An evaluation of the Single Regeneration Budget in the North East

York Consulting

One NorthEast

An evaluation of the SRB programme in the North East

May 2007

York Consulting

Originated by: Tom Foster................ Dated: 1st May 2007 ........................... Reviewed by: Matthew Terry ........... Dated: 2nd May 2007...........................

One NorthEast

An evaluation of SRB in the North East

Contents

Page

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY..........................................................................................I

1 INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................1

2 SRB CONTEXT ...............................................................................................4

3 SPEND AND OUTPUTS................................................................................17

4 SUB-REGIONAL CASE STUDIES ................................................................31

5 KEY LESSONS LEARNT ..............................................................................68

6 THE DEMISE OF SRB...................................................................................78

7 REFLECTIONS ON IMPACT.........................................................................82

8 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS..............................................85

An evaluation of SRB in the North East A report for One NorthEast – Executive Summary

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Introduction

In 2006, York Consulting was commissioned by ONE North East to undertake a final evaluation of the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) Programme across the region, examining the performance of the programme; the key lessons learnt; and recommendations for future regeneration initiatives in the North East.

SRB was designed to streamline the approach to neighbourhood regeneration and set out to “enhance the quality of life of local people in areas of need by reducing inequality”1. Between 1994 and 2007, the North East region was the recipient of over £650m of SRB funding.

Methodology

The methodology for the work comprised:

telephone and face-to-face consultations with over 50 key stakeholders and delivery partners across the North East;

a review of best practice and lessons learnt from 38 SRB final evaluation and précis reports;

analysis of the programme spend and outputs based on final evaluation reports; and

top-down analysis of spend and leverage data from the Department for Communities and Local Government.

SRB funding in the North East

The North East received £650m of funding over the six rounds of SRB. This equated to 11% of the national SRB pot, making the North East the fourth largest regional recipient of SRB money. This amount of funding was in keeping with levels of deprivation in the region – 11% of the most deprived Super Output Areas (SOAs) in England are located in the North East. Put simply, the North East got its ‘share’ of the national SRB pot.

1 Communities and Local Government Website - http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1128087

http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1128087

An evaluation of SRB in the North East A report to One NorthEast – Executive Summary

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Across the SRB rounds, the North East received varying levels of funding. In Round 3, the region received 15% of the national SRB pot. In contrast, in Round 4, the North East received just over 6% of available money. There are no obvious reasons for this disparity, but the marked funding variation between SRB rounds was certainly not unique to the North East region.

SRB funding in the North East was focussed in the more urban sub-regions, especially in the early Rounds of SRB. In Rounds 1-3 of the programme, Tyne and Wear and Tees Valley received an average 86% of the available funding. However, by Rounds 5 and 6, this level had reduced to 66%, with County Durham and Northumberland developing sub-region-wide bids which attracted significant funds.

SRB was supposed to be focused on areas with high levels of deprivation and at a macro-level it was reasonably well targeted in the North East. For example, Tyne and Wear has 49% of the North East’s most deprived SOAs and received 53% of the total SRB funding pot for the region. Only in Tees Valley was there any significant disparity, with the sub-region containing 32% of the region’s most deprived SOAs, but receiving only 25% of SRB funding.

SRB expenditure and outputs

Measuring and assessing the North East’s SRB spend and outputs was not an easy task. The lack of a central data source and a full suite of evaluation reports, while not unique to the North East, meant that only 70% of spend and outputs were analysed.

SRB funded lots of individual projects, with hindsight probably too many. On average SRB programmes funded 65 discrete projects with an average project size of £172,000. SRB’s ability to fund small and locally based projects was a key strength of the programme but almost certainly meant high levels of deadweight and transaction costs which detracted from its economic efficiency.

A key component of SRB was the ability of programmes to ‘leverage’ other public and private sector funding. Across the North East, it was anticipated that for each £1 of SRB money spent a further £2.89 of private and public money would be leveraged. The leverage ratio achieved was estimated to be £1.91 per £1 of SRB spending. That this was lower than expected is perhaps a reflection of an optimism bias on the part of partners when putting bids together.


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SRB in the North East delivered some significant outputs over the last 12 years, for example:

over 12,000 net new jobs have been created or safeguarded;

over 2,700 net new businesses have been started;

net 27,000 people have received some form of training; and

over 320 net hectares of land retained or improved.

Comparison with other programmes is challenging, but based on evidence from the national SRB evaluation the region did reasonably well when compared with the national SRB performance.

The impact of SRB

Gauging the impact of SRB is a challenging undertaking, not least because over the lifetime of the programme, partnerships were not formally required to measure or take account of outcomes, so no historical data really exists. Another challenge is assessing the extent to which SRB money is genuinely new to a region – there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that SRB money substituted for local authority spend in some places.

In some areas SRB had a significant impact, sometimes where it ‘tipped the balance’ in an area so that the private sector became engaged and started investing in an area. In other areas it helped to develop valuable community assets and attract mainstream delivery partners who might not otherwise have been present. In more localised, estate-based regeneration programmes the impact is harder to quantify given the limited scale of SRB resources compared to the systemic socio-economic problems being faced. Some programmes have argued that SRB had helped to stem decline and that estates had “not got any worse”. While this may be true, it should be noted that none of the programmes and schemes set out to maintain the status quo.

SRB has also had a significant impact on the way regeneration is done through the way partners approach regeneration and the development of significant human capital and partnership capacity. This has been a major plus point for the programme.


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The demise of SRB and the VCS

SRB as a programme has, to all intents and purposes, finished. Funding for economic regeneration is now channelled through One NorthEast in the form of Single Pot funding. Funding for neighbourhood regeneration is largely through the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme which is more restricted than SRB in the scope and scale of what it can support.

In common with other regions, the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) in the North East relied on SRB to deliver some of its core activities. There has been a feeling in some parts of the sector that the demise of SRB was poorly communicated and that a successor programme was expected to supersede SRB.

Among the organisations we spoke with, we found little evidence to suggest that the demise of SRB was poorly communicated, although there may have been some mixed messages about what any ‘successor’ to SRB might be. There will certainly be some financial impacts for the VCS, post-SRB, but there is some evidence to suggest that this impact will not be as catastrophic as has been suggested. We would also note that simply because some SRB projects have folded is not evidence for a demise in the VCS sector – at the end of every programme there will be some projects that come to an end.

Conclusions and recommendations

This evaluation has sought to take a broad view of SRB’s performance in the North East. It should be remembered that SRB was never designed to be a regional programme, so the conclusions and recommendations are necessarily generalised in their tone and are couched in terms of some best practice ideas for future programmes and projects.

In broad terms, the SRB programme in the North East achieved the objectives set for it. It delivered locally based regeneration programmes through local partnerships and set the foundations for the on-going regeneration of some of the most deprived areas of the North East. In numerical terms SRB delivered significant outputs, not least over 12,000 jobs and 2,700 new businesses. In some areas programmes have delivered tangible outputs which have served to catalyse the regeneration of neighbourhoods. However, in other areas, SRB was perhaps over ambitious in what it set out to achieve, notably some of the estate regeneration programmes which were bold in their intent, but probably under resourced given the challenges faced.


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Our conclusions for key lessons and recommendations are as follows:

Regional and strategic:

A broad brush approach to funding allocation has strengths and weaknesses - SRB was one of the most laissez faire funding regimes of recent times. Partners could bend SRB monies to almost any objective. This flexibility had the advantage of allowing partners to respond to their location specific circumstances. The flipside of this was that often the impact of programmes was no more than the sum of the programme parts. The breadth of remit also meant that ‘everybody could argue for a slice of the pie’, making it very hard for partnerships to put together a genuinely strategic and inter-connected set of projects.

More doesn’t necessarily mean better – The sheer number of projects funded by SRB made accountability and management challenging. There is also a problem of repeat overheads and management costs which diminishes the amount of funding that reaches the front line. This is not to say that small projects don’t work or cannot be effective, but trying to account for large numbers of projects at a programme level proved very challenging.

Understanding impact is crucial - The lack of real understanding or consideration of impact presents a real problem for local regeneration projects when trying to advocate for the continuation of project funding. In future, estate based regeneration programmes should place a stronger focus on developing a rigorous baseline and clear indicators to measure eventual success. The data to do this is now much more detailed and accessible than when SRB began.

Balancing the funding of opportunity and need - As a programme, SRB very clearly targeted deprivation in localised areas. In comparison the RDAs, with Single Pot money, focus on fewer, larger opportunities which aim to deliver economic benefit to their regions, the logic being that the region needs a strong economy to ensure the jobs and prosperity of its people. RDAs have targets, set by the DTI, to meet and as such have to spend their money wisely. However, it should be noted that while spending in areas of need, rather than opportunity, may not deliver high levels of tangible outputs and impacts, there is the immeasurable impact of ‘showing faith’ in deprived communities by investing in projects and programmes in poor areas.

Strategic connections are important – For some grassroots projects, there is a pride in operating where the mainstream can’t or won’t reach. Such


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projects are unlikely to ‘look upwards’ to make strategic connections with mainstream partners. However, at the larger project and programme level there should be a stronger emphasis on connecting with the strategic intentions of other partners.

The need for good record keeping – A consistent problem in evaluating this programme has been the lack of a central data source to provide accurate information on outputs and spend for the programme as a whole.

Programme management:

Balanced partnerships are crucial – The dynamics of the relationship between local authorities and partnerships could be problematic. This sometimes led to disharmony and a sense that SRB money was substituting for local authority spending, rather than being genuinely additional to an area.

Front loading programmes should be avoided - Partnerships were often too keen to get a good number of projects ‘on the books’ very early on in the programme cycle, so they could plan activities and meet spend profiles. While understandable, in some programmes this limited project flexibility; meant project appraisals were unduly rushed; and by the middle of the programme all the major spend decisions had been made, leading to a diminution of interest from partners.

Robust project appraisal generates good projects – Good partnerships used a robust appraisal process to help shape and refine their projects. However, good appraisal requires time and staff may need training on the concepts and methodologies behind project appraisal.

The private sector will engage, when it makes sense for it to do so – Private sector leverage was a key element of SRB and some partnerships were very successful in securing private sector buy-in. However, the private sector will only engage when there are clear benefits from doing so. This was most frequently evident in physical regeneration projects. Social projects, where impacts are disparate and realised over a longer time-frame, find it hard to attract private sector money.


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Monitoring and evaluation can improve programme performance – The monitoring and evaluation requirements of SRB were often perceived as being burdensome. There is little doubt that the range of output measures used to measure performance was unwieldy and sometimes confusing. However, monitoring and evaluation processes, when correctly employed, helped partnerships to assess progress and take remedial action, where appropriate.

Grassroots delivery:

Community engagement cannot be taken for granted – SRB was a community-focussed regeneration programme, but local engagement was not always easy to achieve. Successful partnerships engaged communities from the outset and continued to use their skills to help deliver and monitor projects’ performance.

Mainstreaming local level projects is very challenging – SRB projects were often designed to function at a local neighbourhood scale. As such, scaling them up to the level at which mainstream providers work was particularly difficult.


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1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 In December 2006, York Consulting LLP (YCL) was commissioned by One NorthEast (One NE) to undertake an evaluation of Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) in the North East.

1.2 Since the inception of SRB in 1994, the North East has been the recipient of £650m of SRB funding. This report seeks to examine: how this money was spent across the region; what impacts the spend has achieved; and what lessons and good practice can be learnt for future regeneration programmes.

1.3 This document is a draft report of our findings and recommendations to date.

The aims of the evaluation

1.4 One NorthEast’s explicit aims for the evaluation were to:

examine the extent to which the aims and objectives of the SRB programme Rounds 1-6 have been realised;

determine the outcomes and impact, intended and unintended, of the SRB programme on the economic development of the region and the contribution to the delivery of the Regional Economic Strategy (RES);

identify the lessons from the SRB programme that are important when developing future programmes through One NE; and

identify the issues for One NE for effectively managing the legacy of SRB, including the voluntary and community agenda.

Evaluation approach and methodology

Approach

1.5 This evaluation has required a pragmatic approach. In particular, it needed to take into account issues relating to the length of time within which the whole SRB programme had been delivered (some 12 years). These included:


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highly inconsistent data quality in completed programme level evaluations, and the absence of information for some specific programmes;

shifts in regeneration and regional development policy, which have impacted on the direction and oversight of SRB delivery over time, including the transfer of regional responsibility for SRB from Government Office to ONE NE in 1999;

changes to evaluation policy and performance expectations – an SRB programme delivered in the mid-1990s, for example, will not necessarily have been structured to meet Regional Development Agency (RDA) performance requirements as set out in the DTI’s Impact Evaluation Framework of 2006.

1.6 The result is an evaluation that attempts to draw lessons of delivery and impact from twelve years of activity and relate it as best as possible to today’s regional development requirements.

1.7 The analytical approach to this evaluation is based on a sub-regional model. Performance indicators, such as spend and outputs have been broken down to provide a picture at the level of Northumberland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, and Tees Valley. Each sub region has also been the subject of an in-depth case study. This approach is designed to provide a finer level of detail than would otherwise be provided by a straightforward regional evaluation. It also fits with current sub-regional delivery structures. Its purpose is not to judge the sub regions comparatively.

Methodology

1.8 In undertaking this evaluation YCL has completed the following work:

scoping consultations with fifteen strategic stakeholders;

a review of 38 evaluation reports from individual SRB programmes across the North East;

a meta-analysis of the outputs and outcomes of SRB in the North East;

an analysis of SRB spend across the North East;



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fifty in-depth consultations with SRB programme managers, delivery staff; partnership board members, the community and voluntary sector, and strategic partners across the four sub-regions in the North East.

1.9 A list of consultees can be found at Annex A.

The remainder of this report

1.10 The remainder of this report is set out as follows:

Section 2: context for SRB funding and analysis of SRB spend across the region;

Section 3: analysis of the North East SRB programme performance;

Section 4: sub-regional case studies, examining the delivery and performance of SRB across County Durham, Northumberland, Tees Valley and Tyne and Wear;

Section 5: best practice and lessons learnt;

Section 6: the demise of SRB

Section 7: reflections on impact; and

Section 8: conclusions and recommendations.

Acknowledgements

1.11 We would like to thank all those people who took the time to contribute to the completion of this evaluation.

1.12 The views expressed in this evaluation are those of the YCL team, and not necessarily those of One NorthEast.



2 SRB CONTEXT

2.1 In this section, we provide some background to the SRB programme nationally. We examine the extent of SRB support provided to the region, compared to other parts of England, and between the sub regions in the North East.

Background and objectives of SRB

2.2 The SRB programme began in 1994 and sought to “simplify and streamline the assistance available for regeneration”2 Bringing together funding from eighteen previously separate programmes such as the Urban Programme, the Local Initiative Fund and Regional Enterprise Grants, the programme was run initially by the Government Offices and, from 1999 onwards, the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs). The broad objective of the programme was “to enhance the quality of life of local people in areas of need by reducing the gap between deprived and other communities”3.

Regeneration partnerships

2.3 A central tenet of SRB was the concept of local regeneration partnerships that were tasked with identifying local need and developing and delivering regeneration programmes accordingly. Partnership boards made up of public, private and voluntary and community sector (VCS) representatives provided an immediate oversight and scrutiny function, with local authorities normally playing the role of the accountable bodies. At a regional level the Government Office for the North East (GONE) and latterly One NorthEast acted as the gatekeeper for SRB funds and took ultimate responsibility for the delivery of SRB programmes across the region.

Programme funding

2.4 Over the lifetime of SRB, there was an evolution in the approach to awarding funding and the types of initiatives funded. The early rounds of SRB were characterised by a bidding approach, whereby partnerships applied to the Government Office for funding to carry out a specific programmes of activity.

2 Communities and Local Government Website - http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=11280873 IBID

http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1128087



In the later rounds of SRB the funding approach was more commissioning based, with partnerships delivering specific programmes of activity. The commissioning based approach was more in keeping with the move towards strategic regeneration employed by the RDAs. Indeed, by Rounds 5 and 6 of SRB the guidance for SRB funding noted that “SRB is an important instrument in delivering the RDAs Regional Economic Strategy….”4. Also, by rounds 5 and 6 the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) had implemented a two tier approach to funding, with Comprehensive Regeneration Schemes in the most deprived areas to receive 80% of funding, with the remaining 20% of funding allocated for local regeneration schemes.

2.5 Table 2-1 sets out the core objectives for SRB funding as defined by the Bidding Guidance for the six rounds of SRB funding.

Table 2-1 - SRB Objectives by Round (Source: SRB Bidding Guidance) Rounds 1-4 Rounds 5 and 6

Enhance employment prospects and education and skills of local people, especially young people

Improving the employment prospects, education and skills of local people

Encourage economic growth by improving competitiveness of the local economy

Addressing social exclusion and improving opportunities for the disadvantaged

Improve housing through physical improvements & better management

Promoting sustainable regeneration, improving and protecting the environment and infrastructure, including housing

Initiatives to benefit ethnic minorities Supporting and promoting growth of local businesses

Tackle crime & improve community safety Reducing crime and drug abuse and improving community safety

Protect and improve the environment and infrastructure

Enhance the quality of life of local people, including health, cultural and sports opportunities

2.6 From Rounds 1 to 4 the objectives remained essentially the same, with some minor semantic changes. What remained constant across the rounds was the very broad scope of what could be funded using SRB monies.

2.7 By Rounds 5 and 6, the objectives for SRB funding had changed, following the hand-over of SRB to the RDAs. Elements such as housing

4 SRB Round 6 Bidding Guidance – Department for Communities and Local Government



improvements were no longer a single objective and were bundled together under a much broader Sustainable Regeneration objective. Other historic support areas such as quality of life and initiatives to support ethnic minorities disappeared altogether in Rounds 5 and 6, to be replaced by a new objective to address social exclusion and improve opportunities for the disadvantaged. Although there is no data to back this up, consultees have suggested that in the North East, the earlier rounds of SRB funding were more focussed on physical and environmental regeneration, with later rounds shifting emphasis towards employment and skills initiatives. This would fit with the RDA focus on economic growth (rather than regeneration per se) in areas such as reducing worklessness, increasing the numbers in employment, and up-skilling the workforce.

SRB funding

Regional variations

2.8 According to the Department for Communities and Local Government, over £5,700m was allocated to partnerships nationally across the six rounds of SRB. Of this total, the North East region secured £650m or 11% of the overall funding on offer over the six rounds (Figure 2-1). In absolute terms, this made the region the fourth highest recipient of SRB funding, behind London, the North West, and Yorkshire and Humber.

Figure 2-1– SRB funding by region (Source: DCLG)

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2.9 The proportion of national SRB funding secured by the North East varied from round to round (Figure 2-2). For Rounds 1 and 4, the North East only secured 7% and 6% of the available national funding pot. In contrast, in Rounds 2 and 3 the region secured 14% and 15% respectively.

2.10 There does not appear to be a particular reason behind such variation. Indeed, the North East was not alone in experiencing significant round-by-round variations in the proportion of the total funding pot that it received.

Figure 2-2 – North East SRB funding across Rounds 1-6 (Source: DCLG)

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2.11 Figure 2-2 shows the highest and the lowest standard deviations from the mean funding level for each region. Put simply, the larger the line on the graph the greater the variability in the level of funding received by a region, on a round-by-round basis. So, we know the North East received 11% of the total SRB pot, rounds 1-6. If this was evenly spread across all six rounds, there would be no standard deviations from the mean and there would be no vertical line on the graph. However, as Figure 2.3 shows, during one round of SRB (Round 3) the region received 4% more than the 11% average and in another round (Round 4) it received 4.8% less than its 11% average.

2.12 What Figure 2.3 clearly shows is that the North East was no exception in experiencing significant variations in the level of funding it received, round by round. It is also worth noting that the sums of money involved in such variations are significant. For example, in Round 3 the North East received



15% of the total SRB pot, four percentage points higher than its overall average. This equated to an additional £37m in Round 3.

Figure 2-3 – Variation in regional SRB funding (Source: DCLG)

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Did the North East get its share of SRB money?

2.13 Judging whether the North East got a ‘reasonable’ share of the national SRB pot is hard to judge. There will have been manifold factors affecting the funding decisions made at national level. However, SRB funding was designed to target areas of deprivation, so in crude terms there should be some correlation between the levels of deprivation in a region and the amount of funding received. The most comprehensive barometer of deprivation is the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).

2.14 The data in Table 2-2 is based on Super Output Area (SOA) IMD rankings. An SOA is a unit of geography with a mean population of 1,500 people. The second column highlights the number of SOAs in a region which are ranked in the bottom quartile of the IMD rankings. The North East has 753 or 9% of SOAs that are in the 25% most deprived SOAs in England. By comparison, the North East received 11% of SRB funding over six rounds.



Table 2-2– SRB funding and deprivation (Source: DCLG and IMD rankings)

Region Number of SOAs in bottom IMD quartile

% of total SOAs in lowest IMD

quartile

% of SRB funding received

Variance (percentage

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East Midlands 618 8% 2% -5

East of England 316 4% 5% +1

London 1,662 20% 27% +6

North East 753 9% 11% +2

North West 1,726 21% 19% -2

South East 402 5% 7% +2

South West 397 5% 3% -2

West Midlands 1,100 14% 11% -3

Yorkshire and The Humber 1,146 14% 15% +1

Total 8,120 100% 100% 0

2.15 Figure 2-4 provides a graphical representation of the variance between levels of deprivation and the amount of SRB funding received. Clearly, there were winners and losers, with London receiving six percentage points more proportionally than one would expect based on its levels of deprivation and the East Midlands receiving five percentage points fewer than expected. In comparison with other regions, the North East fared well receiving slightly more of the total SRB funding pot than might be expected based on its levels of deprivation.

2.16 The methodology used is meant to provide an indicative picture of how SRB money was proportionally allocated among the regions and is not foolproof. For example, despite a mean population of 1,500, SOAs are not the same size in population terms, so some areas may be under or over represented, depending on the size of their SOAs. In addition, the data to measure deprivation is a ‘snapshot’ from 2004, while SRB took place over a longer timescale.



Figure 2-4 - Deprivation (SOA bottom quartile) vs. level of SRB funding (Source: DCLG)

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2.17 When judging SRB allocation and acute deprivation - i.e. those Super Output Areas ranked in the bottom 10% - the picture changes (Figure 2-5).

Figure 2-5 - Deprivation (SOA bottom 10%) vs. level of SRB funding (Source: DCLG)

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2.18 In proportionate terms, London gets 12 percentage points more SRB funding than one might expect based on its proportion of SOAs in the bottom 10% IMD ranking, while the North East roughly achieves parity, receiving 11% of SRB money and having about 11% of all the SOAs in the bottom 10% of the IMD rankings.

How was money distributed across the sub-regions?

2.19 Figure 2-6 shows the proportion of total SRB spend by sub region. Not surprisingly, Tyne and Wear was by far the largest recipient of SRB monies, receiving some 54%, or £345m, of the total SRB money allocated to the North East. Tees Valley, with its significant urban conurbations, received 25%, or £164m. The more rural sub-regions of County Durham and Northumberland received the smallest shares of SRB money: 12% and 7% respectively.

Figure 2-6 – SRB spend by sub-region (Source: DCLG)

All2%

County Durham12%

Northumberland7%

Teesside25%

Tyne and Wear54%

2.20 Figure 2.7 shows the sub-regional allocation of SRB money on a round-by-round basis. As with the regional allocations (Figure 2-3) there was by no means a consistent level of funding to the various sub-regions.

2.21 Of particular note are the high levels of funding awarded to Tyne and Wear during the early years of SRB, especially Round 3 – the largest SRB round for the North East – when the sub-region received 71% of the North East’s SRB money. By Rounds 5 and 6 the level of funding to Tyne and Wear had dropped to less than 35% of the total SRB pot.



Figure 2-7 – Variation in sub-regional spend, by round (Source: DCLG)

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2.22 Also worth noting are the variations in the level of funding secured by County Durham and Northumberland. In Round 3 for Northumberland and Round 4 for County Durham, the sub-regions received just 2% and 1% of the total funding respectively. By rounds 5 and 6 both areas were putting together comprehensive region-wide bids which secured significant amounts of SRB money.

Figure 2-8- Average spend per programme, programme size and programme numbers (Source: DCLG)

Rnd 3, 141,500

Rnd 4, 20,563 Rnd 1, 80,627

Rnd 2, 160,615

Rnd 5, 119,631

Rnd 6, 127,659

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2.23 Interestingly, in years when SRB funding was relatively low (rounds 1 and 4) the number of programmes didn’t significantly decrease see Figure 2-8. What did change was the average value of the programmes funded. In rounds 1 and 4 the average size of a programme was £1.7million and £2.8million, respectively. For the remaining rounds, the average programme size was nearly £8million.

Did SRB money target deprivation in the North East?

2.24 Table 2-3 shows the proportion of a sub-region’s SOAs in the lowest quartile of deprivation versus the proportion of SRB funding received. For example, the North East has 753 SOAs in the bottom quartile of the IMD rankings for England. Of this number, 45 (or 6%) are found in Northumberland. In comparison, Northumberland received 8% of the North East’s SRB funding.

Table 2-3 – Levels of deprivation vs. SRB spend (Source: DCLG)

Sub-region SOAs in lowest quartile of IMD

Proportion of NE total

SRB allocation

(£m) Proportion of NE total

Variance (percentage

points)

Tyne and Wear 376 50% 345 53% 3%

Northumberland 45 6% 48 8% 2%

Tees Valley 193 26% 164 25% 0%

County Durham 139 18% 79 12% -6%

North East 753 100% 636* 100% 0% * This figure does not include spend on projects carried out across the region as a whole.

2.25 This data is better represented graphically (Figure 2-9). County Durham received less SRB money than might have been expected based on deprivation data. The reasons for this are unclear. It may be that in a semi-rural sub region such as County Durham deprivation in some areas was masked when data at a local authority level was analysed. This logic, however, would not explain how Northumberland, a more rural sub region, received more SRB money than one might expect. The more likely explanation is that it was only by Rounds 5 and 6 that Durham had developed a comprehensive, county-wide, approach to regeneration and started to secure significant SRB monies.



Figure 2-9 – Level of deprivation (SOA lower quartile) vs. SRB spend (%)

-8%

-6%

-4%

-2%

0%

2%

4%

6%

Tyne and Wear Northumberland Tees Valley County Durham

Sub-region

Varia

nce

(%)

2.26 Figure 2-10 replicates the same approach, but this time examining levels of acute deprivation and SRB spend. We have defined acute deprivation as SOAs in the lowest 10% of the IMD rankings for England. Using this measure, Tyne and Wear and Northumberland both received more of the North East’s SRB money than their proportion of acutely deprived SOAs would suggest. Tees Valley which has 31% of the North East’s acutely deprived SOAs, received only 26% of the SRB allocated across the region.

Figure 2-10 – Level of deprivation (SOA lowest 10%) vs. SRB spend (%)

-8.0%

-6.0%

-4.0%

-2.0%

0.0%

2.0%

4.0%

6.0%

8.0%

Tyne and Wear Northumberland County Durham Tees Valley

Sub-region

Varia

nce

(%)



2.27 There is an argument that the differences in SRB allocation are not significant, indeed only a few percentage points here and there. However, a small percentage of a large funding pot is still considerable. In the North East a one percentage point difference in total SRB allocation actually equates to a difference of £6.5m.

2.28 It is also worth noting that the level of resolution now available (i.e. SOA level data) was not available for much of the SRB programme. So understanding very specific cases of deprivation and targeting money accordingly was not so easy. Other factors will have come into play, such as the extent of funding that was bid for by individual partnerships. It may be, for example, that partnerships in Tyne and Wear applied for proportionately more money than those partnerships in Tees Valley, although there is no specific evidence to suggest this.

Conclusions

2.29 The creation of SRB was designed to be a simplification of regeneration assistance, with an important new focus on partnership working that remains with us today. Especially in early rounds, SRB was characterised by a ‘bottom-up’ approach to project development, driven by the bidding process for funds. The change in regeneration and economic development policy characterised by the creation of the RDAs has to a certain extent turned this approach on its head. Top-down strategic planning and regional coordination of regeneration has replaced the bottom-up SRB approach, and there is now a much greater focus on the delivery of economic growth as a key priority. As a consequence, SRB legacy programmes struggle to fit neatly into the framework of regional economic strategies.

2.30 The national picture demonstrates quite a variety in the amounts of funding provided to regions across the life of SRB, and between rounds. However, based on an estimate of the North East’s needs measured by the extent of deprivation, the region has certainly not lost out to other regions. Its proportion of the total SRB pot seems about right. Differences in the amount of funding the North East received round by round do not appear to be indicative of any underlying problems.

2.31 Sub-regionally, and based on IMD rankings, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear benefited from slightly more SRB funding than the Tees Valley and



County Durham. While the explanations for this are not clear, it is likely to be a mixture of issues, such as the extent of funds bid for and the preparedness of individual partnerships and sub regions to apply for SRB monies. There is no evidence to suggest that allocation of SRB funding was skewed in favour of particular areas within the North East.



3 SPEND AND OUTPUTS

3.1 In this Section we review the spend and output data for the SRB programme in the North East.

Methodology for assessing spend and outputs

Lack of a comprehensive data source

3.2 SRB in the North East was delivered by numerous partnerships that were directly accountable to Government Office in the first instance, and latterly One NorthEast. Partnerships were individually responsible for recording spend and outputs and commissioning evaluators to assess their progress. The dispersed, localised nature of SRB partnerships and the arms-length monitoring by GONE and One NorthEast means there is no single, comprehensive, record of SRB performance in the region. This is a significant weakness in terms of understanding SRB performance at the regional level, working from the bottom up. However, based on our experience of working elsewhere, the North East is no different from other regional SRB programmes in this respect

Sourcing SRB reports

3.3 The only definitive source of information on outputs and spend are the final evaluation reports for SRB programmes. For the purposes of this evaluation, we have collated information from as many final evaluation reports as could be sourced. Many of the reports were held centrally by One NorthEast or were available publicly. In other cases, local authorities or evaluation consultancies were contacted to provide the requisite reports. In some cases, we have had to rely on information from précis documents, which summarise main evaluation reports, but do not always provide comprehensive information on spend and outputs.

3.4 Over the course of the evaluation, we received 38 final or précis reports. It is unclear how many reports are missing – there is no central record of the number of reports. The most effective gauge of ‘completeness’ is the proportion of the total SRB spend for which we have received reports. Table 3-1 highlights the forecast SRB spend and the spend accounted for in received reports, round by round. Annex B contains a list of reports received.



Table 3-1 – Forecast and recorded SRB spend by round (Source: DCLG and SRB reports) 1 2 3 4 5 6 Total

Forecast spend (£m) 81 161 141 21 120 128 651*

Spend from received reports (£m)

32 96 82 10 90 145 455

% of total 40% 60% 58% 50% 75% 113% 70% * Rounded total

3.5 Overall, reports were received for 70% of the forecast SRB spend. Reports for the earlier rounds of SRB were harder to source. The 113% figure for Round 6 reflects that in some cases earlier SRB programmes were combined within a Round 6 programme, and it has not been possible to disentangle them completely.

3.6 At a sub-regional level, there was a mixed response (Table 3-2). For County Durham, for example, we have reports accounting for 86% of all SRB spend; more than half of that total is made up from the final report for the major rounds 5 and 6 programme. For Tees Valley, reports were only available for 52% of SRB sub-regional spend. Many of the missing reports are from the earlier rounds of SRB, before One NorthEast took over stewardship of the programme.

Table 3-2 – Forecast and recorded SRB spend (Source: DCLG & SRB reports) County

Durham N’umberland Tees Valley Tyne & Wear NE Total

Total forecast spend

79 48 164 345 14 650

Spend from received reports (£m)

68 32 85 257 13 455

% of total 86% 67% 52% 74% 93% 70%

3.7 Reports for a number of large programmes account for a significant proportion of the missing total e.g. South Bank from Hope to Reality (£18m); Grangetown SRB programmes (£16m); and Winning Back Neighbourhoods (£9m). For some other programmes, such as Sunderland SRB 6, final evaluations have yet to take place, so output and spend data was not available at the time of writing.



Analysing the data

3.8 Data was analysed using an Excel template, which has been provided to One NorthEast separately. Developing consistency across programmes was particularly challenging due to the variability in the quality of submitted evaluation reports. Too often there was a complete absence of appropriate, or easily interpretable data on programme performance. Even when such data was included, it was often in a very rudimentary format, with little additional breakdown of information, such as spend by SRB theme or even spend by SRB round.

3.9 Overall, our experience from elsewhere suggests that sourcing 70% of the total output and spend data, using a ‘bottom-up approach’ (i.e. collating data from individual reports, rather than one central repository), is a reasonably good achievement. While the story for the earlier rounds of SRB will be patchy, we believe that there is enough information to draw broad conclusions for the programme as whole. Nevertheless, we would attach a health warning to some of the data results. As noted earlier, the available datasets were often less than fulsome and on occasions we have had to interpret the numbers from less than perfect information sources.

Programme level data

Numbers of projects

3.10 A common observation among SRB evaluation reports was the sheer number of projects carried out within any individual SRB programme. Out of the 21 programmes for which data was available, there were a total of 1,384 individual projects. This equates to roughly 65 projects per programme. There were six programmes with over 100 projects and the East Gateshead programme contained 200 discrete projects. The average cost per project across the programmes sampled was £172,000.

3.11 Figure 3-1 shows a clear correlation between the amount of SRB funding and the number of projects within a programme. The only real outliers are the Tackling Fear of Crime Programme which had 180 projects, at a cost of £10.6m and, at the other end of the scale, the Sustaining the Promise programme (£15m and 9 projects) and the Sunderland Work and Learn Partnership (£17.5m and 22 projects).



3.12 One of the regularly cited benefits of SRB was the flexibility and scope it provided for partnerships to fund regeneration activities, very often on a relatively small scale. Offset against this are the deadweight and transaction costs associated with funding multiple projects. With smaller projects there are multiple staffing and reporting requirements which all take SRB funding away from the frontline.

Figure 3-1 – SRB spend and project numbers (Source: SRB Evaluations)

0

50

100

150

200

250

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

SRB funding

Num

ber

of p

roje

cts

3.13 There is no ‘ideal’ balance between programme size and project volume. Certainly, there are simple economic benefits to funding fewer and larger projects. However, many of the impacts ascribed to SRB were because it responded to very localised needs, needs which may not have been addressed by larger interventions.

SRB leverage

3.14 One of the key objectives of SRB funding was to galvanise other public and private partners into investing in regeneration. Table 3-3 shows the forecast leverage levels for SRB funding in the North East.

3.15 The forecast figure of just under 3:1 compares with a ratio of around 4:1 across the SRB programme nationally. Interestingly, the expected leverage ratio in the North East did not increase over the lifetime of the programme. As partnerships matured and became more experienced one might have expected they would be in a better position to leverage funds for their



programmes. Alternatively, they may have become more realistic about their chances of securing other funding streams.

Table 3-3 – Forecast leverage for North East SRB (Source: DCLG)

Round Total programme (£m) SRB (£m) Leverage (£m) Leverage ratio

1 290 81 209 2.59

2 668 160 508 3.16

3 590 141 449 3.17

4 76 21 55 2.69

5 463 120 343 2.87

6 444 128 316 2.48

Total 2,531 651* 1,880 2.89

* Rounded total

3.16 Across the sub-regions there was a marked difference in the forecast levels of leverage (Table 3-4). The forecast for Northumberland was only £1.47 per pound of SRB spend, compared with £3.56 for Tyne and Wear. This is explained by the different types of SRB programmes delivered across the sub-regions. In Tyne and Wear, capital-intensive programmes often focussed on town centre or urban regeneration were magnets for other private and public monies. In Northumbria and Durham, for example, the forecast spend for the major Round 5 and 6 projects was 55% and 60% revenue spend, respectively. Revenue-heavy projects, by their nature, appear to have struggled to attract private monies and to some extent other public funds.

Table 3-4 – Forecast SRB leverage by sub-region

Round County Durham N’berland Tees Valley Tyne and Wear Total

1 3.97 1.82 4.65 1.46 2.59

2 3.28 3.50 1.96 3.86 3.16

3 2.44 2.83 2.02 3.57 3.17

4 0.49 2.04 2.00 3.14 2.69

5 1.86 0.92 1.96 5.03 2.87

6 1.50 1.00 2.21 3.73 2.48

Average 2.36 1.47 2.32 3.56 2.89

3.17 Table 3-5 highlights the actual SRB leverage achieved, by sub-region, and compares the forecast and actual leverage ratios. Leverage data was only available for £412m of SRB funding.



Table 3-5 – Actual SRB leverage (Source: SRB evaluations and DCLG)

Sub-region SRB (£m)

Private (£m)

Public (£m)

Actual ratio

Forecast ratio Variance

County Durham 67 25 76 1.51 2.36 -0.85

Tees Valley 85 24 73 1.14 2.320 -1.18

Tyne and Wear 227 273 281* 2.45 3.56 -1.12

Northumberland 33 22 12 1.04 1.41 -0.37

Total 412 345 442 1.91 2.89 -0.98

* This figure includes £110m leverage for South Tyneside Enterprise Partnership SRB programmes 1-6, for which there is no public/private breakdown. Also, for the Round 3 programme (South Shields) the leverage of £76million is estimated from a mid-term business plan.

3.18 Across the sub-region the average leverage achieved was £1.91 per pound of SRB, comprising 84 pence of private money and £1.07 of public money. Actual leverage in Tyne and Wear and Tees Valley was more than £1 lower than expected. Northumberland was the closest to achieving its target leverage level, albeit a relatively low target to begin with. It should be noted that in their initial SRB bids, forecast leverage included direct and indirect leverage. However, as SRB evolved, partnerships were increasingly encouraged to only record direct leverage for which they were directly accountable. This may explain some of the discrepancy between the forecast and actual private sector leverage figures.

3.19 The implications of this difference between forecast to actual leverage are significant in monetary terms. The difference between the two equates to some £640m of anticipated funding that failed to be leveraged into the region’s SRB programmes – roughly the same amount as the entire regional SRB budget allocation (£650m). However, it should be noted that much of this expected leverage may not have been lost to the North East region – certainly much of the public money will have been spent anyway, but on non-SRB programmes. The low levels of private sector leverage are probably a reflection of the challenge of attracting private sector capital to local, grassroots regeneration programmes.

3.20 Putting aside the difference between forecast and actual leverage, it is hard to judge the region’s performance relative to the rest of the country. The recent national SRB evaluation cited a leverage ratio of 4:1 across the SRB programme as a whole and notes that this was “a very impressive….ratio”. On this basis, the North East would appear to have performed poorly. However, this is a forecast figure only, a point that has since been corroborated by the report’s authors. As far as we are aware, no national data exists on actual SRB leverage. On this basis, it would be unfair to



compare the North East’s performance with that cited in the national evaluation.

3.21 There is a clear correlation between the levels of SRB spend and the actual leverage achieved (Figure 3-2). The only two significant outliers were the Graingertown project and the South Tyneside SRB programme, both of which had significant physical regeneration elements, which attracted high levels of private sector spend.

Figure 3-2 – SRB spend and total leverage (Source: SRB Evaluations)

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

0 10 20 30 40 50SRB Spend (£s million)

Tota

l lev

erag

e £s

mill

ion

County Durham

Northumberland

Tees Valley

Tyne and Wear

Graingertown

South Tyneside (1-6)

Durham (5&6)

3.22 The final analysis of SRB leverage examines whether or not the leverage ratio increases with the amount of SRB funding. Put another way, are bigger programmes able to use scale advantages to leverage more external funding for each pound of SRB money? The answer, looking at Figure 3-3 would appear to be no. For example, Building a Brighter Future, a relatively small programme in Northumberland (£1.7million SRB) achieved a leverage ratio of above £2.50 per SRB pound. The County Durham 5&6 SRB programmes received above £40million of SRB money and achieved a leverage ratio of £1.8 per pound of SRB money.


24

Figure 3-3 – SRB leverage ratio (Source: SRB evaluations)*

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

0

Leve

rage

(£s)

per

SR

B £

County Durham

Northumberland

* This graph

SRB Ou

County Durham (5&6)

3.23 In the revarious S

The SRB

3.24 The outpthe progrecord thrange ofand comthat the nbureaucrrather thdictate hmessagereport ouof partnetaxpayerbut againsake’.

Building a brighterfuture

York Consulting LLP

10 20 30 40 50

Programme size by SRB £s

Tees Valley

Tyne and Wear

doesn’t include data from the Graingertown project

tputs

mainder of Section 3 we analyse the Output performance for the RB programmes.

output regime

uts used to measure SRB performance evolved over the lifetime of ramme. In the earlier rounds programmes went to great lengths to eir performance against more than 60 output measures across a

areas such as business support; job creation; skills and education; munity development. A consistent message from consultations was umber of outputs made performance measurement an unwieldy and atic process. Indeed, some partnerships felt that the output regime, an measuring what was happening on the ground, actually began to ow and why projects were being delivered. Another consistent was the amount of time and effort it took partnerships to record and tputs. It should be noted that these observations were in the context rships which fully understood the need for proper accountability of s’ money. There was not a resistance to proper monitoring per se, st what some partnerships saw as ‘counting numbers, for counting’s



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3.25 By the later rounds of SRB, the number of output categories had not changed markedly. What had changed was the oversight of the programme. In 2003, One NorthEast informed partnerships that “the agency only required Tier 3 outputs and that SRB outputs are no longer required5”. By the time the RDAs had shifted towards a Core Outputs measuring regime, there were only six SRB outputs that could be counted towards RDA delivery targets6. These were:

number of jobs created, 1A (i);

number of jobs safeguarded, 1A (ii);

number of people trained obtaining qualifications, 1C;

number of businesses supported surviving for 52 weeks, 2C (ii);

area of land improved/reclaimed, 6b; and

number of community enterprise start-ups sustained for 52 weeks, 8E (i).

3.26 This evaluation has focused on the core six output categories that are relevant to the One NorthEast. By comparison, the national evaluation of the SRB programme doesn’t attempt to analyse all the programme’s outputs.

Gauging optimism bias

3.27 The national evaluation of SRB makes reference to the possibility of optimism bias among partners in setting targets for SRB programmes, i.e. that partners overestimate the possible impacts of their programmes. However, a review of evidence from case study areas suggested this wasn’t the case. Quite the opposite in fact, with the report noting that partners consistently under-estimated programme performance – interestingly, the report doesn’t consider the possibility of errors in output measurement, such as double counting.

3.28 A look at the evidence for the SRB programme in the North East suggests a similar story (Table 3-6). In particular, partnerships significantly under-estimated the output performance for people trained and land reclaimed. Only for businesses survivals did not reach their output targets.

5 Preparing for Change – Board Meeting Note (June 2003) 6 Core Outputs – Technical Note - OffPAT



Table 3-6 – Actual vs. forecast outputs (Source: SRB reports) Output category North East performance

Jobs created/safeguarded 117%

New businesses created 102%

New businesses surviving 72%

Number of people trained 143%

Land reclaimed/improved 158%

Community enterprise start-ups 109%

Gross outputs

3.29 Table 3-7 shows the SRB outputs for the North East programme. These outputs account for £409m of SRB spend or 63% of the forecast £650m total SRB spend.

Table 3-7 – Gross SRB outputs (Source: SRB evaluations)

Output category County Durham N’umberland Tees

Valley Tyne and

Wear NE Total

Jobs created/ safeguarded

1A (i and ii) 4,299 3,731 4,847 15,892 36 28,806

New business start ups 2C (i) 885 1,343 574 2,007 30 4,839

Businesses surviving 52 weeks 2c (ii) 147 785 56 144 7 1,139

No. of people trained 1C 12,497 237 6,319 43,456 586 63,095

Area of land retained/improved 6B 38 19 111 253 0 421

Community start-ups surviving 52 weeks 8E (i)

63 2 5 63 0 133

Moving from gross to nets

3.30 The figures in Table 3-7 above are gross figures and take no account of factors like additionality and deadweight. SRB cannot claim full attribution of these outputs and there will have been a host of other factors and influences which will have affected output performance. However, at the time many SRB programmes were being delivered, there was no real guidance to partnerships on how to make gross to net adjustments. As such, only one of the evaluation reports we reviewed attempted to make gross to net



adjustments for SRB outputs and there is no detailed explanation of the methodology.

3.31 There are two main reference sources on making gross to net adjustments for SRB outputs. The recent RDA Impact Study7 provides some proxies for gross to net analysis of SRB outputs, based on a review of documentary evidence from a range of sources. The recent national evaluation of SRB also provides its own methodology for calculating net SRB outputs.

3.32 For the sake of consistency and comparison, this evaluation uses the same approach as that employed in the national SRB evaluation. The national study was specifically tasked with examining gross to net in SRB and employed a rigorous bottom-up approach including interviewing SRB managers to develop additionality metrics, for example. As we understand it, the RDA study, while very comprehensive, relied on second-hand documentary and programme level evidence to develop its SRB proxies.

Additionality

3.33 Table 3-8 outlines the additionality measures, as stated in the national evaluation report. So, for jobs created/safeguarded 42% of the gross outputs claimed can genuinely be attributed to SRB spend. These metrics have been derived in conversation with SRB managers and partners who were asked to what extent outputs would have been delivered without SRB money. These opinions are obviously subjective and the national report notes they are “subject to a wide margin of error”.

3.34 Applying these proxies to the North East data is not ideal; levels of additionality will have varied from programme to programme. However, in the absence of alternatives and given the resources implications of generating a distinct set of proxies for the North East programme, we have used the additionality metrics stated in Table 3-8.

7 England’s Regional Development Agencies – RDA Impact Report (2006)



Table 3-8 – Additionality metrics (Source: National SRB evaluation)

Output category % of outputs that are additional

Jobs created/safeguarded 1A (i and ii) 42%

People trained with qualifications 1C 56%

New business start-ups 2C (i) 45%

New businesses surviving 52 weeks 2C (ii) 44%

Area of land retained/improved 6A 76%

Community enterprise start-ups 8A 78%

3.35 Applying these measures to the outputs stated in Table 3-7 provides a view of the net outputs for the North East SRB programme (Table 3-9).

Table 3-9 – Net outputs for SRB in the North East (Source: SRB reports)

Output category County Durham N’berland Tees

Valley Tyne and

Wear NE Total

Jobs created/safeguarded 1A (i and ii)

1,809 1,570 2,040 6,688 15 12,122

New business start ups 2C (i) 495 751 321 1,122 17 2,706

Businesses surviving 52 weeks 2c (ii) 66 353 25 65 3 513

No. of people trained 1C 5,499 104 2,780 19,121 258 27,762

Area of land retained/improved 6B 29 14 85 192 0 320


49 2 4 49 0 104

Value for money

3.36 In assessing the value for money SRB in the North East has achieved, we again make comparison with the national evaluation. The national report notes that not all the spending that the public sector contributed to SRB programmes will be additional to an area. So, in some cases the public sector spend leveraged would have been spent in the area anyway, irrespective of SRB. The national evaluation estimates the likely additionality of public sector spending as being between 43% and 52%, depending on the level of geography being considered – the smaller the area, the more likely public sector spend will have been additional. Given the large scale geographies this evaluation is working to we have used the 43% additionality estimate for public sector spend. Table 3-10 outlines the total SRB spend



and net public sector spend for each sub-region for which output data was available.

Table 3-10 – SRB spend and net additional public expenditure (all rounds) Sub-region SRB (£m) Net public (£m)

County Durham 57 28

Northumberland 33 5

Tees Valley 85 31

Tyne and Wear 234 114

All - -

Total 409 179

3.37 Having established the net additional public sector spend, the next step is to calculate the benefits realised per £20,000 this public spend. Table 3-11 shows the performance of the North East versus that of the English average for the various output measures.

Table 3-11 – Estimates of net additional benefits per £20k of SRB and public spend (Source: North East SRB evaluations and National SRB Evaluation)

Output category County Durham N’umberland

Tees Valley

Tyne and Wear

NE average

National average

Jobs created/safeguarded 1A (i and ii)

0.43 0.82 0.35 0.38 0.41 0.91

New business start ups 2C (i) 0.12 0.39 0.06 0.06 0.09 0.12

Businesses surviving 52 weeks 2c (ii) 0.02 0.19 0.00 0.00 0.02 -

No. of people trained with quals. 1C 1.29 0.05 0.48 1.10 0.94 1.01

Area of land retained/improved 6B 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.02


0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 -

3.38 In terms of jobs created, the North East as a whole underperformed compared with the national average, 0.41 jobs per £20k of public money, compared with a national average of 0.91 jobs at the UK level. For some of the other measures, the North East SRB programme has provided reasonably good value for money, at or around the level of the national average e.g. number of people trained with qualifications.



Conclusions

3.39 The availability of evaluation reports for individual SRB programmes has been quite poor, with only 70% of spend accounted for, although there is no evidence to suggest that this is any better or worse than the national picture. Nevertheless, this potentially leaves the North East without a record for £192m of SRB spend. Record keeping deserves to be reviewed as a consequence.

3.40 Despite the problems with collecting data, some clear messages come through. On funding:

• revenue projects tended to struggle to secure leverage, compared to physical investment initiatives;

• leveraging private sector funds was challenging;

• overall, the difference between forecast and actual leverage amounted to a ‘loss’ of £650m in anticipated funding;

• there is no correlation between scale of programme and extent of leverage – a large programme does not necessarily bring in proportionately more funding from other sources;

• Gross programme outputs exceeded programme expectations across all but new business survivals (check for community start-ups); and

• the programme has done reasonably well in terms of value for money compared with the average for the SRB programme across England.



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4 SUB-REGIONAL CASE STUDIES

Introduction

4.1 In this Section, we look in more detail at SRB across the four sub-regions of the North East.

4.2 The case studies are designed to take a strategic level view of SRB delivery and performance and impact in each sub-region, based on the following:

interviews with key stakeholders and partners;

interviews with board members;

interviews with project delivery partners and the VCS sector;

reviews of available evaluation reports and data; and

an analysis of contextual socio-economic data.

4.3 From the outset, we would stress that the case studies are not a comprehensive review of SRB in its entirety for each sub-region. We would also note that for many of the earlier SRB programmes staff are no longer in place or evaluation reports were not available, so views on earlier rounds are often less than fulsome. The case studies are designed to provide a compendium review of SRB and to reflect on the following key areas:

key programmes and spend;

socio-economic context; partnership working;

management and delivery;

good practice and lessons learnt;

evidence of mainstreaming; and

the demise of SRB and its impact on the VCS sector.



County Durham

Overview of SRB programmes and spend

4.4 Over the lifetime of SRB, County Durham was awarded £79m funding for 15 SRB programmes. This equates to £5.3million per programme funded. Table 4-1 highlights the top five programmes by SRB allocation.

Table 4-1- Major SRB programmes in County Durham (Source: DCLG) Programme name SRB Round SRB allocation (£ 000s)

Integrated regeneration in County Durham 5 26,248

Promoting strong, healthy and safe communities in County Durham 6 20,000

Easington SRB 1 4,640

Sustaining a community (Shildon) 3 4,540

Sherburn rd SRB 2 4,200

4.5 The round 5 programme ‘Integrated regeneration in County Durham’ and the round 6 programme ‘Promoting strong, healthy and safe communities’ were the two major SRB allocations to the sub-region. Combined they make up 58% of the SRB money awarded to County Durham – see Table 4-2. The earlier rounds of SRB in County Durham were exemplified by smaller bids, often for focussed area regeneration schemes, submitted by specific local authorities – for example the Round 1 Easington SRB programme.

Table 4-2 – County Durham SRB allocation (Source: DCLG)

SRB Round SRB allocation (£s 000)

% of sub-regional total

No. of programmes

Average per programme (£s

000)

1 14,420 18% 5 2,884

2 7,200 9% 2 3,600

3 11,300 14% 4 2,825

4 155 0.2% 1 155

5 26,460 33% 2 13,230

6 20,000 25% 1 20,000

Total/average 79,535 100% 15 5,302



Socio-economic trends

4.6 Table 4-3 outlines the trends in key socio-economic areas that SRB sought to affect over the lifetime of the programme. We do not seek to infer SRB impact from this data. While there is a correlation between these data trends and the delivery of SRB, there were simply too many other factors in play to attribute direct causality of impact to the SRB programme.

Table 4-3 – Socio-economic trends (Source: NOMIS data) 1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)

England 1,873,261 864,010 703,107 -62%

North East 126,651 72,483 45,131 -64% Claimant Count

County Durham 17,849 10,531 6,307 -65%

1998 2001 2005 Change (98-05)

England 41.3% 45.4% 48.7% 7.4%

North East 36.7% 40.6% 45.2% 8.5% % of working age population with NVQ3 County Durham 36.1% 40.2% 44.7% 8.6%

1998 2001 2005 Change (98-05)

England 339 382 436 97

North East 302 334 384 81 Average weekly pay (£s)

County Durham 300 321 368 68

1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)

England 48,383,500 49,233,300 50,431,700 4%

North East 2,582,700 2,543,400 2,558,300 -1% Population

County Durham 499,900 495,100 499,800 0%

1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)

England 71.6% 75.0% 75.1% 3.5%

North East 65.6% 71.9% 69.4% 3.8% Employment rate (%)

County Durham 64.6% 67.3% 70.2% 5.6%

1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)

England 1,362,780 1,491,410 1,581,360 16%

North East 42,460 44,000 46,865 10% VAT registered businesses

County Durham 8,670 9,000 9,795 13%

4.7 Across County Durham, the data suggests an improvement against many of the above measures. For example, the proportion of the working age population with an NVQ Level 3 qualification was 36.1%, by 2005 this had risen to 44.7% - although this figure is till a full 4% lower than the national average.



4.8 The national evaluation of SRB uses population movement as a guide to the extent to which areas have been ‘turned around’ – it should be noted that this measure is used for small localised areas where SRB money has been focussed, rather than whole sub-regions. However, we note that the population in County Durham has stayed relatively constant over the period, compared with a slight decline in the North East as a whole.

4.9 One area where Durham has fared poorly is the average weekly wage. While it increased by £68 in Durham over 10 years, from £300 to £368, across the North East as a whole, the average weekly wage increased from £302 to £384, an increase of £82. For England as a whole, over the same period, average weekly wages increased by £97.

Context for SRB

4.10 SRB in County Durham operated in two distinct phases. For the first 4 rounds, local authorities made individual bids for funding to the Government Office. By rounds 5 and 6, the County was strongly encouraged to scale up its bids into a county-wide SRB programme. This shift in emphasis was not unique to Durham and Northumberland in the North East also submitted county-wide bids during the later SRB rounds. The shift towards an amalgamated SRB approach was not without its challenges. Indeed, a number of consultees noted some initial resistance on the part of local authorities to such approach, perhaps fearing they would be marginalised. In the final reckoning 60% of SRB from the Round 5 and 6 SRB bid was shared among seven local authorities proportionately, according to the number of deprived wards in the local authority. The remaining 40% was spent on thematic projects delivered across the county.

Reflections on the partnership working

4.11 The final evaluation of the County Durham round 5 and 6 SRB programme notes that ‘SRB is disparate and complex……the (partnership) structures set up to implement the scheme reflect that complexity’8. In essence, the County Council had responsibility for the oversight and direction of the programme, with delivery responsibility devolved to ten local authority partnerships. Beneath this structure were sub-partnerships responsible for

8 Integrated Regeneration in County Durham – Final Evaluation Report



delivering specific projects. Thematic projects were managed via a Thematic Project Approval Panel.

4.12 On reflection, consultees thought the tripartite of County, Local Authority and SRB Partnerships worked well, but it was not without its issues. A number of consultees did recognise the work put in at strategic level by county council staff to make the rounds 5 and 6 partnership approach work. However, it was also suggested that the County Durham Partnership was a somewhat artificial creation, developed to secure SRB funding. Certainly, the impetus of the main partnership ebbed towards the end of the SRB programme, shifting meetings to a twice yearly basis, rather than the quarterly basis during the early years. There was also some suggestion that rather than being able to focus on a strategic programme of regeneration across County, the Council had to give each local authority “its slice of the cake”. However, the final evaluation does note that the delivery of seven local packages meant that local needs could be properly targeted and addressed.

4.13 The final evaluation notes that the lack of a genuine rationale, above and beyond financial imperatives, meant that the County Partnership “struggled to fulfil its strategic role”.9 However, it should also be reflected that without the marriage of convenience of bringing partners together at a County level, the sub-region would probably have received only limited SRB funds in rounds 5 and 6.

4.14 At a local level, partnerships were recognised as one of the “enduring legacies” of SRB. As with other sub-regions, the development of local partnerships not only acted as the vehicle through which to deliver SRB, but also as a means to develop the capacity and skills of local people. Despite the demise of SRB, some of the partnerships established through SRB are still up and running and sourcing funds from elsewhere. For example, in Wear Valley the Crook partnership now delivers Big Lottery funded projects and the Bishop Auckland partnership is undertaking the renovation of a church to develop into a community centre. In Easington, the SRB partnership has outlived the SRB programme and is now focussed on delivering programmes from other funding sources. However, it was also recognised that increasingly, post SRB, some partnerships are fragile, relying on the capacity of single individuals to keep them going.

9 IBID



Management of SRB

4.15 The management of the SRB 5 and 6 programme in Durham is thought to have worked well, this despite the devolved system of delivery at a sub-regional level. The final evaluation reports that the scheme was managed in a “flexible and responsive way”10.

4.16 However, the two tier system did mean an unwieldy level of bureaucracy with often a duplication of effort and time delays as projects had to filter through local and county level systems. Certainly, there was a feeling from project delivery staff that the processes in place for securing funding were, especially in the early days, very bureaucratic. One consultee noted that “once you got the money it worked extremely well, but getting it was a challenge”.

4.17 As with all programmes, there were some problems along the way and the drive to achieve early spend targets and deliver outputs was thought to have been a challenge for what was an inexperienced area, in terms of delivering major regeneration programmes.

Impact and value for money

4.18 The County Durham programme differed from some of the larger programmes in more urban areas in that it was largely revenue focussed. The rounds 5 and 6 programmes were felt to have “supported many disadvantaged people and communities and made a real difference”11. It also notes that SRB is not the end of the road and that regeneration is a process that happens over many years. Other earlier programmes are less sanguine about the impact of SRB, for example the South Bishop Auckland programme evaluation reflected that while the SRB programme had gone some way to improving the local environment, severe deprivation still existed. In such cases, it is perhaps worth noting that in very few areas across the North East was SRB successful in turning an area around – the funds simply weren’t of a sufficient scale to achieve this. Where partnerships set very bold objectives for SRB programmes, a failure to achieve these objectives is perhaps more a reflection on partners’ optimism bias, rather than necessarily being indicative of a poor programme.

10 IBID 11 IBID



4.19 It was noted by one consultee that in some deprived areas, despite SRB money, nothing had really improved. There is perhaps a case to be made that SRB prevented further decline in run-down areas, but SRB schemes did set out to improve areas, rather than just arresting a decline. The question was raised as to whether, with hindsight, SRB money would have been spent in such deprived areas, when there was little chance of delivering significant impacts? The feeling was that in the current climate of ‘targeting opportunity’, probably not. However, the consultee noted that “doing nothing is not an option” in such areas SRB will not have necessarily failed if it generates civic pride and feeling among communities that they are “being invested in”.

4.20 One of the most significant impacts of SRB funding in County Durham has been the development of human capital, not only within community and VCS sectors, but also within local authorities. To some extent this human capital will endure, especially in those areas where partnerships are continuing, post SRB, to deliver projects in their localities. However, there is a concern across the sub-region much of this capacity will be lost. Certainly, within many local authorities and at the County level SRB staff have been retrenched. One consultee noted that if the regeneration infrastructure that now exists was in place at the beginning of SRB, the programme would have been much more effective. The concern among some consultees was that the capacity to deliver regeneration programmes in County Durham will be lost and that some of the softer impacts of SRB will not be fully realised.

4.21 A familiar refrain during consultations and in documentary evidence was that SRB was very output focussed, with little emphasis on measuring the outcomes and impacts of programmes. The drive to measure outputs was, with hindsight, probably overplayed, but at the time the output counting regime was the modus operandi for SRB performance measurement. However, it does mean that a retrospective review of impact is challenging.

4.22 The extent to which SRB projects in County Durham were truly additional and delivered value for money is variable. One of the cited benefits of SRB as a funding stream was its flexibility, such that local authorities could use SRB funding to meet their own objectives. However, there was a feeling among a number of stakeholders that some SRB projects were, in effect, substituting for local authority spending. There is no hard evidence to back up the claim of substitution, but certainly some of the thematic projects funded perhaps could or should have been delivered using mainstream funds. This observation is not unique to County Durham, indeed, it has been a consistent



theme across the region that local authorities did try to direct SRB funds towards projects that directly served their own objectives.

4.23 Interestingly, in one of the capital projects the programme did fund and which attracted significant private sector interest (the refurbishment of council housing in Parkside) was such a success that the SRB are now in the process of clawing back SRB money that was used to plug a funding gap.

Mainstreaming of SRB

4.24 As with other sub-regions, there was limited hard evidence of SRB projects that had been mainstreamed. Why wasn’t mainstreaming more common? The feeling was that SRB, as a programme, was designed to ‘look down’ to the grassroots level, rather than upwards to a more strategic level. This downward focus was one of the reasons why SRB was successful, but also why very few programmes were mainstreamed. Further, the lack of capacity at the VCS and community levels meant that projects lacked the skills required to take projects forward to statutory bodies, post SRB. One consultee noted that it’s very hard for statutory bodies, with targets to meet, to take the time out to work with the VCS.

4.25 However, this is not to say that mainstreaming did not take place. Age Concern Durham had a number of successful projects, initially funded by SRB, which are now being supported by mainstream partners.

Age Concern Durham

Age Concern in Durham ran a range of successful local and county-wide SRB projects, some of which have been mainstreamed. For example, the ‘Message in a Bottle Scheme’ was set up to provide emergency services with instant access to patients’ details on entering a property. Patients recorded their medical details and kept them in a bottle in the fridge and a sticker was placed on the front door to alert the emergency services. The initial order of 42,000 bottles ran out in 3 weeks.

SRB funding allowed Age Concern to develop a platform from which to develop their capacity and portfolio of projects. Since the demise of SRB, Age Concern has worked successfully to deliver services for the Primary Care Trust.



Other successful projects continued post-SRB include the inter-generational project which works to bring young and old people together to break down inter-generational barriers. The project was very successful and was recognised at a national level as a best practice project. However, there was a desire among the project volunteers to develop more formal skills to run the project. Age Concern approached the Council to fund the project, but to no avail. However, a successful grant application to the Northern Rock Trust means Age Concern are now able to deliver formal training for their volunteers.

4.26 In Derwentside a number of projects have been successfully mainstreamed. For example, the Widening Horizons project which works to provide diversionary activities for young people is now being supported by Durham County Council. At a thematic level, the Focus on Learning programme has been successful in mainstreaming some of its SRB funded projects.

Focus on Learning

Before SRB funding, Durham already had a well developed family literacy programme in place. However, SRB funding allowed the project to develop a much wider range of activities for family learning, some of which have been incorporated into the mainstream, post SRB.

For example, SRB funded a partnership with Sunderland Football Club to develop family learning football courses. SRB funding allowed the Focus on Learning team to be more innovative in their approaches than mainstream funding might otherwise would have allowed.

At an operational level, SRB funding allowed the programme to develop cross-county operational groups to help run family learning programmes. Since the demise of SRB, these operational groups are still up and running and are being funded by the Durham County Council.

The demise of SRB

4.27 The vast majority of SRB commitments have now been delivered in County Durham and during consultations there was very much the feel of a



programme slowly being wound down. Parts of the County are in a position to take advantage of other funding streams such as LEGI and Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (NRF), but it was recognised that these are much less flexible funding sources than SRB was. However, in many parts of the County there will be no programmes to supplement for the demise of SRB. Certainly, there was very little expectation that Single Pot monies could or will fund any of the projects set up by SRB. Despite misgivings about the demise of SRB, partners were well informed about the wind down of SRB.

Community Development Fund

The Community Development Fund (CDF) was set up to provide financial assistance and support to local community groups across the County. Groups could apply for up to £10,000 to assist them with a specific project. The idea was that CDF money would act as seed funding to allow groups to attract in funding from other agencies. To this end, the project worked in partnership with a community funding officer that assisted eligible groups to access other sources of funding e.g. The Big Lottery Fund. An example of a funded project was in Cuckshaw, where a local youth group applied for £1,700 to develop a BMX skid track. Since this initial investment, the group have attracted over £1.7million to develop a full BMX track.

Over the 5 years of the programme, the CDF granted £650k to 109 community groups. However, since the demise of the SRB programme the scheme has folded and no successor has taken its place. Since its closure last year, the project has received over 80 enquiries from organisations requesting funding support.

4.28 As to the impact of SRB’s demise on the VCS , there were mixed views. According to some, “SRB created a dependency culture among VCS organisations” and in some cases groups were resistant to change or development, even after the demise of SRB was made public. There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that the larger VCS groups such as the Groundwork Trust in East Durham and Age Concern have used SRB funding as a means to develop, rather becoming overly reliant on the funding. In contrast, smaller organisations were often heavily dependent on SRB funding and will be hardest hit.



Tees Valley


4.29 Over the lifetime of SRB, Tees Valley was awarded £164m funding for 36 SRB programmes. This equates to £4.5million per programme funded. Table 4-10 highlights the top five programmes by SRB allocation.

Table 4-4- Major SRB programmes in Tees Valley (Source: DCLG) Programme name SRB Round SRB allocation (£ 000s)

South Bank From Hope to Reality, Langbaurgh On Tees 2 17,900

Owton / Rossmere Partnership, Hartlepool 2 17,700 North Hartlepool Partnership 3 10,300 From Exclusion to Inclusion - Stockton 6 10,000 Accelerating the Renaissance of Central Middlesbrough 6 10,000

4.30 The three largest SRB awards in Tees Valley were during the earlier rounds of SRB. The largest single programme was the South Bank from Hope to Reality programme, in what is now Redcar and Cleveland, accounting for some £17.9million of SRB spend. Of a similar size, the Owton Rossmere programme also secured funding in round 2 of SRB. Some partnerships received multiple funding from successive SRB rounds, for example the North Hartlepool Partnership secured over £25million of SRB funding from rounds 3, 5 and 6.

Table 4-5 – Tees Valley SRB allocation (Source: DCLG)

SRB Round SRB allocation (£s

000) % of sub-

regional total No. of

programmes

Average per programme (£s

000)

1 16,891 10% 7 2,413

2 41,470 25% 5 8,294

3 26,900 16% 7 3,843

4 2,836 2% 3 945

5 32,682 20% 6 5,447

6 42,870 26% 8 5,359

Total 163,649 100% 36 4,546



4.31 Table 4-6 highlights some of the key socio-economic trends in the Tees Valley, North East and England over the lifetime of SRB. In keeping with the region as a whole, the claimant count has decreased by almost two thirds between 1995 and 2005. A corollary to this is the increase in the employment rate over the same period, in Tees Valley this increased by 8.2%, significantly more than the regional and national levels.

Table 4-6 – Socio-economic data for Tees Valley (Source: NOMIS data) 1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)

England 1,873,261 864,010 703,107 -62% North East 126,651 72,483 45,131 -64% Claimant Count Tees Valley 36,571 22,200 13,520 -63%

1998 2001 2005 Change (98-05) England 41.3% 45.4% 48.7% 7.4% North East 36.7% 40.6% 45.2% 8.5%

% of working age population with NVQ3 Tees Valley 38% 38% 44% 6.2% 1998 2001 2005 Change (98-05)

England 339 382 436 97 North East 302 334 384 81

Average weekly pay (£s)

Tees Valley 313 343 388 75 1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)

England 48,383,500 49,233,300 50,431,700 4% North East 2,582,700 2,543,400 2,558,300 -1% Population Tees Valley 1,121,300 1,089,000 1,095,200 -2%


Employment rate (%)

Tees Valley 62.9% 65.1% 71.1% 8.2% 1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)

England 1,362,780 1,491,410 1,581,360 16% North East 42,460 44,000 46,865 10%

VAT registered businesses

Tees Valley 9,875 10,145 10,425 6%

4.32 Despite increasing employment rates, the average weekly salary only increased by £75 between 1995 and 2005, compared with £81 in the North East and £97 nationally. This weekly wage gap between Tees Valley and England was £26 in 1995; by 2005 this gap had increased to £48. Of some concern should be the relatively poor growth in the numbers of VAT registered businesses. Over the period 1995 to 2005, the number of VAT registered businesses increased by 6% in Tees Valley, compared with 10% in the North East and 16% in England.



Context for SRB

4.33 There were numerous partnerships and programmes across the Tees Valley, which makes developing a picture of SRB in the sub-region difficult. Also, the limited number, and mixed quality, of final evaluation reports for Tees Valley programmes compounds this problem. In considering the impact of SRB in the Tees Valley, we reflect mainly on a number of key partnerships, namely, Owton Rossmere; South Bank; Stockton; Middlesbrough and Hartlepool.

Reflections on partnerships

4.34 The Hartlepool and Owton Rossmere partnerships were both public sector led, but retained a good level of VCS and private sector engagement. The Hartlepool partnership made most of their funding decisions in the first 2-3 years of their existence. A consequence of this was that interest and engagement in the partnerships tailed off, notably community engagement was hard to achieve “once partnerships had already set their stall out”. A reflection from one consultee was that once the writing was on the wall for SRB, a number of key partners shifted their focus towards securing Single Pot monies, albeit with limited success.

4.35 There needs to be a balance between getting early consensus over a programme’s direction and retaining some level of flexibility. One consultee noted that drift and uncertainty are possibly more damaging than a consensus reached too early in the life of a programme. It should also be recognised that the shift in partnership emphasis from development to reflection is a natural progression over the lifetime of a partnership.

4.36 In Middlesbrough the partnership was initially local authority dominated which meant the board lacked independence and also meant there was little scrutiny over what types of projects were funded. One of the key successes of the partnership was achieve independence of the board which meant that the partnership had more effective control of how and where SRB money was spent.

Management of SRB

4.37 There is a general sense that SRB was well managed by committed delivery teams. Indeed, in Stockton it was noted that delivering over 100



regeneration projects with an administration overhead of only 4% of programme costs was genuinely challenging and required high levels of commitment from the SRB team.

4.38 The lack of strategic coherence meant that across Tees Valley numerous SRB programmes were delivered by individual partnerships and there was little joined up working. This isn’t meant as a reflection on poor performance, rather the way SRB was structured, especially in the early days, meant there was little impetus towards joined up working, across partnerships. In addition, the deadweight associated with funding multiple partnerships was considered to be high. Funding multiple management and delivery arms meant that SRB spent less on actual interventions, than otherwise could have been the case with a more focussed and streamlined approach.

4.39 There was a tendency in the early years of SRB to make long term commitments to projects, for example some revenue projects were approved for up to 6 years. This meant that programmes got ‘silted up’ early on in their lifespan. This lesson has been learnt by other programmes such as the New Deal for Communities Programme which gives shorter-term project approvals. However, despite this early planning, some programmes such as the Middlesbrough round 5 and 6 programme still had problems in the final quarter of financial years ensuring they were on target to meet spend profiles.

4.40 In keeping with observations from other sub-regions, there was an undue emphasis on output monitoring to justify the value for money of the programme. It was reflected that outputs were good at capturing the means to the end, but not actually the end itself.

Impact and value for money

4.41 The views on some of the housing stock developments undertaken were mixed. The Owton Rossmere housing project which combined SRB and Housing Investment programme money to carry out housing improvements was considered to have been a success. It was noted that without SRB money the housing improvements would have taken place anyway, but SRB money meant housing stock issues were more quickly than otherwise would have been the case.



4.42 However, a familiar refrain that was that some of the housing stock projects that were undertaken were simply a ‘sticking plaster’ for estates. There was a view that to stimulate the market and engage the private sector, more houses should have been knocked down, rather than being ‘dressed up’. For example, the South Bank project placed a heavy emphasis on housing stock regeneration and community safety, but the general perception was the project only managed to prop up a declining area, rather than actually turning it around. It was also noted that for an area facing the social challenges of South Bank the timescales set for SRB were too short – “to make a real difference would take 10-15 years of funding”. In South Bank the community safety projects received mixed reports, with some suggesting money for additional police numbers simply paid for more over-time for existing police staff. In contrast, some consultees suggested that the blocking up of alleyways and additional CCTV and street lighting led to a “dramatic decrease in crime”.

4.43 One consultee noted that over the lifetime of SRB, partnerships invested significant funds in housing stock developments that were later transferred to the private sector to manage. However, upon the transfer, SRB partnerships did not receive any money raised, to reinvest in local regeneration programmes. Indeed, in some cases, it was suggested that without SRB money to improve the housing, stock transfer wouldn’t have taken place. More broadly across SRB, when clawback did take place the money was returned directly to the treasury and was not available to partnerships for re-distribution.

4.44 Other major physical regeneration projects in Tees Valley included the re-development of Middlesbrough Town Centre which was funded through the rounds 5 and 6 programme, Accelerating the Renaissance of Central Middlesbrough. The ERS evaluation of the programme noted that tackling strategic regeneration of the town centre was “a brave departure from both what had gone before and SRB guidance”12. The project was also a rare example of where SRB projects were specifically designed to tie in with Regional Economic Strategy. In a departure from the norm, a separate arms length company, The Town Centre Company, was set up to deliver the programme of works.

4.45 Some of the innovative town centre projects that SRB contributed to included the development of the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA). SRB contributed nearly £1.2million to the £14.2million development, which was

12 Middlesbrough SRB 5/6 Programmes Final Evaluation – Final Report – ERS



also funded by money from the Single Pot, Middlesbrough Council, the Arts Council, and philanthropic donations from the likes of the Northern Rock Foundation. The Institute certainly provides a striking addition to the cultural offer in Middlesbrough and the North East, with the gallery attracting artists of genuine international acclaim such as Jackson Pollock and Francis Bacon. The challenge will be to sustain visitor numbers, once the initial media focus has died away.

4.46 The Town Centre Team used a number of proxies to measure impact, one of which was capital investment into the town. In 1999/2000 an estimated £9million per year was being invested into Middlesbrough Town Centre. Between 2000 and 2004 an average sum of £28million was being ploughed into the centre, although by 2004/05 this had reduced to £5million. Despite this investment, consumer perception surveys and retail rankings both suggested that the town centre had yet to be ‘turned around’ over the lifetime of the SRB programme.

4.47 The skills and employment initiatives in Middlesbrough, while on the whole successful, did not always deliver high value for money. Of particular concern was the intermediate labour market projects @Work and Opportunities ILM. The interim evaluation of the project went as far to note that these projects should no longer be funded, but concerns about the lack of replacement programme and the sunk costs already incurred, meant the programme continued to be funded.

Mainstreaming of SRB

4.48 There was limited evidence of mainstreaming within Tees Valley projects. As one consulted observed that given mainstreaming was never a core objective of the SRB programme, it shouldn’t be a surprise that so little has occurred.

4.49 However, the evaluation did come across some successfully mainstreamed projects such as The Meteor which began in June 1999 and delivered interventions to raise aspirations and attainment of pupils in Years 6-9. Since the demise of SRB, the project has been mainstreamed and is now delivered through other schools in Middlesbrough and the Tees Valley.



The demise of SRB

4.50 At the strategic level the demise of SRB was widely spoken about 3 or 4 years before it actually finished. Many partners shifted their focus towards Single Pot, long before SRB monies had been spent. At the grass roots level, the views were mixed but often less sanguine. The Future Regeneration of Grangetown (FROG) group noted that the loss of SRB was a ‘catastrophic blow’ for VCS groups and local projects. The flexibility of SRB to test new initiatives and provide funding for genuinely grass roots groups, was genuinely appreciated among VCS groups. The local capacity developed in areas like Stockton was considered to have “blazed a trail” for partnership working and local regeneration, such that schemes like NRF are much better placed to deliver effective programmes.

Five Lamps

The Five Lamps organisation, based in Thornaby was established in 1984 “to advance education and relieve need amongst the young, unemployed, unwaged and disadvantaged residents….through the provision of gainful employment and training facilities to develop vocational skills”.

The organisation delivered a number of SRB funded programmes including the Adult Guidance Project and the South Thornaby Youth Centre or ‘Youthy’ a state of the art facility for young people which received nearly £1million of SRB money. The organisation noted the flexibility of SRB as a funding stream, allowing organisations to be genuinely innovative and deliver projects that other funders would not necessarily back.

As an organisation Five Lamps have felt the impact from the demise of SRB. While some projects have found alternative sources of funding e.g. NRF and LSC money, the organisation estimates it has lost 6 jobs and an estimated £1million of income, post SRB.

4.51 Interestingly, the ‘Exclusion to Inclusion’ interim programme evaluation13 in Stockton makes an estimation as to what level of funding would be required to secure the future of 20 to 30 projects – somewhere in the region of £2million per year. The impact of SRB’s demise is clearly communicated, with the primary concern being the loss of hard won progress in developing the capacity of local partnerships and communities to undertake regeneration work.

13 ‘Exclusion to Inclusion Regeneration to Renaissance SRB’ – An Evaluation and Impact Assessment



Tyne and Wear


4.52 Many of the largest SRB programmes in the Tyne and Wear were delivered during the earlier rounds of the programme – see Table 4-7. Indeed, in the top ten largest programmes delivered in the Tyne and Wear, only one programme was funded later than round 3 – this was the Extending East Gateshead programme which received £12million and built on the progress made in the larger round 2 Gateshead programme.

Table 4-7- Major SRB programmes in Tyne and Wear (Source: DCLG) Programme name SRB Round SRB allocation (£ 000s)

Regeneration of Shields Road District Centre and the East End 2 25,000

North West Newcastle 3 23,000

East Gateshead 2 18,600

The South Shields Challenge 3 18,500

Longbenton Estate 3 17,900

4.53 Tyne and Wear received over 50% of the North East’s SRB money. Much of this funding was received in rounds 2 and 3 or SRB, when the sub-region received around £200million of SRB money - Table 4-8. The result of this was larger programmes, £13.8million and £12.6million in rounds 2 and 3. By rounds 5 and 6 this had dropped to around the £7million per programme mark.

Table 4-8 – Tyne and Wear SRB allocation (Source: DCLG)

SRB Round SRB allocation (£s 000) % of total No. of

programmes Average per

programme (£s 000)

1 45,100 13% 11 4,100

2 97,100 28% 7 13,871

3 100,900 29% 8 12,613

4 12,495 4% 5 2,499

5 42,633 12% 6 7,106

6 46,412 13% 6 7,735

Total 344,640 100% 43 8,015



Table 4-9 – Socio-economic data for Tyne and Wear (Source: NOMIS data) 1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)

England 1,873,261 864,010 703,107 -62% North East 126,651 72,483 45,131 -64%

Claimant Count

Tyne and Wear 60,724 33,254 21,026 -65% 1998 2001 2005 Change (98-05)

England 41.3% 45.4% 48.7% 7.4% North East 36.7% 40.6% 45.2% 8.5%

% of working age population with NVQ3 Tyne and Wear 35.7% 40.6% 44.7% 9.0% 1998 2001 2005 Change (98-05)


Average weekly pay (£s) Tyne and Wear 304.1 339.6 389.6 86 1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)

England 48,383,500 49,233,300 50,431,700 4% North East 2,582,700 2,543,400 2,558,300 -1% Population Tyne and Wear 655,700 651,900 652,100 -1%


Employment rate (%)

Tyne and Wear 64% 65% 70% 5.3% 1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)



Tyne and Wear 16,140 16,815 18,145 12%

4.54 Table 4-9 highlights some of the key socio-economic trends in Tyne and Wear over the period of SRB. Clearly, Tyne and Wear has outstripped the regional performance against many measures, but in actual terms the sub-region still lags behind the national average in some areas.

4.55 Most notably, the employment rate in Tyne and Wear increased by 5.3% between 1995 and 2005; compared with 3.8% for the North East and 3.5% for England over the same period. However, Tyne and Wear was starting from a low base in 1995 and still has an employment rate 5% lower than the level across England. Similarly, for the proportion of the working age population with an NVQ Level 3 qualification, the level in Tyne and Wear has increased by 9% between 1998 and 2005, compared with an 8.5% regional average and 7.4% in England. Again, however, Tyne and Wear was starting from a low base, and in 2005, the proportion of working age population with a Level 3 NVQ qualification was still 4% lower than the English average.



Context for SRB

4.56 Preceding the bulk of SRB activity in Tyne and Wear, regeneration had been delivered predominantly through the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation. The activities of the Corporation focused heavily on riverside developments, such as East Quayside in Newcastle.

4.57 More generally, consultees noted that regeneration initiatives in Tyne and Wear before SRB, like City Challenge, had tended to be “too loose and unfocused”. Early attempts to address problems were characterised as being too small to effect the kind of transformational change required among the sub region’s most deprived areas.

4.58 Perhaps as a result of the ‘unfocused’ approach which preceded it, SRB is viewed as having been similarly rather piecemeal during its early rounds, developing into more focused and evidenced programmes by Round 3. Even in the later rounds of SRB, once sub-regional structures had been established, there was not a strategic sub-regional approach to SRB per se, reflecting the bottom-up, local nature of the programme. However, later programmes, such as Preparing for Change in Newcastle, had a wider spatial remit, while the geographies of other programmes were expanded, round-on-round in several areas, such as in Sunderland.

4.59 The number of major SRB programmes completed across Tyne and Wear is considerable. This case study therefore focuses on three of the larger and more interesting programmes delivered in the sub region, namely:

• The Grainger Town Project: a major programme in Newcastle city centre designed to bring rundown and underused properties back into residential or commercial use. SRB funds (some £11m of £45m total public sector funding) was focused on activity aimed at drawing in larger amounts of private sector investment (£194m by 2006). This activity included major public realm works, business support and cultural activities. Grainger Town SRB ran for six years from 1997 to 2003.

• Pride in Pennywell: a Sunderland-based scheme focusing on a particular residential area with substantial long term deprivation. Pennywell was the recipient of SRB support through a number of different rounds. This case study and consultations with stakeholders have concentrated predominantly on Round 3 activity, where the SRB budget was £17.85m. The programme’s activities covered five thematic



areas: community safety and environment; youth and community; employment; education; and health and family support.

• The Ouseburn Valley, A Sustainable Future: a five year programme (1997-2002) with some £2.5m of SRB funding, building on the work of the Ouseburn Trust, and focusing on the regeneration of an ‘urban village’ at the eastern end of the East Quayside development on the Tyne. The programme was a collection of relatively small individual projects covering housing, building refurbishment, and environmental and security improvements. No evaluation report was available for this programme.

Partnerships and delivery

4.60 SRB is characterised by variety in terms of its partnership and delivery structures. Grainger Town, for example, was a company limited by guarantee, which provided it with a “a degree of independence from the council” and placed executive autonomy in the hands of the executive board, despite the fact that its management team was employed by Newcastle City Council. The partnership board began small, centring on the major funding bodies, but later expanded to bring in key local groups, such as residents and businesses. The ability of the partnership to work relatively autonomously from the Council was widely regarded by consultees as a significant strength.

4.61 Ouseburn SRB, on the other hand, was an unincorporated association, with the Ouseburn Trust as its lead partner. Ouseburn described itself at the time as the only voluntary sector-led SRB programme in Tyne and Wear. The prior existence of the Ouseburn Trust gave the programme a structure around which partnership and delivery could coalesce. It has since also provided some continuity beyond the lifetime of SRB funding.

4.62 The evidence from the two Newcastle-based programmes suggests a degree of friction between the accountable body and the SRB Partnership and delivery teams. In both of these cases, SRB appears to have been delivered within quite a highly charged political environment, with associated downsides for the relationship between accountable body and programme: “politics and personalities got in the way”; “things got quite heated”. This is perhaps most evident, but not confined to, programme management. Where the accountable body employed programme managers on behalf of an SRB partnership, there was sometimes a conflict of interest which placed individual programme managers in difficult situations. The assumption that



everyone shared a commonality of purpose across partnership and accountable body cannot be taken for granted.

4.63 Conversely, a number of consultees stressed the very important contribution of specific individuals within programmes, be they from the community, in programme management, or partnership boards. It is clear in a number of programmes that the Chair of the Board was particularly crucial in driving programmes forward, and in smoothing over relations between programmes and accountable bodies.

4.64 Consultees have noted the struggle of getting the balance right between project development at the early stages of a programme, project monitoring throughout the life of the programme, and project evaluation and closure at the end. One SRB team suggested, for example, that their early focus on project development had left them limited time to monitor project performance. They acknowledged that “forward thinking and delivery are rare skills to find in the same person”.

4.65 Programme managers who were consulted thought that the level of bureaucracy and administration involved in SRB had not been excessive: “rigorous but tedious” was how one former programme manager described it. Resources devoted to programme management were widely thought to have been sufficient.

4.66 The public realm improvements to Grainger Town are widely viewed as having been a major success within the SRB project as a whole. A large amount of superfluous street furniture was removed from the area and replaced with essential, high quality and expensive alternatives. The impact of this in terms of bringing confidence to the area is seen as having been a major driver in attracting new developments to Grainger Town.

4.67 The cultural aspects of the Grainger Town project were among the least successful elements of the SRB programme. The activities included public performances in the Grainger Town area and a series of public art installations. As one consultee noted, “culture costs”, and the hope for a longer term, sustainable programme of public performances failed to gain subsequent financial support. This is indicative of some revenue-based SRB projects, which provide vitality to an area during the programme’s existence, but which are not particularly well-suited to sustaining themselves in the longer term.



4.68 Pennywell Neighbourhood Centre was the recipient of SRB funds (a little under half of the total project costs) which helped to establish it within a purpose-built building in 2000 and secure a community asset for the future. The Centre provides a range of services, especially in the field of health and family support. According to the programme evaluation, despite 46% of working age men in the area being permanently sick, there were no GP facilities in Pennywell. The Centre attracted two GPs and a range of other healthcare services to the area. These were all identified as mainstream services that residents had previously struggled to access (and begs the question why such a residential area should be so poorly served by mainstream healthcare provision). The Centre has been noted for the way in which it involves Pennywell residents in decision making and service need – the residents raised £10,000 of ‘match funding’ to demonstrate their own commitment to the project. The Centre continues to operate, receiving a cocktail of funds from a range of sources.

Impacts and value for money

4.69 Grainger Town provides an interesting example of how to ‘value’ the impact of a predominantly physical regeneration project. With the focus of the programme on bringing property back into use, the property market provides a useful indicator of success.

4.70 The final evaluation of Grainger Town shows that the area benefited from a rise in office and retail rental values, with some streets experiencing double the UK rise in rental values between 1997 and 2003. Original plans to include social housing were altered as private developers increasingly took on the risks of development themselves. By the end of the programme, Grainger Town had seen the sale of its first half million pound apartment.

4.71 The challenge with a project like Grainger Town is to understand what would have happened anyway. Consultees pointed out that the programme was fortuitous in its timing, riding the wave of a new-found enthusiasm for inner city living - not unique to Newcastle - and a consequent rise in property prices. The real value of the programme appears to have been in creating a new sense of confidence in Grainger Town, through an improved public realm and encouragement to renovate, which helped to attract people back in to the area.

4.72 Grainger Town is perhaps a rather unique SRB programme. Physical regeneration impact elsewhere is not always as easy to quantify directly. In



Gateshead, for example, while the regeneration of the quayside has not been directly funded by SRB, early intervention by the programme effectively opened up access to the area, which has subsequently flourished. The economic value of the SRB intervention is therefore indirect and more difficult to value precisely, but no less important for that.

4.73 By contrast, in Ouseburn one of the objectives of the programme was to provide physical assets that would help to sustain the Ouseburn Trust beyond the life of the programme, through the provision of a rental income. This has been achieved.

4.74 Early rounds of SRB in the sub region included physical work on housing, especially on deprived estates. This focus was reduced substantially in later rounds, in part it would seem as a result of its limited impact. Work in this area has also been affected by large scale stock transfer from local authorities to arms length management organisations.

Community safety and security

4.75 This has been a particular area of concern for many residents within SRB areas, and was consequently a priority in a number of programmes. Activity here has included a range of initiatives including the physical - use of CCTV cameras, street lighting and ‘target hardening’ such as home security improvements – as well as strategic changes, such as the development of new policing approaches in Pennywell.

4.76 In terms of hard outcomes and impacts, the Ouseburn programme reported a 44% reduction in commercial property burglaries in the area in 2000. This compares very favourably with an overall drop in non-residential burglaries of around 20% for Northumbria as a whole in the same period (Home Office statistics). Pennywell saw an impressive 87% reduction in burglaries; this in an area which had suffered from burglary rates of up to 40 times the national average. The final evaluation of Pennywell also suggests that perceptions of community safety had also improved within some areas of the programme, most notably as a result of the change in the policing strategy.



Employment and economic recovery

4.77 Impacts on employment and economic change are quite hard to confirm due to the many external pressures that can influence change in an area. However, the Pride in Pennywell evaluation states that the area has seen a considerable decline in unemployment, a drop of three quarters in some wards within an area of high and long term unemployment, while its ability to encourage local enterprise was less successful. Grainger Town was more successful with support for start-up businesses, but this is perhaps no surprise given its city centre location.

Mainstreaming

4.78 In the case of a programme like Grainger Town, mainstreaming was not really expected, but there is a wider issue with physical regeneration and ongoing upkeep. The Council are having to maintain and repair the physical developments of SRB, such as street furniture. SRB deliberately installed high quality (and expensive) street furniture in line with the city’s wish to be a major European destination. This has left a legacy of ongoing maintenance for the Council. The partnership and the Council came to an agreement about this maintenance, and it is a good example of how the ongoing costs, even of physical projects, need to be borne in mind. It should be noted that under the rules of SRB ‘dowry’ payments for maintenance were forbidden as ‘payments in advance of need’.

4.79 Pennywell’s Job Linkage project is a rather rare but important example of how an SRB initiative can be rolled out and mainstreamed. The project aimed to link unemployed people with job opportunities through the provision of information, guidance and support. Job Linkage is now a city-wide scheme supported by Sunderland City Council.

4.80 In some areas, consultees thought that there may have been a perception of mainstream funding following SRB finance, however they suspected that had more to do with the better coordination of funds, rather than it being indicative of SRB ‘skewing’ the mainstream in favour of one or more areas. In one or two other areas, consultees were candid in their views that SRB monies had led some local authorities to concentrate their own resources where the programme did not reach.



The demise of SRB

4.81 VCS bodies played an important role in the sub region’s SRB programmes, from grassroots delivery through to senior board and partnership roles. The concern with which the sector viewed the demise of SRB (and other funding streams, such as European funds) was reflected in the Invest 2006 campaign led by VONNE (Voluntary Organisations’ Network North East). VONNE suggested that the ending of these funds would jointly result in the loss of £46m to the sector in the North East as a whole. It has not been possible to verify the figures, but there is a perception within the sector that there is less money around for them to draw on.

4.82 Certainly, the structure of SRB does appear to have been favourable to the sector. The size of individual projects, the relative freedom with which funding could be used, and the ‘bottom-up’ nature of project development placed VCS bodies in an excellent position to contribute.

4.83 It is clear from consultations in Tyne and Wear that the sector feels, in comparison to the days of SRB, it is now struggling. The particular concerns include the following:

• the increased focus on decision making and planning at the sub-regional and regional level. VCS organisations tend to be small and locally based, so operating effectively at this wider geographical level is viewed as problematic and heavily reliant on representation by umbrella bodies such as Newcastle CVS. There is a reluctance to increase the scale of its activity in line with the move to regional and sub-regional planning because of what the sector views as the risk of losing its local character, trust and experience;

• the move towards a commissioning-based approach to project development, and the contracting of services, for which many organisations are not appropriately structured to exploit. Others are simply not interested in such arrangements;

• the hiatus created between the ending of one funding stream and the start of another which has meant that some useful CVS-run projects have closed, post-SRB, with the loss of staff, experience and knowledge, only to be ‘re-invented’ some months later;

• the early difficulties in establishing an effective line of communication to ONE North East, which now appears to have been broadly addressed.



4.84 The demise of schemes, in any programme of regeneration, brings with it a loss of tacit knowledge and individuals who have developed a significant amount of experience and expertise. In some programmes, the closure of SRB has been preceded early on by the departure of some programme management staff, with a clear knock-on for end of scheme evaluation and potential impacts on helping projects sustain themselves beyond SRB. However, while people have moved on, the indicative feeling from this case study’s fieldwork in Tyne and Wear is that a large number of people who were involved in SRB continue to work in regeneration and economic development.

4.85 The development of Local Strategic Partnerships and the sub-regional approach to RDA activity have provided strong geographic partnerships, and many have their roots in partnerships developed through SRB.



Northumberland


4.86 Over the lifetime of SRB, Northumberland was awarded £48m funding for 15 SRB programmes. This equates to £3.2m per programme funded. Table 4-10 highlights the top five SRB programmes, by funding allocation.

Table 4-10 – Major SRB programmes in Northumberland (Source: DCLG) Programme name SRB Round SRB allocation (£ 000s)

Northumberland: Action for Community 5 15,607

Northumberland - The Can-do County 6 15,000

Renaissance of Blyth, Northumberland 2 3,900

Confident in Prudhoe 3 2,400

Wansbeck Neighbourhood Renewal 4 2,160

4.87 Up until rounds 5 and 6, Northumberland was securing smaller pots of SRB funding. Similarly to Durham, individual local authorities were making their own bids, the largest of which was the Renaissance of Blyth in round 2. By rounds 5 and 6, the sub-regional partnership had been developed meaning Northumberland was much better placed to secure significant levels of funding.

Table 4-11 – Northumberland SRB allocation (Source: DCLG) SRB Round

SRB allocation (£s 000) % of total No. of

programmes Average per

programme (£s 000)

1 4,216 9% 6 703

2 4,245 9% 2 2,123

3 2,400 5% 1 2,400

4 5,077 11% 3 1,692

5 15,607 32% 1 15,607

6 16,680 35% 2 8,340

Total 48,225 100% 15 3,215



Table 4-12 – Socio-economic trends (Source: NOMIS data) 1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)

England 1,873,261 864,010 703,107 -62% North East 126,651 72,483 45,131 -64% Claimant Count Northumberland 11,507 10,531 6,307 -45%


% of working age population with NVQ3 Northumberland 39% 42% 48% 9.4% 1998 2001 2005 Change (98-05)


Average weekly pay (£s)

Northumberland 282.3 296.8 356.5 74 1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)

England 48,383,500 49,233,300 50,431,700 4% North East 2,582,700 2,543,400 2,558,300 -1% Population Northumberland 499,900 495,100 499,800 0%


Employment rate (%)

Northumberland 68% 71% 72% 3.9% 1995 2000 2005 Change (95-05)



Northumberland 7,775 8,040 8,505 9%

4.88 Northumberland is a mainly rural area of low population density, with 0.6 persons per hectare. The total population is 310,000, with 50% of people living in 5 per cent of the area in the south east of the county in Blyth Valley and Wansbeck areas, with the next sizeable community to the west in Tynedale.

SRB Context

4.89 In order to successfully bid for and then deliver major SRB funding, a number of key partners, including Government Office North East and the local authorities, recognised they needed to develop infrastructure and capacity, at a regional level. This fitted with a steer from central government to the effect that they wished to see larger, more co-ordinated and country-wide bids for SRB funding.



4.90 The Northumberland Strategic Partnership (NSP) was established to meet these needs. The NSP is a partnership of key organisations involved in local and regional government (including representatives from local strategic partnerships), representatives from the community and voluntary sectors, the private sector, and key public sector agencies including Northumbria Police, the Northumberland Care Trust, the Northumberland Learning and Skills Council, Business Link Northumberland, and trade union representation.

4.91 The SRB Five and Six programmes were brought together, in 2001, under a single delivery plan, structured under the four SRB5 strategic objectives.

Reflections on partnerships

4.92 As already noted, the NSP was the key strategic partnership for the planning and allocation of SRB funding, and the management of SRB schemes. Project delivery was the responsibility of delivery partners, including local authorities, the community and voluntary sector, and other partners. In the early life of the NSP an SRB 5 delivery team was established, including a Programme Director, an officer responsible for thematic projects and local area co-ordinators (LACs). 14The LACs were based within and had responsibility for local areas such as the former coalfield areas, Berwick, and Kielder.

4.93 As the NSP Evaluation report notes, the LACs were a response to the scale of the Programme, and to the geographically broad nature of the County. They also represented an acknowledgement that there was a lack of institutional capacity and experience, particularly at the local level.

4.94 As the SRB Programme evolved, and the SRB6 scheme was merged with SRB5, the LACs were withdrawn from the localities to form part of the overall NSP team. The delivery team has been composed of officers with thematic responsibilities, and also with performance and operational responsibilities. A number of stakeholders referred positively to the work of the LACs, and they certainly played a valuable role in developing SRB programmes.

4.95 Feedback relating to the NSP team from those involved in delivery was positive. Programme management, while not without its occasional

14 Northumberland SRB Programme Evaluation – Northumberland Strategic Partnership (2005)



difficulties, seems to have been effective, and partners have appreciated it as such.

4.96 A considerable investment in time and resources went into the project appraisal process, with a number of staff from NSP attending a course provided by the University of the West of England designed for this end. The NSP also undertook some capacity building work with officers in the local authorities to share this learning and to build project development capacity. Consultees noted that although the appraisal process was demanding, it was not overly onerous. In addition, those involved in developing projects were invited to work with NSP to help the process.

4.97 More broadly, consultees appreciated not only the role and remit of the Partnership, but also the approach to partnership working among key partners. It is clear that in Northumberland partners paid more than simply ‘lip service’ to the idea of working in partnership and there was genuine cooperation and joint working.

4.98 Previous experience suggests that in poorly functioning partnerships, some partners will ‘play ball’ as a means of securing funding to meet their own narrower objectives, rather than those of the partnership. This does not appear to have been the case in the Northumberland sub-region. Organisations have worked together as they have recognised that it is the most effective and practical way of getting things done.

4.99 If there has been a weakness to the partnership approach, it may be in the direct involvement of many partners in developing and bidding for projects. More than one consultee felt that a more commissioning-based approach to project development might have enabled them to deliver an even greater impact from SRB funding.

4.100 Consultees broadly agreed that the NSP Board had played an effective role in the oversight and scrutiny of the SRB programmes. The composition of the board was referred to as ‘very holistic’, with a broad range of backgrounds and interests, and capable of looking at the strategic needs of the sub-region.

4.101 The Board played a strong role in the appraisal and ongoing scrutiny of projects, and as the NSP grew so did the Board, increasing their capacity to make an effective contribution. There was some concern expressed by the



SRB Evaluation team that the composition of the Board did not allow significant opportunities for community involvement in shaping the programme at a strategic level.

Impacts and Outcomes

4.102 A number of consultees noted that the output focus of SRB was not always easy to reconcile with the broader social regeneration objectives of the Programmes, and that the outputs did not always capture the depth or richness of some of the achievements realised through SRB.

4.103 At the same time, there has not been a significant attempt by the majority of SRB projects, and the sub-regional partnership, to quantify the outcomes and impacts of the schemes. Although the bid for SRB6 funding provides a range of intended outcomes (many of which could more realistically be described as outputs), to date there is limited evidence of a review of these outcomes having taken place.

4.104 The evaluation of the scheme commissioned by NSP noted that:

“…insufficient attention has been given to outcomes…NSP drew up a long list of intended outcomes and related baseline data…but there are too many of these target outcomes to provide a focus for the programme and track progress, and some are outputs, not outcomes. In any case, NSP has not fully updated them to indicate how far outcome targets have been achieved.”15

4.105 In terms of proxy indicators of outcomes, a quantitative analysis of measures of social and economic deprivation, such as Government Floor Targets, would not provide an effective assessment of impact, given the difficulty of disaggregating the impacts of other funding streams and mainstream service delivery.

4.106 As a final caveat, some of the outcomes generated through SRB projects may take a significant length of time to become realised. Consultees noted that the objectives of SRB were about solving entrenched social problems and the impacts may not be seen for a generation.

15 Northumberland Can-Do Communities Final Evaluation, NSP, 2005 p.23



4.107 Consultees agreed that the SRB programme, through its range of projects, had clearly impacted positively on the social and economic needs of the sub-region. Individual examples of projects that have had an impact on individuals, groups, communities, and areas are numerous. Also highlighted as a key impact was the development of a strong partnership culture in the sub-region. Partners are now recognisably much better versed and equipped in multi-agency planning and delivery, as a result of the process of coming together to prepare for and then deliver the SRB programmes.

4.108 Similarly, SRB has helped to build capacity within the region for the management of regeneration funding, not just at the sub-regional level, but at the level of individual local authorities, and others, including the community and voluntary sector.

4.109 The learning experience has also been valuable in enabling partners to understand what has worked well, and not so well. From a base of limited experience, partners in the sub-region are now able to look across a large and diverse range of interventions, delivered in varying styles, to see what has been a success, or vice-versa. As a result, future regeneration programmes in the sub-region, whether at the sub-regional or local level, will hopefully be more precisely fitted to the needs of individuals and areas.

Value for Money

4.110 The discussion here is not based on a firm economic value for money assessment, but is based on the perceptions of those involved in planning, delivering and managing the SRB programmes. Although the NSP considered the potential value for money of projects as part of the appraisal process, it has not particularly featured as part of project evaluation.

4.111 Stakeholders were positive about the relative value for money of the SRB schemes. Although private sector leverage has been slightly below expectations (an issue common to many SRB schemes), public funding leverage has massively outperformed expectations, with the original target of £8m likely to be exceeded by at least 500%. In the context of the relatively limited public sector budgets in the sub-region, this is a significant outcome, and has clearly added to the overall value for money of the SRB scheme.

4.112 One particular theme, referenced by a number of stakeholders, was that the small nature of the mainstream budgets of the participating local authorities



meant that SRB was, in relation, a much more significant source funding than in might be in other parts of the north east. Thus the relative importance attached to the funding stream meant that partners worked hard to maximise its effectiveness, and realise good value for money.

4.113 At the same time, one stakeholder observed that the costs of project delivery (and associated costs) in a rural area could, proportionally, be much higher than in more urban areas, especially those with existing regeneration expertise and infrastructure.

Mainstreaming

4.114 Limited mainstreaming of SRB projects has taken place in the sub-region. While many of the projects funded through SRB are valuable, and likely to attract funding from other sources, few have been adopted into the delivery of mainstream partners, although there are some good examples such as the Beehive project and the Parenting Initiatives project.

4.115 The most likely sources of mainstreaming funding in the Northumberland region are the local authorities, the county council and the 5 district councils. Because SRB was such a large and additional sum of funding, it might reasonably be expected that it would be a struggle for mainstream providers to replace/perpetuate similar levels of funding in the context of limited mainstream budgets.



Beehive Project

The Beehive Project, supported by SRB funding principally as capital investment, involved the construction of a purpose-built building in Berwick to house drop-in and office facilities allowing improved access to information, advice and guidance, counselling and IT services; a youth café, and supported accommodation.

While SRB contributed just under a fifth of the capital costs of the project, it was clearly recognised by project staff as being critical to the timely development of the construction. Although staff were confident that they would have found the necessary resources from another source, in time, this would have delayed the construction and completion of the centre.

While in pure output terms the project is limited, its broader outcomes are more significant. Although difficult to map, the project is confident that it is having a strong impact on key social issues such as worklessness among young people, educational attainment and attendance, anti-social behaviour, and crime. This has been recognised by the project being adopted as the statutory agency for youth services for both Berwick town, and for the local authority. It is a good example of how capital funding, used imaginatively, can have an impact on issues of broader social deprivation.

4.116 Feedback from the authorities indicated that, while they were certainly open to the idea of adopting SRB funded projects into their service delivery, the pressures on existing services gave them very little scope for doing so. It was also the case that the drive for mainstreaming had to be developed from within projects. It seems clear that, in many projects, there has been a lack of this drive, or consideration of what might happen to the project when SRB funding expired. It was recognised that SRB provided a long term ‘comfort zone’ for projects, such that they mainstream and substantiality issues were often delayed.

4.117 In addition, because SRB was not particularly specified as a fund that encouraged project planners to take risks, and develop innovative forms of delivery, there have been limited opportunities for mainstream agencies to adopt new ways of doing things, based on the experience of the SRB scheme (although the Parenting Initiatives is a good example of this happening).



Parenting Initiatives

This project, led at first by Northumberland CC, and now mainstreamed into the county’s Children’s Services delivery, offers outreach support to families, parenting programmes, courses to help parents engage in community work, and qualifications for helping parents re-enter the jobs market. Innovative features the project were the delivery of training and qualifications in community settings, with crèche facilities available while parents are participating and the fact that the programme used parent focus workers, rather than social workers or teachers.

The benefits of this approach have been demonstrated in the project’s outputs and outcomes, which have been striking. Success has been underpinned by effective multi-agency working, right from the very start of the project, and particularly the investment in supporting parents and engaging with them from a different, non-traditional perspective i.e. social care and teachers.

SRB’s key input to the project was as a funding stream which allowed partners to be creative and innovative in their delivery approach. Consultations revealed that SRB was felt to be a very clear and straightforward resource, without many of the complexities in the funding and monitoring processes that other funding streams require.

The demise of SRB

4.118 The demise of SRB is a cause for concern for many delivery partners in the Northumberland region, including local authorities, other public sector agencies, and the community and voluntary sector.

4.119 There was a general consensus that all those involved in SRB projects were, or had every opportunity to be, well aware of the end of the SRB schemes. Two years before the end of the scheme all projects were visited by the NSP team, told about the process of SRB coming to an end, and given advice on how to plan and manage exit/succession strategies.

4.120 In some cases projects have come to the end of their natural life, achieved what they set out to achieve, and are no longer necessary. But inevitably, the



demise of SRB funding is going to lead to some projects ending, if they are unable to attract mainstream funding, or other external funding.

4.121 The Single Programme has provided some support for the sector through the Community and Voluntary Sector Infrastructure Fund, and this should help the transition from SRB. Some local authorities are seeking ways in which to invest in the sector’s capacity.

4.122 The Single Programme may be able to play a role in the ongoing support of projects originally funded through SRB, but it is not a natural fit. Certainly, there is some pessimism among those stakeholders we consulted about the potential to use Single Programme funding to support SRB developed schemes.

4.123 There are some examples, however, of SRB developed projects which do have a more ‘natural’ fit with Single Programme objectives, particularly those in the Developing Competitive Businesses strand of SRB 5, and Developing an Entrepreneurial Culture (SRB6). One example of this is the Business Advice Centre Network, a project that played a formative role in the development of Business Link Northumberland. Much of the Business Link’s operational budget is now supplied through the Single Programme.



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5 KEY LESSONS LEARNT

Introduction

5.1 In this Section, we reflect more broadly on the key lessons learnt from the delivery of SRB in the North East based. We examine the following key areas:

partnership working;

oversight and scrutiny;

programme and project delivery;

project appraisal process;

community engagement;

private sector engagement;

monitoring and evaluation; and

project sustainability and mainstreaming.

Partnership working

5.2 As the bedrock of SRB management and delivery, partnerships had a large bearing on how well programmes performed. Clear from consultations with partners and evaluation reports was that the development of effective partnerships was not always a smooth process, but over time many partnerships learnt to be flexible and adaptable. This maturation process was also reflected in the national SRB evaluation. The report notes that at the 2-3 year stage of programmes, between one third and a half of the partnerships examined reported there to be no benefits to the partnership approach to regeneration. However, by the end of programmes, in nearly all partnerships there was some acknowledgement of the benefits of multi-partner working.

5.3 As a programme, SRB was ambitious in that in sought to engage the public, private and VCS sectors to develop and deliver programmes. All of these actors will have had their own motivations for engaging with SRB, including



meeting strategic objectives, profit seeking and securing funding to cover running costs. For the most part, it seems that these potentially conflicting agendas were well managed and many partnerships flourished over time. However, some partnerships had trouble either engaging with the private sector or, if the private sector was on board, getting them to contribute to projects outside their core interest or genuinely taking the lead in regeneration. However, there were some notable exceptions. For example, the North Tyneside Partnership was chaired by a private sector representative, which it was felt increased the levels of transparency and efficiency of partnership working.

5.4 A tension within some partnerships was the role of local authorities. Among some partnerships there was a sense that local authorities had sought to dictate the direction and focus for SRB spending. For example, the Darlington Community Works programme evaluation noted that the partnership was very local authority driven, which had a detrimental effect on programme performance. A similar criticism was also made in the North West Partnership and North West into Work evaluations, although both reports also note that over time the power dynamic became more balanced. There will always be an element of ‘who shouts loudest’ in partnerships, especially early on when partners may lack the confidence or be wary of other partners’ agendas, but these problems can be overcome. In the East End Partnership it was noted that initially partners had a very narrow focus and that there was some suspicion of other agencies and their agendas, but with time a mutual trust was established to the betterment of the partnership.

5.5 The tensions between local authorities and partnerships were not eased by the accountable body role held by many local authorities. Many SRB employees were actually employed by local authorities, rather than SRB programmes themselves. Funding was also frequently routed through local authority accounts. Some partners felt it would have been more appropriate if staff had been employed by the partnerships themselves, increasing the autonomy and responsibility of the partnership. The decision to employ people and route money through local authorities was primarily a practical consideration, easing cash flow and simplifying employment processes. Local authorities were also naturally keen to ensure that partnership money was well-spent, given that they were ultimately accountable for the funds.



Oversight and scrutiny

5.6 Few of the evaluation reports made comments about the oversight and scrutiny mechanisms for SRB programmes. While a little thin, there is evidence that in some cases a strong board had a positive influence on the direction and delivery of SRB programmes. For example, the Accelerating the Renaissance of Central Middlesbrough programme evaluation noted that the board operated effectively and with a growing degree of confidence over time. Furthermore, attendance at board meetings remained high, reflecting the commitment of members, their satisfaction with progress and their enthusiasm for seeing the job through.

5.7 Proactive and engaged boards were not the case in every programme. In some cases, board meetings were felt to be ‘rubber stamping’ exercises to provide the mandate for pre-ordained decisions. This was a criticism levelled at the County Durham SRB board, for example. Another common problem was the ebbing away of interest in board matters as the programme progressed. For example, the Northumberland Can Do Communities evaluation reflected a diminution of board influence after a few years. This is perhaps not surprising. In the early days of a programme, there is a need for strong board involvement to help shape and develop the programme of work – board members also want to have their say on how the money is spent. Once this work is done, oversight shifted towards the ongoing monitoring of outputs and spend. An observation has been that SRB partnerships often committed all, or nearly all of their funds early on in the lifetime of the project. This lack of room of flexibility to fund new projects in later years does perhaps mean that board meetings necessarily became more routine and limited in the extent to which programme direction could be influenced.

5.8 There is a balance to be struck between boards maintaining a strategic level view of the programme and becoming too involved in operational matters. Clearly, partnerships want a board that has an interest in what is happening on the ground. However, in some partnerships boards got bogged down in the detail and the lines between the executive and the board were sometimes blurred.

Programme and project management

5.9 The broad consensus view is that SRB was well managed as a programme in the North East. Indeed, numerous evaluation reports make reference to



the commitment and dedication of programme staff. For some partnerships there were early teething problems to overcome such as a lack of staff capacity; resource limitations; poor communication between partners; lack of internal reporting systems and problems identifying good projects. Given the standing start many partnerships made, these early challenges were to have been expected and it programme management appears to have bedded down over time.

5.10 There is little evidence about how resource intensive SRB programme management was. Very few projects defined how much of their SRB budget they spent on programme management. The few that did reported spend levels between 2% and 5% of the programme budget on management. This is a reasonable level, and consistent with our experience from elsewhere. To note, there was a nationally imposed spend limit of 5% for programme management and administration.

5.11 One of the identified weaknesses in management was the lack of communication and linkages between individual projects and more widely different partnership programmes. During the course of the evaluation, there was no evidence of any cross partnership working or structured information sharing. This view is corroborated by various evaluation reports. For example, the Northumberland ‘Can do communities programme’ noted that more could be have done “to foster links between individual projects”. The ability to communicate across partnerships and local authorities was even more essential in thematic projects. The ‘Tackling Fear of Crime’ evaluation highlighted the problem of ensuring cross-local authority working, with the result that the project tended to be focussed on local areas, rather than the broader programme that was expected.

5.12 The lack of cross partnership and/or project working was one of the main weaknesses of SRB, and not just in the North East. While a Regeneration Exchange was set up to share good practice, lessons learned in one area were not always shared between partnerships. However, this is not necessarily to blame the partnerships. SRB was meant to be an area-specific, grassroots programme and partners were often responding to the incentive structures put in place (especially in the early days) i.e. to deliver local level outputs. Nevertheless, it does mean that in the new Single Pot regime, which requires working at a higher geographic and partnership scale, SRB projects can seem a little parochial in their outlook.



The project appraisal process

5.13 The appraisal process was designed to help shape and refine good projects and to weed out the weaker proposals. A number of the evaluation reports noted that a transparent appraisal framework, sensibly implemented, helped avoid downstream problems. A key lesson learnt was that sufficient time must be given over to the appraisal process and partners should feel like they have genuine influence over which specific projects are funded. There is evidence from some partnerships that the project appraisal process was rushed in order to meet deadlines – especially the need to start spending - and this led to some ineffective projects securing funding. However, in the early days partnerships very often had backlogs of project proposals awaiting appraisal.

5.14 Project appraisal was normally a two stage process, with SRB staff conducting the initial scrutiny of initial proposals, before submitting worked up project proposals to the appraisal board. This process makes sense, appraisal boards should not be wasting time scrutinising poorly worked up project proposals. However, there was a feeling in some partnerships, the appraisal board simply rubber stamped projects that had already been internally approved, rather than providing genuine scrutiny of the proposals being put forward. For project proposals above £250,000 there was a secondary scrutiny mechanism in place, with GONE and latterly ONE NE appraising project proposals.

5.15 Project appraisal can be tricky and in the early days of SRB, partnerships sometimes struggled to adapt to the process. In Northumberland, where there was very little prior experience managing regeneration programmes, partners initially found the appraisal process daunting. Numerous partnerships implemented formal appraisal training for their staff, which was felt to improve partners’ understanding of appraisal and their capacity to effectively interrogate projects.

Community engagement

5.16 One of the most frequently cited benefits of SRB was the development of community capacity to help shape and deliver local regeneration programmes. Engaging with communities effectively is not easy and over the course of SRB, many partnerships learnt valuable lessons. For example, developing community engagement is an ongoing process and very often



local people will require some form of capacity building before they can actively participate in local partnerships. In Wear Valley, in County Durham, the partnership specifically employed capacity building workers for this purpose.

5.17 A crucial element to fostering community engagement was ensuring that the local people’s involvement was genuine. Getting communities to agree to decisions made by committees does not represent real community engagement. In some programmes, consulting with communities after spending decisions have already been made has led to disillusionment and disengagement.

5.18 There was some anecdotal evidence from some partners that, by the end of SRB, communities felt ‘over consulted’ and were frustrated by the emphasis on ‘talking rather than doing’. Progress in regeneration can often be slow and people, perhaps not unreasonably, sometimes resent being asked for their views numerous times before any changes on the ground can be seen. However, sensitive engagement and clear communication up front can do much to alleviate these problems.

5.19 There is some sense that communities’ inputs into the regeneration process can be front loaded. However, a number of the SRB programmes noted that community groups were important not only in the initial conception and design of projects, but also the ongoing management and monitoring of projects. For example, the Exclusion to Inclusion in Stockton programme used community members as ‘critical friends’ to help monitor and manage projects.

Private sector engagement

5.20 The private sector will have its own motivations for engaging in regeneration work. Private companies are much more likely to engage with programmes if they see genuine opportunities for making profit. While this could be argued as being at odds with the objectives of SRB, correctly harnessed, the private sector can contribute significantly to regeneration programmes. Capital projects seem to have been more successful in securing private sector funding than revenue based social regeneration programmes, although the hard data to back this up is thin. The returns from social regeneration programmes are likely to be in the form of increased human capital and skills. Increased skill levels, for example, may deliver economic benefits but these benefits will be realised over longer timescales and at a disperse level,



neither of which are likely to have been of immediate interest to the private sector.

5.21 SRB struggled to engage private sector interest in areas of particular blight or dereliction that don’t respond to traditional market forces. Housing stock projects on run down estates came in for particular criticism by partners. It was noted in a number of cases that housing projects were ‘patch up efforts’, where, in reality, housing stock needed replacing.

5.22 The Graingertown project, in many senses an unusual SRB project, was highly successful in attracting private sector funding. There was an element of good fortune with the project. English Partnerships had just been created and was looking to invest in Newcastle, inner city living had just kicked off and SRB took advantage of what was a nascent trend. The fact that Graingertown was a project that targeted economic opportunity, rather than need, was reflected in the high levels of private sector investment in managed to attract.

5.23 Very few programmes developed proactive asset management strategies, despite the significant investment in capital projects. However, in Ouseburn the partnership developed an innovative approach, retaining the capital assets developed in a trust. The partnership now rents its property and uses the money to fund local projects. Pennywell’s Neighbourhood Centre has a similar role. In some SRB areas, partnerships funded improvements in housing stock which was later transferred to arms length management organisations. One consultee noted that without SRB money to fund housing improvements, the housing stock would not have been of sufficient quality to be transferred. However, on stock transfer, SRB partnerships did not receive any of the capital investment they had made in the housing stock. This is an aspirational observation; in reality any money clawed back was returned to the Treasury and not to partnerships for re-distribution, in keeping with national guidelines. It should also be noted that much of the housing stock improvement took place in rounds 1-3 of SRB, some time before the large scale transfer of local authority housing.

Monitoring and evaluation

5.24 Partnerships were required to monitor their quarterly outputs and submit reports to GONE and latterly One NorthEast. As noted earlier, partnerships were required to account for their activities using over 60 output measures.



The monitoring requirements were a source of frustration to partnerships, especially in the early days of the programme, but in the later rounds partners found the evaluation process to be “manageable, if a little tedious”. Some partnerships actively commented that the output monitoring process gave them a structure around which to assess performance and progress. For others, there was a feeling that the monitoring requirements were too onerous and had the effect of distorting project behaviours, as partners focussed on “chasing outputs”, rather than delivering projects.

5.25 Over the lifetime of SRB, all the partnerships undertook final programme evaluations and many of the larger programmes carried out interim evaluations. Evaluation, when correctly employed, should be a tool to enhance and develop regeneration delivery. However, in some cases evaluation was viewed as a necessary evil or a box ticking exercise to be endured. Indeed, our review or SRB revaluation reports highlighted a marked variation in the quality of evaluation reporting. In some cases, there was a genuine sense that evaluators had worked collaboratively with partnerships to fairly reflect programme performance. At the other end of the spectrum, some of the evaluation reports lacked basic information in areas such as spend and outputs and contributed little to partnership or regeneration thinking.

5.26 While there was guidance issued for programmes on measuring performance and evaluation e.g. the formal guidance from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) in 2000, a stronger lead on how independent evaluation should have been commissioned and managed would have been helpful. Worth noting is that in the early days of SRB, programme evaluation was a relatively new concept and to some extent organisations were learning about the benefits of good evaluation. An interesting insight from some partners was the reflection that the consultants employed in the early days of programmes may not be the right people to carry out the final evaluation work. The skills required to develop programmes and projects are markedly different from those required to take a more sober, analytical view of performance.

5.27 In the later rounds of SRB, it was clear that the output measures were an ineffective way of judging programme performance. While there were guidelines on how to define and count outputs, individual partnerships will have been subject to any number of optimism or pessimism biases when trying to assess the outputs achieved. As such, partnerships became increasingly aware of the need to measure outcomes, rather than outputs, to get a genuine reflection on how effective their programmes had been.



However, there was no consistent approach to capturing impacts and measuring outcomes was often referred to as “something we should do”, rather than “something we could do”. We refer in greater detail to the challenges of measuring impacts in Section 7.

Project sustainability and mainstreaming

5.28 SRB was a time-limited funding stream. As such, there was an onus on partnerships and project managers to plan for life ‘post-SRB’ where there was a valid reason for projects to continue either under their own steam or via mainstream agencies.

5.29 In partnerships where limited succession of projects occurred, this was largely due to two reasons. First, in some partnerships partners simply didn’t give the time and resources required to plan exit and succession strategies. For other partnerships, the lack of project succession wasn’t due to a lack of effort or focus; rather partnerships were unsuccessful in their attempts to secure funding, for example, the Effective Labour Market Progression programme made numerous unsuccessful bids for further funding. The issue of project succession was actively addressed by some partnerships, for example the East End Partnership in Newcastle gave its staff specific training in planning for programme succession.

5.30 Where partnerships were successful in securing a future, post SRB, this was often in connection with Neighbourhood Renewal Funding. There are many crossovers between the objectives of SRB and NRF funding, although SRB was recognised as a much more flexible funding source. Other projects developed innovative approaches to ensuring project sustainability. In the Northumberland programme, for example, the evaluation notes that some projects planned very carefully for succession and in some cases, such as Newbiggen Life and the Parenting Initiative project, charitable bodies or new partnerships were set up to ensure the continuation of the projects.

5.31 A small number of evaluations make reference to the likely sustainability of capital projects, such as community centres. For such capital projects there will be ‘endowment effects’16 in play, which mean that communities feel a sense of ownership and are more likely to value the resource as a result.

16 The endowment effect (or divestiture aversion) is a hypothesis that people value a good or service more once their property right to it has been established - Wikipedia



Longer term, two evaluations make reference to the fact that longer-term sustainability has not been secured for capital projects, e.g. The Palew View Community Resource Centre developed as part of the Sherburn rd SRB programme.

5.32 For around half the project evaluations we reviewed, there was little evidence of any project mainstreaming taking place. Speaking to partners, there was an acknowledgement that mainstreaming small locally based initiatives is difficult – they work at the local level and such initiatives are not necessarily scaleable to a larger geographic level. Other consultees noted that very often mainstreaming or project sustainability considerations were always ‘next week’s issue’. In the experience of the City of Sunderland Partnership effective mainstreaming relied on agencies being involved from the project from the very outset.



6 THE DEMISE OF SRB

Introduction

6.1 The SRB funding stream was formally wound up in March 2007. Some programmes have been granted additional time to tie up their operations, but to all intents and purposes the programme has finished.

6.2 Much has already been written and spoken about the demise of SRB and passions run high about the issue, particularly at community and delivery levels. The principle concern is that post-SRB there aren’t the funding sources available for the VCS sector to run social regeneration projects in the North East. The displacement of Lottery Funding to the London Olympics; the reduction in EU funding; and the tighter economic focus of the RDA agenda are all factors that potentially accentuate the perceived ‘funding crunch’ for the VCS.

6.3 In this section, we examine whether the demise of SRB was sufficiently well communicated; its impact on VCS income; the loss of human capital; and ongoing engagement with One NorthEast.

Communicating the demise of SRB

6.4 Some of those involved in SRB in the North East have felt that the eventual winding-up of the programme was not well-communicated. In addition, some thought that there was an expectation, or perhaps a hope, that a replacement for the programme - a ‘son of SRB’ - would be developed by the Government or One NorthEast to ease the transition into a post-SRB world, despite the absence of any commitments or indications to this effect.

6.5 Over the course of the consultation process for this evaluation, including with partners from the VCS, we have found little evidence to suggest that people were unaware in advance that the SRB programme would end after Round 6. There was certainly an expectation by some that a successor programme would supersede SRB. This appears to be a mixture of wishful thinking and some misunderstanding about what new funding streams were going to target. The RDA Single Programme, for example, following hard on the heels of SRB, was viewed by some as its natural successor, despite having a very different focus. More clarity earlier on about the objectives of Single



Programme may have mitigated some of the heightened expectations. In reality the Neighbourhood Renewal programme, unveiled in 2001, was the more natural successor to the SRB programme. Some of the confusion that has arisen about the role of the RDAs is perhaps the consequence of them managing the latter half of the SRB programme.

Loss of income to the VCS

6.6 The Invest 2006 report17 estimates a net loss of £46m (timescale unclear) for social regeneration projects from the demise of SRB and reduction in EU funding. However, the more detailed ‘Facing the Future’ report18 suggests that, on the whole, the VCS is more confident about its future, with 94% of organisations expecting to be sustainable in the longer term. Less positive is that 54% of Voluntary and Community Organisations expected their funding levels to decrease in 2006. The principle strategy for offsetting declining incomes from government sources was to develop more sources of ‘earned income’. A significant concern raised by the report was that there was a ‘”lack of preparedness in the sector” and that organisations may be suffering from an optimism bias about the extent to which they could secure income from other sources. A more specific SRB Succession Audit published by the Invest 2006 group examines the impact of the demise of SRB on sixteen specific projects. Of this number, seven of the projects audited faced the threat of closure. Five of the projects were reporting the potential loss of staff and/or aspects of their projects.

6.7 Reading these reports, it is easy to come to the view that the VCS is on the edge of a precipice in financial terms. While the sector undoubtedly faces significant challenges, and SRB will be sorely missed, this was not the sense we got speaking to organisations on the ground. To put this into context, the Facing the Future report notes that SRB, NRF, New Deal for Communities and Sure Start combined contributed 12% of total funding for the VCS . There will certainly be some organisations, heavily reliant on SRB that will, or have, folded since SRB finished. However this in itself should not be used as evidence that the sector as a whole is in decline – in all funding programmes there will be projects that fail or come to a natural end.

6.8 Consultees have suggested that the impact of SRB will be more acutely felt among those smaller, grass roots organisations operating at a community level. This is slightly at odds with the Facing the Future Report which notes that small VCS groups get 44% of their funding from government sources,

17 Report of the North East Voluntary and Community Sector Task Force – April 2006 18 Facing the Future – The impact of a changing funding environment on the Voluntary and Community Sector in the North East of England – Social Futures Institute (2006)



compared with 52% and 59% respectively for medium and large VCS groups. Certainly, larger, more structured, structured groups have the capacity and flexibility to develop alternative funding strategies and engage with the mainstream. There were a number of organisations we spoke with that had used SRB as a springboard to develop their capabilities, such that they were now able to provide services for mainstream providers.

Loss of human capital

6.9 The loss of human capital, post SRB, was widely acknowledged as being one of the major consequences of SRB’s demise. This human capital was by no means only in the VCS. Partnerships took years to develop and gel and, while some are continuing post-SRB, there are many that have folded. Also, experience will be lost in local communities that had made great strides in developing their capabilities over the lifetime of SRB. Less widely reported, but also important, was the capacity within local authorities to deliver and manage local regeneration programmes.

Engagement with One NorthEast

6.10 A common perception with VCS groups we spoke with was the apparent disconnect between the VCS and One NorthEast as an organisation. Consultees viewed the Agency’s remit as “strictly economic” and suggested that there were no clear ‘lead-ins’ for the VCS to engage and work with the agency. Despite this, according to the Facing the Future report, around 3% of annual VCS funding came from Single Pot monies.

6.11 The RDAs have a clear remit to deliver economic advantage to their regions and their focus has increasingly shifted to larger transformational projects, which do have the potential to exclude smaller VCS bodies. It should be recognised that this remit has been set externally and One NorthEast has limited scope to shift emphasis back towards more grassroots type regeneration.

6.12 The North East region’s VCS is not alone in finding post-SRB life more challenging. Indeed, there we have no reason to believe that One North East is any more or less accommodating towards the VCS than other RDAs. A report by The National Association of Councils for the Voluntary Sector (NACVS)19, examining whether Single Pot will tackle social regeneration, highlighted unease in many regions. In the North West, for example, the

19 Will the Single Pot tackle social regeneration? – NACVS (2004)



report noted that the sector had little success in engaging with the North West Development Agency (NWDA). This story is mirrored across many regions, with only the East Midlands and the South West regions’ RDAs making clear commitments to engage with the sector.

6.13 A clear challenge facing the VCS is the scale at which many organisations operate. RDAs deliver activities through their sub-regional partnerships and the level of geography at which they operate is not going to change. The VCS almost certainly has skills and capabilities that would be of use to One NorthEast, but it would struggle to operate at a sub-regional level. One solution would be for groups in the sector to work in collaboration to deliver projects and programmes at the scale required by One NorthEast. However, the sector suffers from a level of coordination failure, such that some groups do not have the capability or willingness to coordinate cross sector working. There are, however, organisations in existence, such as Acumen in Durham, that seek to overcome these coordination failures and to get the sector working more coherently. For its part of the quid quo pro, there needs to be an acknowledgement from within One NorthEast that the VCS sector may not yet be able to deliver programmes at a sub-regional level, but there is scope to expand the sector’s involvement in the delivery of Single Pot initiatives by helping to build their capacity to do so.



7 REFLECTIONS ON IMPACT

7.1 SRB in the North East was very often delivered in areas experiencing severe deprivation. The national evaluation notes that the worst such areas are impervious to the influences of the market place and sometimes beyond the reach of mainstream service delivery agencies. SRB was designed to help break the cycle of deprivation in run down areas by improving the physical infrastructure and people’s access to economic opportunity.

7.2 Gauging the extent to which SRB has made an impact is hard to judge. The national evaluation makes use of a targeted baseline survey of residents conducted in 1996. The survey was then repeated in 2001 to give an indication of how levels of employment, income, health and perceptions and satisfaction changed over the lifetime of SRB. This is a resource intensive undertaking and not surprisingly none of the partnerships in the North East adopted this approach.

7.3 Another common approach to assessing the level of impact is the use of baselines to track changes across SRB areas over the lifetime of the programme. This was a commonly used approach in many SRB reports, but the reality is that discerning the ‘signal’ (i.e. the impact of SRB) from ‘noise’ (changes bought about by other factors) is not easy, especially at the geographical level at which data was available for factors such as VAT start-up rates, for example. Also, the problem of shifting programme boundaries means developing a consistent picture can be difficult. For example, the Pennywell estate received SRB funding from 4 different SRB rounds, all at slightly differing geographies. The advent of Super Output Areas should, in future, allow for a much clearer picture of the impact of targeted local regeneration programmes.

7.4 A final challenge when considering the outcomes of SRB is the time lag between programme inputs and possible positive outcomes. While there are immediate effects to be seen from physical regeneration programmes, the softer social impacts may take much longer to become manifest.

Consideration of additionality, deadweight and substitution

7.5 SRB programme evaluations did not generally make any allowances for deadweight and additionality considerations. A common perception for



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certain types of interventions e.g. housing development programmes was that, irrespective of SRB, the market would have led to the still delivered the same level of impact, with or without SRB. In such examples, there is certainly a case to be made that SRB ensured such developments happened more quickly. Making things happen more quickly is, in itself, a form of additionality, but there is no sense of the extent to which SRB speeded up developments.

7.6 Another not infrequent observation was that SRB funding substituted for local authority spending. So, instead of being genuinely additional to local areas, SRB spend simply made up the shortfall for local authority spending. There is no definitive data on potential levels of substitution and it varied from programme to programme. Housing and crime prevention projects cropped up regularly as examples where SRB money often substituted for the spend of statutory agencies. Developments such as CCTV cameras, street lighting developments and target hardening projects could and perhaps should have been delivered by mainstream service providers. However, where the package of physical improvements was delivered in line with softer initiatives to improve community safety programmes, SRB spend on physical infrastructure is more justifiable. In some cases, such as the Grangetown estate regeneration programme there was a suggestion that the additional SRB money designed to ‘get more bobbies on the beat’ in reality funded police overtime for existing officers.

Observations on impact

7.7 Given the limited documentary or data evidence detailing SRB impact, much of the evidence of impact is anecdotal. Some of the observations made on impact are as follows:

SRB was successful where it ‘tipped the balance’ in favour of an area. For example, the Graingertown project in Newcastle. While SRB money only funded a small part of this programme, it was recognised that the early up-front commitment made by SRB ensured the buy-in from key private and pubic sector agencies

Overall impact of some estate based regeneration programmes was low - In some of the estate based regeneration programmes, SRB had a minimal impact in actually turning around the fortunes of areas. Put simply, SRB funds were not of magnitude required to address



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systemic socio-economic problems. However, this in itself is not a reason not to invest regeneration monies in deprived areas.

Socio-economic impacts may not be realised during the lifetime to a programme – The impacts of some interventions, especially softer skills interventions, may not be realised until after programmes are finished. SRB did not use a post-programme monitoring approach, so these impacts were not captured.

Diversity can dilute impact - Lots of projects doesn’t necessarily make for successful programmes. If anything, it over complicated programme management, incurred higher levels of deadweight and led to a lack of overall programme focus.

Inter-project co-operation – Programmes where individual projects were run in isolation only delivered the sums of their collective parts. Where programmes make cross-project linkages the scope for scale and synergy benefits was increased.

Key impacts may not always be measurable - One significant outcome from the SRB programme has been the increased capacity and confidence among local communities to not only contribute to local regeneration programmes, but also to engage with wider mainstream stakeholders. However, these impacts are not effectively reflected in the performance measurement systems used for SRB.



8 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Introduction

8.1 In this section we set out the main conclusions from the report, which seek to respond to the aims of the evaluation set out in Section One. We also provide a series of recommendations for future action.

8.2 In reading these conclusions, it is important to remember that SRB was never a regional programme. This evaluation has sought to derive a broad regional picture of performance, drawing on the experience of 113 disparate programmes and over 7,000 individual projects delivered across 12 years of activity. There has been no comprehensive dataset, and forming a consistent regional view has been very challenging. The range of experiences is huge, but there are some consistent messages which can be drawn on to provide generalised conclusions.

Aims and objectives

8.3 Nationally, the aims and objectives of the SRB programme were cast broadly. It was an attempt to simplify the funding of local regeneration schemes; help the most deprived areas socially and economically; and support local partnerships and communities to take action for themselves. SRB in the North East has undoubtedly been delivered in accordance with these aims, both in style and content.

Expenditure

8.4 Over its 12 year life, £650m of SRB funds were spent in the North East. Based on those evaluations we have seen, the total expenditure through SRB, including leveraged funds, pushes this to in excess of £1.2bn. While a sizeable sum, actual leverage fell some £640m short of forecast. Private sector funding appears to have been particularly difficult to leverage in, and revenue projects have found it hardest to attract additional funding streams.

8.5 Resource spent on managing individual SRB programmes appears to have varied between 2% and 5% of total budgets, which is a reasonable level of management overhead.



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Outputs and value for money

8.6 Judged against outputs as a measure of performance, the regional SRB programme performed very well. Outputs exceeded expectations in all of the core categories, with the exception of business survivals. Overall, the SRB programme has delivered (net):

over 12,000 jobs created or safeguarded;

over 2,700 new businesses;

over 27,000 people trained; and

320 hectares of land reclaimed or improved.

8.7 On the whole, these outputs were delivered at cost in keeping with the national evaluation for SRB.

Outcomes and impact

8.8 The North East region today is very different to that of 12 years ago. Of course, there have been many factors, internal and external, which have had an influence on this change. Attribution of impact to SRB is therefore very difficult, doubly so because the programme was never really designed with outcomes in mind – this has been a relatively recent element of evaluation policy and practice. What we can do, however, is draw attention to a number of the significant outcomes and impacts that have been evident from programme evaluation reports and consultees:

• turning around or halting the decline of some particularly disadvantaged areas in the region, both through physical change and creating a more positive, confident sense of community;

• providing assets to sustain longer term community activity, and to act as a focus for community action and cohesiveness;

• attracting mainstream services into areas which had previously been ignored or avoided;

• reducing crime through physical means, as well as policing and community safety strategies;

• helping people to up skill and find employment;



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• supporting nascent businesses. The other, perhaps equally important element of SRB’s impact has been on the way in which regeneration is done. Specific impacts here include:

• leading the way in developing the partnership approach to regeneration, which continues in a range of guises today;

• capacity building among managers, deliverers and communities, providing them with an ongoing ability to support and instigate regeneration activity. While the demise of specific programmes will undoubtedly result in the loss of some tacit knowledge and experience, many people appear to have stayed on in regeneration and economic development within the region;

• increasing the importance of community engagement and ownership in the delivery of regeneration.

Final conclusions and recommendations

8.9 Our final conclusions and recommendations from this report are as follows:

Regional and strategic:

A broad brush approach to funding allocation has strengths and weaknesses - SRB was one of the most laissez faire funding regimes of recent times. Partners could bend SRB monies to almost any objective. This flexibility had the advantage of allowing partners to respond to their location specific circumstances. The flipside of this was that often the impact of programmes was no more than the sum of the programme parts. The breadth of remit also meant that ‘everybody could argue for a slice of the pie’, making it very hard for partnerships to put together a genuinely strategic and inter-connected set of projects.

More doesn’t necessarily mean better – The sheer number of projects funded by SRB made accountability and management challenging. There is also a problem of repeat overheads and management costs which diminishes the amount of funding that reaches the front line. This is not to say that small projects don’t work or cannot be effective, but trying to account for large numbers of projects at a programme level proved very challenging.



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Understanding impact is crucial - The lack of real understanding or consideration of impact presents a real problem for local regeneration projects when trying to advocate for the continuation of project funding. In future, estate based regeneration programmes should place a stronger focus on developing a rigorous baseline and clear indicators to measure eventual success. The data to do this is now much more detailed and accessible than when SRB began.

Balancing the funding of opportunity and need - As a programme, SRB very clearly targeted deprivation in localised areas. In comparison the RDAs, with Single Pot money, focus on fewer, larger opportunities which aim to deliver economic benefit to their regions, the logic being that the region needs a strong economy to ensure the jobs and prosperity of its people. RDAs have targets, set by the DTI, to meet and as such have to spend their money wisely. However, it should be noted that while spending in areas of need, rather than opportunity, may not deliver high levels of tangible outputs and impacts, there is the immeasurable impact of ‘showing faith’ in deprived communities by investing in projects and programmes in poor areas.

Strategic connections are important – For some grassroots projects, there is a pride in operating where the mainstream can’t or won’t reach. Such projects are unlikely to ‘look upwards’ to make strategic connections with mainstream partners. However, at the larger project and programme level there should be a stronger emphasis on connecting with the strategic intentions of other partners.

The need for good record keeping – A consistent problem in evaluating this programme has been the lack of a central data source to provide accurate information on outputs and spend for the programme as a whole.

Programme management:

Balanced partnerships are crucial – The dynamics of the relationship between local authorities and partnerships could be problematic. This sometimes led to disharmony and a sense that SRB money was substituting for local authority spending, rather than being genuinely additional to an area.

Front loading programmes should be avoided - Partnerships were often too keen to get a good number of projects ‘on the books’ very early on in the programme cycle, so they could plan activities and meet spend profiles. While understandable, in some programmes this limited project flexibility; meant project appraisals were unduly rushed; and by the middle of the programme all



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the major spend decisions had been made, leading to a diminution of interest from partners.

Robust project appraisal generates good projects – Good partnerships used a robust appraisal process to help shape and refine their projects. However, good appraisal requires time and staff may need training on the concepts and methodologies behind project appraisal.

The private sector will engage, when it makes sense for it to do so – Private sector leverage was a key element of SRB and some partnerships were very successful in securing private sector buy-in. However, the private sector will only engage when there are clear benefits from doing so. This was most frequently evident in physical regeneration projects. Social projects, where impacts are disparate and realised over a longer time-frame, find it hard to attract private sector money.

Monitoring and evaluation can improve programme performance – The monitoring and evaluation requirements of SRB were often perceived as being burdensome. There is little doubt that the range of output measures used to measure performance was unwieldy and sometimes confusing. However, monitoring and evaluation processes, when correctly employed, helped partnerships to assess progress and take remedial action, where appropriate.

Grassroots delivery:

Community engagement cannot be taken for granted – SRB was a community-focussed regeneration programme, but local engagement was not always easy to achieve. Successful partnerships engaged communities from the outset and continued to use their skills to help deliver and monitor projects’ performance.

Mainstreaming local level projects is very challenging – SRB projects were often designed to function at a local neighbourhood scale. As such, scaling them up to the level at which mainstream providers work was particularly difficult.

Annex A – Consultees

Name Organization Giles Southwell One NorthEast

Peter Sweeney One NorthEast

Tim Pain One NorthEast

Robin Beveridge One NorthEast

Nick Muse One NorthEast

Lesley Calder One NorthEast

Helen Nattress One NorthEast

Mike Lazzari One NorthEast

Mark Brown One NorthEast

Giles Southwell One NorthEast

Peter Sweeney One NorthEast

Kristen Da Stockton Borough Council

Daniel Crawford South Tyneside Council

Bob Ward Durham County Council

Steven Bowyer Durham County Council

Martin Simpson Tees Valley Partnership

Claire Fewster Durham County Council

Sarah Bullerwell Derwentside District Council

Fred Robinson Durham University

Fiona Clarke Durham University

Margaret Richards Durham County Council

Jane Ritchie None

Harriet Gibbon Age Concern Durham

Stuart Green Hartlepool Borough Council

Peter Richards Groundwork Trust

Alan Weston Wear Valley District Council

Mark Rowland Wear Valley District Council

Dawn Egglestone Wear Valley District Council

Tom Warburton One NorthEast

Heather Smith Northumberland Strategic Partnership

Jane Nolan Northumberland Strategic Partnership

Alan Wann Northumberland County Council

Chris Metcalf Sure Start Blyth

Thom Bradley Blyth Valley CVS

Phil Langton Business Link Northumberland

Jack Cavagin Business Link Northumberland

Judith Nunn Business Link Northumberland

Ray Browning Wansbeck District Council

Bill Hayden Middleborough Council

Charmaine Buckley Partnership in Learning

Kester Haith FROG

Ian Jeffrey South Bank and Grangetown SRB Partnership Board

Kate Brown Middleborough Partnership

Graham Orram Five Lamps Organization

Julie Derbyshire Stockton Residents Association

John Ford Hartlepool SRB Partnership

Neil Cawson Housing Renewal, Stockton

Allison Patterson Sunderland City Council

Phil Calvert One NorthEast

Ray Bland Ouseburn Trust

George Snaith Tyne and Wear Partnership

Phil Spooner Sunderland City Council

Stan Hughes Sunderland City Council

Andrew Seekings Sunderland City Council

Dale Bolland Newcastle City Council

Peter Howe Newcastle City Council

Graham Bell Civic Trust

Roger Mould Newcastle CVS

Suzanne Ruffell Tees Valley Partnership

Annex B – Evaluation reports reviewed

SRB Programme

Accelerating the Renaissance of Central Middleborough and Winning Back Neighborhoods

Bensham and Saltwell SRB Partnership Building a Brighter Future City of Sunderland Partnership City of Sunderland Partnership: Work and Learn Competitiveness Partnership Programme Darlington Community Works Programme Easington District SRB Partnership East End Partnership East Gateshead Regeneration Scheme Effective Progression to the Labour Market Empowering Communities Programme

Exclusion to Inclusion - Regeneration to Renaissance SRB

Focus on Ford and Pallion Hartlepool Headland Revival Integrated Regeneration in County Durham Longbenton SRB

Making Waves: Tourism Business Support Scheme

Newcastle West into Work North Tyneside @ Work Partnership North West Partnership Programme Northumberland Can-Do Communities

Owton Rosmere Partnership, SRB Challenge Fund

Partnership Scheme for Young People Preparing for Change Pride in Pennywell Pride of Place: Grainger Town Project Safe in Tees Valley Sherburn Road Regeneration Initiative

South Bishop Auckland Regeneration Partnership

South Tyneside Enterprise Partnership

Sunderland 'Connecting Communities' - Mid Term Evaluation

Sustaining a Community Sustaining the Promise Tackling the Fear of Crime

Universities at the Heart of Process Industry Clusters

Wansbeck Online West Redcar Pathways to Inclusion

Documents

An evaluation of the Single Regeneration Budget in the North East