sustainability of the neighbourhood partnerships is key to the future success of regeneration and neighbourhood renewal in West Chester and steps should be taken to ensure that these partnerships are well supported in the future

ii.  That the continuation of elements of projects where possible is explored with mainstream service providers as a matter of some urgency.  There is a danger that when the SRB Programme ends on the 31^st March 2004 many of the innovative elements of projects may be lost.  Work should be undertaken to identify those elements which could be mainstreamed by public agencies

iii.  The skills and experience gained by the Board Members and SRB staff should not be lost once the Programme has ended and at the very least some form of 'best practice' manual should be created to hold the tacit knowledge gained through the operation of this Programme

iv.The partners that form the West Chester Regeneration Board communicate the findings of this report to their respective organisations.