The Pontypool Deep Place Study
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All Around Us The Pontypool Deep Place Study Dr Mark Lang 2016 Contents Page Executive Summary 3 1.0 Introduction 5 2.0 Theoretical Influences 7 2.1 Social Exclusion 9 2.2 Transition Theory 10 2.3 Total Place 11 2.4 Foundational Economy 12 3.0 Legislative Context 13 3.1 Well-being of Future Generations Act 13 3.2 Environment Act 15 3.3 Planning Act 16 4.0 Economic Context 16 4.1 The Context for Economic Policy Making in Wales 16 4.2 Welsh Economic Policy 18 5.0 Methodology 20 5.1 Selecting the Place 20 5.2 A Brief History of Pontypool 21 5.3 Methodology 23 5.4 Research Methods 23 6.0 Re-Localising Economic Activity 24 6.1 Torfaen Economic Approach 26 6.2 Tourism 28 6.3 Pontypool Town Centre 29 7.0 The Local Economic Sectors 39 7.1 Food 40 7.2 Energy and Energy Efficiency 43 7.3 Care 47 7.4 Environment 48 7.5 E-commerce and Employment 50 8.0 Breaking Down the Challenges 51 8.1 Health 54 8.2 Education and Skills 59 8.3 Housing 63 8.4 Transport 68 9.0 Conclusions 70 References 72 Appendix 1: List of Think Space Attendees 86 Appendix 2: List of Action Points 88 2 Executive Summary Undertaken with support from the Sustainable Places Research Institute at Cardiff University, this report sets out and further develops the Deep Place approach to sustainable place- making advocated in the Tredegar Study of 2014, and which has now been further applied in Pontypool. The central research questions remains largely the same: What type of economy and society do we need to create in Pontypool to achieve economic, social, cultural and environmental sustainability by 2035? The approach continues to be strongly influenced by, and indeed seeks to influence in return, theories of Social Exclusion, Transition Theory, the Total Place public service reform agenda, and Foundation Economics. The legislative context has developed since 2014, most notably with the Well-Being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, which presents significant opportunities to take forward the place-based sustainable place-making agenda in Wales. The place-based approaches have experienced some criticism, but without such an approach creative local solutions to sustainable futures are often frustrated. Critics of place tend to over emphasis the power of national Governments to solve problems, which in turn seek to exert too much influence upon local stakeholders. Nevertheless, place-based activity has so far failed to fundamentally overcome the disadvantages experienced by poor communities, which in large part remain poor. This should not, however, lead to an abandonment of the place-based approach, but rather a reframing of place-targeting as holistic sustainable place- making. The economic policy-making landscape in Wales, and the UK, present significant challenges to the whole-place approach advocated by Deep Place. The overriding emphasis on securing foreign direct investment and agglomeration economics take priority over distributed local economic development, and a significant emphasis on infrastructure investment, albeit accompanied by references to ‘investment ready skills’, appears to ignore the importance of broader social infrastructure. This report argues that current dominant approaches are unlikely to resolve the challenges experience in disadvantaged communities. Pontypool has a socio-economic mixed population, with areas of deep poverty in close proximity to areas of relative affluence. Pontypool town centre experiences significant weaknesses, but continues to have significant potential to provide public services, to be a focus for community cohesion and act as a potential location to grow local economic activity and employment. Food, energy, care, the environment and e-commerce all offer opportunities for local employment, as well as being critical for the sustainable place-making agenda. Pontypool, like other disadvantaged communities, experiences a broad range of challenges, and these have been and will continue to be exacerbated by the UK Government’s ‘welfare reform agenda’. Health inequalities, educational attainment gaps, housing conditions and transport weaknesses, all affect the poorer locations within Pontypool significantly more adversely. 3 This Report contains a range of specific Action Points that are highlighted throughout the text, but it should as a whole be seen as an argument for a broad change in approach. Ultimately, the report concludes that a sustainable future for Pontypool requires: A society where there is significantly increased localisation of economic activity, greater social equity in economic outcomes, and a better integration of people and environment. Dr Mark Lang Mark Lang is an independent consultant socio-economic and public policy researcher and over the last 15 years he has held a number of roles in the public, private and voluntary sectors. As a consultant he has worked with a broad range of clients in Wales and further afield to develop strategic responses to strengthening local economies, addressing the social consequences of economic policy making, as well as undertaking more general policy-focused research. With Professor Dave Adamson, he co-developed the Deep Place approach, and whilst at the Centre for Regeneration Excellence Wales they undertook the initial Deep Place Study in Tredegar during 2014. www.marklang.co.uk Sustainable Places Research Institute The Sustainable Places Research Institute is helping to reinforce Cardiff's reputation as a unique international leader in the emerging field of sustainability science, by bringing together leading scholars and research clusters across a wide-range of academic disciplines. Through making these new connections, the Research Institute is tackling the vital issue of sustainability and sustainable places in a fundamentally new way, seeking solutions to the enormous environmental and social challenges facing humanity. As the Institute continues to engage in theoretically led, integrated and place-based research practice, by engaging across a number of academic disciplines and sectorally-based resource sectors and institutions, it is acting as an integrating hub. It is examining the interdependencies and trade-offs between key resource sectors, such as energy, food, water, and waste, while combining place-based community, business and governance interests to derive solutions that can progress sustainable transitions. www.cardiff.ac.uk/sustainable-places Acknowledgments The author is grateful for the support of the Sustainable Places Research Institute at Cardiff University, which has enabled this research to be undertaken, and for the advice and support of Professor Terry Marsden and Professor Dave Adamson, who was the co-author of the Tredegar Report and co-developer of the Deep Place approach. The author is also grateful to Torfaen County Borough Council and the many officers, in particular David Leech and Andy Wilson, stakeholders and experts who helped to facilitate and took part in the research and many of whom attended the Think Spaces, as listed in the Appendix to this report. 4 1.0 Introduction Deep Place is a holistic approach to sustainable place-making. It is grounded in an empirical concern with how to achieve more economically, socially, environmentally and culturally sustainable places and communities. It seeks to overcome what it identifies as the harmful consequences of the current dominant Neoliberal economic paradigm. Although it is not anti-capitalist, it recognises the weaknesses and failings of Neoliberalism, which is exploitative of human and natural resources as factors of production. There has been a significant drive toward Neoliberalism since the 1980s, and the costs in terms of increased inequality are all too clear (Ostry et. al., 2016). The UK is now one of the least equitable countries in the world. Income inequality has been well above the OECD average for the last 30 years. The average income of the richest 10% is 10 times that of the poorest 10%. Between 2005 and 2011 the average income of the poorest 10% in the UK fell by a further 2%, and the share of the top 1% of income earners has grown from 6.1% in 1981 to 12.9% in 2011. (OECD, 2015) Deep Place is based on the premise that the economy is socially constructed, and it therefore argues that it can be socially reconstructed. Even some of those who have been so closely linked to Neoliberalism, such as the IMF, are now appearing to accept the significant economic and social damage that arises from the inequality it causes. Key people within the IMF have now argued that policy makers should be more open to redistribution (Ostry et. al., 2016). At the same time, the Capital Institute has argued for a form of ‘regenerative capitalism’. They suggest that ‘…today’s greatest challenge is to address the root cause of our systemic crises – today’s dominant (Neoliberal) economic paradigm and the financial system that fuels it and rules it – by transitioning to a more effective form of capitalism that is regenerative and therefore sustainable over the long term’ (Fullerton, 2015, p. 12). Deep Place does not deny the complexity of global economic interrelationships; indeed, it fully recognises the difficulties and implications of managing and controlling these hugely complex circumstances. The impact of the 2007/8 Global Financial Crisis and the as yet not fully understood consequences of the decision of the UK in a referendum to leave the European Union, clearly illustrate the limitations of national governments to control such forces. That is why Deep Place is place-based. It argues that more localised action can often have a significant impact on strengthening community resilience against these external forces. In order to be most effective however, it contends that local action needs to be coordinated and fully integrated: it needs to be whole-place. The use of place as a mechanism for public policy development has predominantly been linked over the last 30 years with regeneration initiatives, anti-poverty policy and as a response to urban unrest.