Speech to Coastal Regeneration Conference.

Winter Gardens, Margate.28.1.10.          Stephen Ladyman MP.

Good morning

We have already heard this morning from Phyllis [Starkey MP, Chair of Communities and Local Government Select Committee] about her committee’s report on coastal towns. The Select Committee she chairs is a cross party group - and the Government agreed with parts and disagreed with parts of her report. There are agreements and disagreements both about past activity and about the way forward – and my job today is to give you the Governments viewpoint.

In addition, we have an election coming. We’ve heard from Mark [Simmonds MP, Conservative Spokesman] about the ideas that the Conservative Party will put before the country in respect to coastal towns and my job will be to give you an indication of what the Labour Party will offer.

The Labour Party has had since 1997 a specialist group of MPs looking at coastal town issues, it is chaired by Gordon Marsden MP, and that group offers ideas to the team that writes our manifesto. The manifesto itself, however, won’t be confirmed until the election is called so I’m only in a position to tell you what might be in it and not what will be in it.

We are meeting here in Thanet, my constituency does not include Margate but it does include the neighbouring Thanet Towns of Ramsgate and Broadstairs and, of course, I know Margate very well and these days I do a lot of work around the wider South East and am Chair of the South East Region Select Committee. I hope, therefore, that if I draw mostly on Thanet or South East England for examples of what can be achieved and what needs to be achieved you will forgive me -  it is definitely not my intention to use Thanet or the South East as a case study or to be parochial.

I emphasise this because I think one mistake that some people fall into is to lump seaside and coastal towns together and assume that they all face the same issues and will benefit from the same actions. This was a mistake the Select Committee did NOT fall into and they were very clear that each coastal community faced a unique set of challenges needing local action and this was one aspect of their report that the Government agreed with.

That said there are some common issues and some issues that affect a number of coastal towns and the Government has also recognised these common challenges.

Seaside communities often have a high level of unemployment and lower than average income levels. Traditional areas of economic activity have declined and some of the most deprived communities in the country can be found in coastal towns where there are often also high levels of people who are long term unemployed and benefit dependent. Low skill levels and poor levels of educational attainment are often factors.

Coastal towns are often poorly served by transport infrastructure, many face problems as a result of vulnerable children and adults being placed in them and local demographics can create pressure on local services. Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) proliferate in some communities and attract migrant and itinerant workers while conversely good quality, affordable housing can be scarce.

Each coastal town will have its own mix of these problems and each local authority must address the specific mix of issues that it faces. The job of central government is to support the approach adopted locally and not to impose its own solutions. It should in a sense ‘bring the horse to water but accept it cannot make it drink.’

The Government has for example created Regional Development Agencies that can bring a more local focus to regeneration issues and it also gave those Agencies significant resources to promote economic activity in their area. Some coastal councils have taken a pro-active approach to engaging with RDAs and others haven’t. For example, my own South East Region Select Committee took very positive evidence from Hastings about the role that SEEDA had played in that town’s regeneration.

The Department for Transport has also created a regional process for determining the priority for regional infrastructure investment. Again this has worked to the benefit of coastal towns in some areas and not so well in others. Once again, a positive example of regional prioritisation, is the investment being made on the A3 Hindhead Bypass, which was only possible because all the councils in the South East prioritised the building of that road over their more local interests and the work, once complete, will be of massive benefit to south coast towns and communities.

The Government has also provided both powers and resources in respect to local housing issues to local authorities. The Housing Act 2004 allows local authorities to licence HMOs and some coastal councils have used its powers while others have chosen not to. Just this week the Government has announced that there will be further extensions to these powers that will make it easier for Councils to influence the development and management of HMOs and will extend the definition of what constitutes an HMO.

While we are on the subject of Housing, the Housing Corporations Affordable Housing Programme is as open to coastal councils as it is to inland councils and makes significant amounts of money available for social and low cost housing where councils wish to use it. Planning Policy Statement 3 on Housing also encourages local and regional planning bodies to take account of affordability in their decision making.

There are also a number of nationally decided ‘initiatives’ from Government that have helped coastal communities:

Some areas would have been adversely affected by the redrawing of boundaries for the European Regional Development Fund from 2007 but the Government designated all those coastal areas that would have lost assisted area status as tier 3 authorities as well as adding some not previously included.

New Deal for Communities is making £20bn available and benefits many coastal towns and 21 of the over 80 deprived neighbourhoods that benefit from the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund are on the coast.  The Working Neighbourhoods fund benefits many seaside towns including Thanet which received £1.5m this year.

Other ‘national’ DfT investments – as opposed to regional spending – has benefited coastal towns. The most obvious example is the new domestic high speed service in Kent that serves Folkestone, Dover, Ramsgate and other towns on the Kent coast.

And the Department for Culture Media and Sport has also recognised the specific challenges facing the seaside with its £45m Sea Change Fund. It is benefiting seaside resorts with major £1m plus investments in towns as disparate as Hastings and Southport, Bridlington and Great Yarmouth and here in Margate it has provided nearly £4m to rejuvenate Dreamland as a heritage theme park.

Last but not least, there has been significant action on the placement of children and vulnerable adults in seaside towns. In 1997 children’s homes with fewer than 3 children did not even need to be registered. City social services departments would place a child in a registered home and a day later the home owner would move the child into an unregistered satellite home to create a vacancy in his registered home. Now all children’s homes are registered and inspected and social services departments are thoroughly monitored.

As a result, the scale of the problem created by children being placed from out of their own area into coastal communities became clear. Here in Kent the special inquiry into children’s placements and around the country the work done by Chris Ruane the MP for the vale of Clwyd has shown that the problems continue. As a result the Government is working on further measures to protect both the interests of Children and the communities where they are being placed.

So it is clear that the needs of coastal towns have been recognised by Government. I could go on and list initiatives on coastal erosion, anti-social behaviour, investments in health, schools, apprenticeships, Surestart and post 18 education all of which also have direct benefits for coastal towns. There were also initiatives in response to the recommendations in the Select Committee report, including the creation of the cross-departmental working group on coastal towns.

But perhaps before I run out of time it is more important to signal where we are going next.

The Seaside Group of Labour MPs has put forward manifesto proposals in a range of areas and I would hope that many will find their way into our manifesto and ultimately become Government policy if we win the election. At this point I should offer a ‘health warning’ that any of these proposals that cost money, given the need to cut the budget deficit once the economy is strong again, will be more problematic than proposals that simply require a re-prioritisation of already allocated resources.

That said, we want the Government to build on its current work and the initiatives it has already taken to support coastal towns and consider categorising specific areas of some or all seaside towns as priority investment areas and expand the use of sub-ward statistics to target grants and investment at deprivation hot-spots.

We believe the VAT regime draws an unfair distinction between new build and the refurbishment of existing buildings. Any tax cut will be difficult given the economic situation but cutting VAT on repair and maintenance work to 5%, once we can afford to do it, would benefit many coastal towns.

We want to see a commitment to extend the Sea Change programme. We would also like to see loans and tax allowances made available to support part of the cost of improvements to guest houses and hotels.

The new powers announced this week in respect to HMOs were one of our recommendations but we want a commitment to continually review these powers and planning legislation to ensure that Councils can effectively deal with poorly managed and inappropriate property developments.

The Local Economic Growth Initiative (LEGI) programme, which aims to improve the economic potential of deprived areas should be expanded.

Initiatives that protect or improve the incomes of older people and the standard of care for those older people who need it will, in our view, be important for coastal towns. Besides proposals that are already government policy, such as linking the state pension to earnings and free personal care at home for older people with the most severe needs, we would like the Government after the election to consider other measures such as abolishing mandatory retirement ages.

We also supported the idea that a network of RDAs be created to share expertise and best practice in respect to the regeneration of coastal communities and one, with specific expertise in supporting coastal towns, should be given lead responsibility. So we were delighted when this happened with SEEDA in the lead and we want to see that network continue to flourish.

In addition, we have put forward some more controversial ideas that would help. Introducing Daylight Saving Time would extend the light evenings and could boost the UK leisure industry by £2bn. A new Autumn bank holiday would extend the traditional visitor season – if it was linked to Trafalgar Day we think it would be popular and enable resorts to benefit from half-term visitors with families.

How many of these ideas will end up in our manifesto I cannot say. What I can say is that Labour will fight the election committed to efforts to ensure that economic recovery is maintained and the deficit cut at a pace that does not endanger recovery. We will also be committed to protecting front line services and continuing with our work to target help at the most deprived communities – which will include many coastal towns.

We have, I believe, demonstrated an understanding and commitment to seaside and coastal towns not matched by any previous government. We have taken significant steps already to reverse the decline in fortune of these communities but we recognise this is very much a work in progress. There is a lot more to do and – in partnership with regional agencies, local councils and the private sector – we are determined to do it.