Private investment cash finds its way to St Helens for regeneration

Mar 19 2008 by Alex Turner, Liverpool Daily Post

Alex Turner looks at how an influx of new money is rebuilding the former industrial town

LIVERPOOL may be bustling with billions of pounds worth of new private sector funded property regeneration schemes, but ten miles down the road St Helens has been struggling to do the same.

The town, famous for its glass and mining industries, has not seen any significant private sector investment cash in recent years. Instead it has had to rely on public funds to kick-start regeneration schemes. But all that could be about to change.

Pilkington, the glassmakers that began life as St Helens Crown Glass Company in 1826, employed 16,700 people in 1970.

By 1992 two-thirds of the workforce, more than 10,000 people, had gone. Two years later, another 1,000 jobs had been shed and now less than 2,000 people are employed by the now Japanese-owned company’s home town operations.

The end of the coal mining industry was no less dramatic. At 7pm on October 24, 1992, Parkside Colliery at Newton-le-Willows ceased production. It finished the mining careers of 720 people, but it was also the last pit in the once-huge Lancashire coalfield that had employed tens of thousands of people.

Over the last decade the rugby club’s fortunes in dominating the domestic game have gone against the grain, but it is now increasingly finding its fortunes tied in with those of the town.

It’s no surprise then that one of the key private sector developments now on the drawing board is the St Helens Stadium plan. It is certainly the project that grabs the headlines. Another big private scheme is Parkside Strategic Rail Freight Interchange, being developed by Astral Developments.

But the major private sector investments are only just entering the planning process and to date a lot of the regeneration that has taken place in the town is heavily subsidised by the public sector.

The 2,800 sq m development of Atlas House, on the site of the former headquarters of St Helens Glass, will house 300 staff from the Children and Young People’s department, while the £6m Enterprise Centre unveiled last month which will house St Helens Chamber of Commerce and start-up businesses is being funded by the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative, Europe’s Objective One programme and St Helens Chamber. The £63m redevelopment of St Helens College is largely funded by the Learning and Skills Council. But they all feed into the strategy of laying the foundations for economic growth.

Bob Hepworth, the council’s director of regeneration and urban housing, said: “A lot of the regeneration to date has been residential and taken place on former colliery sites.

“Housing growth has been key, we have delivered housing-led regeneration.

“We have submitted St Helens in partnership with Halton and Warrington as a place for housing growth.”

The development of three urban villages, Lea Green, Moss Nook and Vulcan, will create 2,400 new homes before 2016.

He said: “The housing theme is so important to us, we are the only Merseyside borough growing in population.”

The average selling price is £135,100, compared with a Merseyside average of £149,400 or £222,100 in Cheshire. The changes in the borough ar e not just about delivering places to live, but places where people would choose to live, and not just for cheap housing.

And attracting a good workforce can be important for the future.

St Helens Council’s head of regeneration, Aidan Manley, said: “I think the challenge over the next 10 years will be growing the knowledge economy. Because we are coming from a lower base, we have to work that bit harder.”

HOWEVER one unavoidable problem is a hangover from the glass and coal industries that continues among the workforce, of believing they are owed a living by the town.

Today more than a quarter, 26.2%, are classed as economically inactive compared with a national average of 21.4%.

Incapacity benefit claimants make up 11.7% of the workforce-age population, while the national average is 7%, and in St Helens proportionally more people have been claiming for more than five years.

The UK generally is trying to grow its knowledge economy, but St Helens is not in the vanguard of that particular employment revolution - not yet, anyway, although there are positive signs.

GCSE results have improved, and last year St Helens went above the national average for 5 A*-C grades.

And on other measures the town is also improving. It has, for example, moved in a positive direction on the index of multiple deprivation and crime rates are falling. Commercially there are new developments such as Mere Grange, located within a mile of junction 7 of the M62, which will offer 32,000 sq m of office space, while nearby Micklehead Business Village and Haydock’s Empress Park will bring the total to around 40,000 sq m.

Mr Hepworth is confident that companies will find St Helens an attractive proposition.

“My guess is that firms will relocate from Warrington,” he said. “We still don’t have congestion in St Helens and were recently voted by Virgin Money as the North West’s most car-friendly place.

“The town still has a lot to do but it has a lot of ambition. It doesn’t sit still.”

AND in one crucial measure, the town is making huge strides.

Mr Manley said: “One thing that was missing was a seriously high levels of business start-ups. We have invested heavily in that and are now hitting 500 a year. In the past there has been a small number of big employers but in times of recession there is more danger of them closing. A more robust economy will have a larger number of SMEs.”

There are plans to continue nurturing the number of start-ups. The St Helens Enterprise Centre, which is scheduled to open in December, will cater for up to 30 start-ups, while Catapult and Catapult Too are established as hothouses for creative businesses.

Meanwhile the town is developing a ”can do” reputation. Its council has a four-star rating from the Audit Commission and the Chamber of Commerce was voted the best in the country in January.

It is also about to republish its City Growth Strategy in the coming weeks, four years into the 10-year plan. The town was one of four pilot areas chosen to deliver this approach to regeneration, which is driven by the private sector, and is credited with encouraging much of the town’s recent progress.

The council’s economic development manager, John Whaling, said: “The original City Growth Strategy was a 10-year strategy for the economic development of the borough. Its a testament that we are having to review it after 3-4 years because the majority has been achieved or is being achieved.

“There will be 85 projects in the revised strategy. The main themes about business infrastructure, image and aspiration have remained the same but it is the projects that have changed.”

St Helens is not seeking a golden bullet solution to the town’s problems, but is instead focused on developing the individual building blocks of economic stability and success. However this approach doesn’t address the one thing that is very difficult to deliver.

A town that is famous for things it no longer does is in need of something to build its future identity around, otherwise its confidence will become beholden to the vicissitudes of sport.

And from there it is only a drop-kick to becoming another identikit struggling post-industrial Northern town.

For now, though, St Helens is ready for the future while it searches for its 21st-century identity.

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