Wolverhampton City Council and Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) LOCAL INVESTMENT PLAN July 2010-2014 August 2010 Making it happen in Wolverhampton CONTENTS CONTEXT Introduction to the Local Investment Plan 3 Wolverhampton’s vision 3 Local context and challenges 4 Strategic context 8 PRIORITIES City-wide thematic priorities 15 Thematic housing priorities 29 Spatial priorities 34 Shared principles of investment 37 Continued engagement 38 Monitoring and review 39 Governance 39 Appendix A: Progress in achieving Wolverhampton’s vision 41 Appendix B: City wide evidence base – Picture of Wolverhampton 42 Appendix C: List of LSOA areas (deprived) 47 Appendix D: Groupings of 10% most Deprived Neighbourhoods 49 Appendix E: WDC Priority Projects across the city 50 Appendix F: The six spatial priorities 51 Appendix G: Prioritising the spatial priorities 72 2 CONTEXT 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE LOCAL INVESTMENT PLAN The Wolverhampton Local Investment Plan 2010-14 (LIP) has been developed in partnership between Wolverhampton City Council (WCC) and the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA). Its role is to set out how these two organisations will work together and with other public and private sector partners during the plan period to help deliver Wolverhampton’s long term vision, which has a significant emphasis on increasing economic prosperity. Whilst the plan initially focuses on investment over the next 3 years, the LIP is designed to be flexible to take into account changing policy direction over a longer 15 year horizon. The plan sets out how WCC and partners will work together through agreed thematic and spatial priorities for regeneration and housing. In addition it also focuses on how partners will work together on a whole area approach to investing capital and revenue and to delivering improvements to services within communities – in line with the government’s Total Place / Total Capital agendas. This will involve integrating investment streams, including housing, health, transport, education and employment. This strategic alignment of funding streams will support ‘place making’; in which interventions are coordinated and integrated and together contribute to a vision for the whole City. The key areas covered by the Wolverhampton LIP are: The vision and wider strategic context for the investment decisions in housing and regeneration Thematic priorities that reflect Wolverhampton’s Sustainable Community Strategy. Spatial priorities derived from extensive research where investment for housing regeneration and growth will be targeted. Previous, current and planned investment across a range of public sector organisations. Defining the principles of co-investment between the HCA and WCC. Governance arrangements Plan for continued engagement Monitoring and review. 2. WOLVERHAMPTON’S VISION This Local Investment Plan will form part of the delivery mechanism for Wolverhampton’s Sustainable Communities Strategy. In building this vision for the City, the Wolverhampton Partnership (the LSP) recognised the significance of economic competitiveness in driving other desirable outcomes for the City, so that “By 2026, Wolverhampton will be a City where people can thrive. The economy is transformed and the gap in health, wealth and prosperity between communities and neighbourhoods in the City is substantially reduced. Wolverhampton is a place with safe, strong, diverse and popular neighbourhoods; a place where everyone has an improved quality of life and the chance to reach his or her full 3 potential and where the benefits of the City’s growth are widely shared.” To increase the City’s economic competitiveness this vision has been distilled into 3 strategic regeneration objectives. These are: Firstly to develop the City’s Human Capital by building on the strong culture of listening to residents and to continue to ensure Wolverhampton’s people prepare themselves for future employment opportunities. Secondly the City is prioritising a number of large scale projects with the aim to transform the city and create the conditions for enterprise to flourish. Thirdly to ensure a prosperous future and to attract and retain people the City aims to significantly improve the City’s quality of place and residential offer. Significant progress has already been made towards realising this vision, some elements of which are provided in Appendix A. To achieve Wolverhampton’s ambitious transformational plans, local partners established the Wolverhampton Development Company in 2008 which provides opportunities to attract new businesses to the city and in doing so create sustainable economic growth. WDC cannot tackle everything at once and has therefore targeted the City Centre, Stafford road corridor and the new deal area in Blakenhall and All Saints known as ABCD. WDC has identified 13 key strategic projects. A full list can be seen in Appendix E. Progress to date on 3 of the major schemes is: Interchange Following receipt of approval in principle for Interchange Phase 1 (the Bus Station Redevelopment) start on site for the main works contract was made in January 2010. i 54 A planning application has been submitted to allow an increase in the amount of floor space permitted in the first phase of development at the site from 15,000 sq metres to 50,000 square metres. Permission has been granted subject to conditions and a S106 agreement City Gate Outline planning permission has been granted for a scheme involving a 60 room hotel, conference facilities, restaurants, a nursery and managed workspace at an existing warehouse on the Stafford Rd. This scheme includes a proposal for 450 new jobs. 3. LOCAL CONTEXT AND CHALLENGES Wolverhampton is the largest of the 4 local authorities that make up the Black Country, having a population of 236,400. It lies to the North West of Birmingham. The City centre is located 7 miles from the major motorway network to the north and the city’s railway station is served by the West Coast Main Line and has regular rail services to London, Birmingham and Manchester. The Midland metro connects Wolverhampton and Birmingham City centres. After many years in decline the population of the city has started to increase. The proportion of younger and older people is also continuing to rise which could cause demographic polarisation. In terms of diversity there are approximately 36,000 people of Asian origin and 12,000 people of African-Caribbean origin living in the city. Significantly 27% of all under 19 year olds are from BME communities. There are 4 growing numbers of people from the new EEC countries settling in the City and there is already a significant and well established Polish community. Wolverhampton has an increasingly aging population with 21.7% of the population being retired. However the 45–64 age group is forecast to increase by 4,000 people (7.3%) and the 65+ age group by 8,900 people (22.1%) in 2026. Economically, Wolverhampton has had mixed fortunes. It is currently in the process of a structural transformation – from a once prosperous industrial city to a modern mixed economy. The collapse of the traditional manufacturing sector over the last 25 years has taken its toll and it has not yet developed a critical mass of modern, high- value added wealth creating activities. The growth in non-revenue generating public sector services has not balanced the equation. Traditionally, Wolverhampton's economy was dominated by engineering and manufacturing industries. However by 2008, 74.9% of the city's employment was in the service sector. The major subcomponents of this sector are in public administration, education and health (32.8% of the total employment), while distribution, hotels and restaurants take up 21.1%, and finance and IT takes up 12.7%. The largest non-service industry is that of manufacturing (12.9%), whilst 5.2% of the total employment is related to the tourism industry. Wolverhampton University is now one of the largest universities in the country and nearly 50% of the 23,000 students are local people. Wolverhampton was ranked 28 out of 354 Local Authority Districts (with 1 being the most deprived) in 2007, having slipped from 35 in 2004. It has two Super Output Areas (SOA) within most deprived 1% in the country, and 15 in the top 5%. This demonstrates the need for significant intervention, strengthening the argument for intelligent investment to support economic growth and reduce deprivation in the City. Wolverhampton has a working population of 138,500. Of this figure, 68.7% of the population are classified as ‘Economically Active’, (West Midlands equivalent is 72.9%). Wolverhampton suffers from problems of relative high rates of unemployment - 11.3% compared to the UK average of 6.9% and the West Midlands average of 8.6% - which has increased through the recession. However the City wide unemployment rate also hides pockets of severe deprivation, the five wards with the highest unemployment levels are Heath Town, Ettingshall, St Peters , Low Hill and Blakenhall who account for 26.5% of the City’s population but 40.5% of unemployment claimants. In addition the Wolverhampton City employment strategy has suggested that whilst there will be some employment growth in the service sector, employment is predicted to contract further due to over reliance of the economy on those sectors where employment is set to fall. Alongside the challenge to achieve significant economic growth in Wolverhampton where high unemployment and low activity rates exist, other key issues that have been raised through the City’s employment strategy are: Low levels of educational attainment in the workforce are putting off business investment. 25% of the working age population have no qualifications. High Levels of benefits. 36% of households are in receipt of housing /council tax benefit in 2009. 7% increase on the previous year. One in ten children is growing up in households where nobody has ever worked. Low levels of earnings 5 Attracting and retaining Talent – trend of out migration from the City of high achieving young people Wolverhampton’s population suffers from poorer health than many areas of the country.