That this House takes note of the Report from the Select Committee on Regenerating Seaside Towns and Communities The future of seaside towns (HL Paper 320).
My Lords, it is a privilege to present this report to your Lordships’ House. I have greatly enjoyed chairing the Lords’ seaside regeneration Select Committee. It is not often in politics that you get to report on something close to your heart, with a primary purpose of wanting simply to contribute to improving the lives of people and places. Noble Lords who know me will know that I went to school in Clacton, a town famous only for being invaded by mods and rockers in the 1960s and having a pop festival nearby at Weeley in 1971. I moved from that seaside resort to Brighton, a major seaside resort, and was then confronted with the observation by Keith Waterhouse that I lived in a place that was probably best known for helping the police with their inquiries.
On the report, I want to start with a few thank-yous. I give my thanks to the Lords’ team who supported me throughout the year, including the clerks: Matt Smith, Chris Clarke and Beth Hooper, ably backed up by Robert Cocks. I also thank Dervish Mertcan, who did our communications, and the Lords outreach team. I give special thanks for the work and thought put in by our special adviser, Nick Ewbank, and thanks too to the committee’s members, most of whom are here this evening. They gave generously of their time. Of course, I also thank the local authorities and public bodies which made all our visits possible and hugely interesting. Finally, I give a big thank you to the people who welcomed us to their communities, provided us with the evidence and ideas, and gave witness to the issues facing the seaside and our coastal communities.
The report stands as more than a wake-up call to those involved in government, locally and nationally. Why is that? It is because it needs to. More than a decade ago, a Commons committee pointed up the problems and issues facing coastal communities and, while some measures seem to have been put in place, much of what was said and recognised as issues has been ignored. During the intervening period, with a few notable exceptions—Brighton, Bournemouth and, yes, Blackpool—many of our seaside towns and communities have gone backwards, when they ought to have been moving forwards. If action is not taken soon to reverse the decline of many of the communities the report covers, the problems associated with them will become intractable and irreversible. The resentments that have led to a sense of these communities feeling left out and left behind in our nation’s story will become permanent.
We can either move towards “Seaminster”, our mythically reinvented, regenerated place, or move into only a spiral of decline, disconnection and community failure by the sea. Given our innate love of the seaside, which all in the UK share and generally celebrate, that would seem a major failure of public policy and a waste of a precious, protective, glorious national asset—our coastline. I take it as a given that we have not all fallen out of love with the British seaside and so did our Lords committee. We discovered that sense of place on our visits, and a passion within the communities we travelled to. The report is all about finding a renewed sense of purpose for the seaside and a route map. None of this comes without a cost but, with leadership and a vision for the future, we believe that the UK seaside can be transformed and be a place for dreaming and fun, and a place to be—as both home and host.
My Lords, it was an honour to serve on the Select Committee on Regenerating Seaside Towns under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton. I pay tribute to the hard work and assistance of the committee’s excellent clerks and staff. I must make reference to my various interests, as set out in the register, relating to the hospitality industry, since part of our deliberations related specifically to the important role which that industry plays in the life of many seaside resorts. I will limit my contribution to making just a few points and shall do so as promptly as possible, even with the luxury of an untimed debate.
The evidence we received during our work revealed that seaside towns faced three particular areas of challenge: the economy—jobs—infrastructure and education. During one of our evidence sessions, the economist Fernanda Balata from the New Economics Foundation said that what makes coastal communities different is their unique asset: the coastal and marine environment that surrounds them, and living in a 180-degree context. If policies could acknowledge this one priority, it would go a long way to creating better policy-making and support for coastal communities. It was these challenges and opportunities that the committee recognised and which were set out in our wide-ranging report, which covered so many different subjects, from health to housing and education to entertainment. Clearly, the problems of Blackpool are not shared by Bournemouth. That is not to say that parts of Bournemouth are not in need of assistance, but there is no single silver-bullet solution to every issue.
Part of the Government’s general response to our report was:
“The Government will have invested almost £227 million in the Great British Coast by 2020 through dedicated programmes like the Coastal Communities Fund and the Coastal Revival Fund, to help generate jobs and boost businesses and bring iconic or at-risk heritage and community assets back into economic use. This investment is having tangible results in our coastal towns”.
My Lords, my full title is Lord McNally of Blackpool and I am a member of the Blackpool Pride national advisory board and chairman of the Fleetwood Trust. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, both for his introduction to this debate and for the collegiate and constructive way in which he chaired our committee. I think that we sometimes think of the noble Lord rather as parliamentary enforcer from his days as Chief Whip in the Labour Party, but he led us with great good humour and only a minimal tendency to remind us of what he termed Brighton’s “golden age”, which seemed to coincide with his own leadership of Brighton council in the 1990s. I echo the thanks offered by both the noble Lords, Lord Bassam and Lord Smith, to our clerks and advisers as well as to Nick Ewbank, our specialist adviser, Beth Hooper, our policy analyst, and Robert Cocks, the committee assistant.
Sarah O’Connor, writing in the Financial Times in November 2017, stated:
“Blackpool exports healthy skilled people and imports the unskilled, the unemployed and the unwell”.
Our report shows that that could have been written about many of our seaside towns. They faced a collapse of the old seaside holiday industry based on boarding houses for the families of the workers of industrial Britain. That collapse was compounded by a straitjacket of a benefits and housing policy which almost incentivised the slum landlord and burdened seaside towns with a concentration of social problems which, by their very nature, accentuated the spiral of decline.
Our report makes strong recommendations about the need for flexibility in national policy so that local authorities could offer bespoke solutions to the social and economic challenges they face. We also call for longer, more strategic assistance rather than a series of short-term, small-impact, penny-packet initiatives.
During our travels, we saw some bold and successful regeneration initiatives, often based on cultural investment, such as the Turner Contemporary at Margate and the Tate at St Ives. At Clacton and Skegness, we saw how investment in sea defences could be used to enhance the tourism offer. We received a wide range of evidence about the importance of transport links and investment in high-quality education and training as well as better digital connectivity. It was encouraging to see on our visit to Skegness how Butlin’s was prospering by providing themed weeks and weekends for specific target audiences —something that could be imitated by other resorts. It was also good to see the Butlin’s company fully committed to a training programme for people wanting to make a career in the leisure industries.
My Lords, in speaking to the report by the Select Committee on the future of seaside towns, I wish to focus on two aspects of our inquiry which had most significance for me. I was a somewhat wayward member of that committee, absent unavoidably from several of its sessions and unable to join many of the specific visits, so I pay tribute to the unqualified concentration brought to the committee not only by its chairman, the consistently committed and well-informed noble Lord, Lord Bassam, but by its diligent and focused members and its excellent and sympathetic staff.
First then, education. I had the chance to chair an afternoon round-table discussion among schoolchildren in Skegness. They loved their home town. They were lively, enthusiastic and hopeful for their futures. But problems soon became evident. All seemed well enough until they began to plan for their jobs. Skegness is not alone among seaside resorts in lacking adequate higher education opportunities. What is more, transport to reach the nearest such opportunities is poor and costly for young people. Rail connections are few—Beeching devastated Lincolnshire. People struggle to get from Skegness to the county town of Lincoln. There is an hourly bus service that takes two hours. From Mablethorpe, the journey—five buses a day—also takes two hours, with a change of buses at Louth, or there is an hourly service via Skegness, taking three hours and two minutes. These lengthy times are all within one county.
In its evidence, Bus Users UK highlighted the problems this creates for young job searchers across the country. Some 23% of 18 to 24 year-olds responding to its survey cited the lack of a suitable bus service, often aggravated by local authority cuts, as a key barrier to finding jobs. Our report found that inadequate transport connectivity is holding many coastal communities back and recommended that the Department for Transport prioritise improvements to the coastal transport system. Unfortunately, the Government’s response is feeble, throwing the responsibility back to various local authorities. Our further suggestion that the Government fund local authorities to provide full public transport costs for post-16 students in coastal communities had slightly more success. We were referred to the 16 to 19 year-old bursary fund and the intention to launch a consultation on how it might one day help with transport—by which time it will of course be too late for the young people round the table in Skegness.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, and the whole of the Select Committee on their excellent report. It is a brilliant and comprehensive analysis of the issues affecting our seaside towns and a road map for the positive changes that could transform these places.
I will say something about housing in coastal towns, which is covered by chapter 5 in the report, which notes:
“Issues relating to housing emerged as one of the most prominent concerns voiced by coastal towns”.
Many of the housing concerns in the seaside towns are the same as those elsewhere. Their problems are national ones; most prominent is the need for many more homes that are decent, secure and affordable for those who need them. As elsewhere, what is needed will not be met by reliance on the oligopoly of volume housebuilders providing their standardised homes so profitably on out-of-town greenfield sites. Coastal towns, just like other places, require investment in regenerating what is already there, utilising brownfield sites and bringing existing homes up to decent standards.
Many of the Select Committee’s recommendations call for central government to eschew national, one-size-fits-all policies and give local authorities greater flexibility to prioritise what councils see to be the best approaches locally. This definitely goes for housing, and I strongly support all the committee’s housing recommendations. I will pick up just one aspect of these tonight and target it under the broad heading of devolving decision-making. My chosen single issue is the subject of the Select Committee’s recommendation that,
“the Government implements changes to the system for the calculation of local housing allowance rates in areas with high densities of HMOs”—
houses in multiple occupation—
“to ensure it more accurately reflects local market rents”.
My Lords, like other members of the committee, I thank my noble friend Lord Bassam—briefly, but with feeling—for the wonderful way in which he chaired the committee, and I thank the staff and the other members of the committee for giving me an enjoyable nine months exploring this subject and for a useful report that does the House some credit. It is also a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Best, who brings his great expertise in housing and saves me from having to talk about it, because he has said it all. As a committee, we all had his insights from his visit to Blackpool. I want to underline his comments for the Minister, who I could see was listening carefully, and who I hope will pass those insights back to the department.
Around two years ago, my son told me that he had received messages on Facebook from his former classmates at Wey Valley School in Weymouth. They had left 10 years prior to that. There was an attempt to get a class reunion going, using a private group on Facebook. Fergus said that this gave him a chance to find out what all his classmates were doing. He said that everyone who, like him, had done A-levels over the hill in Dorchester had now gone on to university and left Dorset, and they were not coming back. I asked about the others. The person who had instigated this was one of the more enterprising young men in his class, and, like all the other enterprising men who were still in Weymouth, he was a personal fitness trainer—the enterprising job of choice. The other young men, who were slightly less enterprising, were dead, in prison or on benefits. The young women who did not get over the hill to do A-levels in Dorchester were all mums with two or three kids, and they did not have a class reunion, because £10 was more than they could afford for an evening out.
That told me a story, fairly graphically, of the social mobility problem in a town such as Weymouth, where, incidentally, as the report says, all the secondary schools are now in a below-average Ofsted category and are struggling. It has reinforced a sense that we need to focus more on community-level social mobility rather than just focusing on what education can do for individuals. At heart, that is what this committee was trying to get at. To achieve that, you need more population diversity than we get in a place such as Weymouth, where those struggling with disadvantage are to some extent crowded out statistically by an elderly, asset-rich population; they have their own problems, which I do not want to belittle, but they skew some of the statistics. That community and others like them around our coast also need economic diversity, away from the old bucket-and-spade, stag-night economy into something that, in the end, offers graduate-level employment. We will not regenerate these places without an offer that will entice some of Fergus’s classmates back to Dorset, or people like them back to Weymouth.
My Lords, following the wise words we have just heard, I want to take you on a journey of nearly 500 miles from Weymouth to Berwick-upon-Tweed. I am fortunate to live in the beautiful, historic seaside border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and this valuable report examines many of the problems our town and many other seaside towns face.
We do not have the problem of a transient population and multi-occupied housing on the scale of Blackpool—I am fond of Blackpool from both childhood and party conferences, which I regret to say no longer happen there. I still have a great regard for Blackpool and recognise the seriousness of the problem. But we have all the other problems: seasonal employment, low wages, educational disadvantage, remoteness from medical services and the problems of being at the end of the road. In our case, the road is the A1, with still no plans to dual it the whole way to Berwick, although it is largely dualled on the Scottish side of the border.
I am glad that the report refers to what it describes as the 180 degrees factor. If you draw a circle to show the catchment area of a seaside town, the area on which it can draw from local trade, jobs and services is only a semicircle, because half of it is in the sea. In Berwick’s case, for public services, most of that semicircle does not count either, because it is on the Scottish side of the border and there is now an artificial barrier to access things across the border. That population is not counted in planning local service provision.
I must pay tribute to what local volunteers have achieved in making our town more attractive than ever to residents and visitors alike, drawing in public funding to do so. The Coronation and Castle Parks in Berwick have been wonderfully restored. The Maltings arts centre is a great cultural and entertainment asset, and the traditional Victorian resort amenities in Spittal have been beautifully restored and maintained through the work of the Spittal Improvement Trust.
My Lords, it was my pleasure, too, to serve on such a thoughtful and solution-focused committee. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for chairing the committee in such an open-minded and collaborative way. On a personal note, if your Lordships will indulge me, this was my first time serving on a Select Committee and I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord for his encouragement and support as I learned the ropes. I assure my Front Bench that I did my very best not to agree with him too often. Our clerks were absolutely first class and a pleasure to work with; I extend my thanks to them too.
The inquiry was important to me at a personal level, as someone who spent childhood weekends at Newbiggin-by-the-Sea—not quite as far up as the noble Lord, Lord Beith, but the proud north-east, all the same—and regular summer holidays in Blackpool. I know that I can never compete with the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in his love of Blackpool; but, when we went on our highly informative fact-finding trip last September, it felt like only yesterday that I was heading back to our guest house on Reads Avenue, on a high after meeting Keith Harris and Orville.
As the political world raged around us on all sides, it was a relief to focus in depth and in detail on ways to allow all our fantastic seaside towns to prosper. Some of them are really prospering, and thanks to excellent local leadership and innovative ideas have responded to change and remain exciting, dynamic places to be. Those that experience social and economic difficulties are certainly not lacking in things to be proud of, as we heard from some inspirational young people we met who were working in Blackpool Tower.
We have a balancing act to perform, here, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, alluded to. We must not fall into the trap of pushing out solely negative messages: how utterly demoralising it is for young people growing up in towns that are talked about purely in terms of problems. Every town that we heard about or visited had many things to be proud of, including the way in which many of them are tackling difficult legacy issues. While Westminster and Whitehall too often talk in terms of strategies and processes, our most impressive evidence came from those with a people-focused approach. In the report we highlighted a dynamic GP in Fleetwood, who gave us a very impressive overview of a community public health campaign he had spearheaded with colleagues, which delivered tangible physical and mental health improvements for many local residents. What sticks in my mind is his insight into why it worked so well: because people were supported and encouraged to own their own improvements, they became the do-ers, rather than the done-to.
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So what did we find? Our report was addressed over a year; we came to our conclusions just after Christmas, and published in April 2019. We heard from 52 oral witnesses and received over 120 written submissions on a range of issues that affect our coast. We were clear that the inquiry could not be conducted within the confines of Westminster. We wanted to ensure that the voices of the people who live and work in seaside towns and communities helped shape our inquiry. That is why the committee travelled the country, visiting six different seaside areas, to give people living on the coast the opportunity to tell us about their issues and concerns.
However, during our visits we also saw many examples of where communities have found solutions to the challenges they face, and have reinvented themselves through effective leadership and partnership work, utilising the unique assets that seaside towns have. For too long, these communities have been neglected. They should be celebrated as places that can provide attractive environments for visitors and residents alike. Our report, therefore, made the following recommendations.
We observed inadequate transport connectivity, holding back many coastal communities and hindering their economic potential. We asked for a detailed review of the coastal transport network to assess where the greatest socioeconomic benefits can be realised through improvement to transport links. We commented on the need for improved digital connectivity, presenting a significant opportunity to overcome the challenges of peripherality that persist in coastal areas. The committee felt that the provision of high-quality broadband in coastal locations should be a priority.
We commented on limited access to education, particularly to FE and HE institutions, and how that curtails opportunities for young people in many coastal areas. We considered that greater scope for flexible access, such as online, part-time and distance learning, should be part of the solution, and we recommended that the Government produce ambitious proposals for how this can be achieved. We commented on the cost of post-16 transport, as an impediment to accessing educational opportunities. We recommended that the Government fund relevant local authorities to provide full public transport costs for post-16 year-old students.
Poor-quality housing was among the significant problems reported by residents of seaside areas. We therefore recommended a package of measures to tackle issues related to housing, including measures to address the perverse financial incentives to offer poor accommodation. Recommendations around easing the pressures on inspection and enforcement regimes, and measures to support more regeneration of existing housing, were offered. We commented on local enterprise partnerships. They should have a clear role and responsibility to support seaside regeneration where it is most needed. LEPs can and should help depressed seaside towns to build their visions through local industrial strategies.
Beyond 2021, the committee felt that the coastal communities fund should be focused on projects that aim to encourage sustainable place-based approaches to regeneration. We recommended that the Government should secure town deals for Blackpool and other deprived seaside towns. We strongly supported determined action between Government and local government to tackle the root causes of deprivation. Finally, we felt that a variant of enterprise zones specifically designated for coastal areas could offer seaside towns a package of interventions to meet the challenges of peripherality, poor connections and the difficulty of attracting private investment and businesses to those areas.
The Government’s response was helpful in some ways, but rather disappointing in others. However, at the beginning, it recognised that,
“coastal communities are comparatively more deprived and on average underperform economically in comparison to other areas”,
and that, despite investment to date,
“there is more that needs to be done by Government and all stakeholders”.
I think all noble Lords can sign up to that. We welcome this recognition, as it speaks to our core assertion that, although many of the features of deprivation are common across other areas of the country, some seaside towns are labouring under disadvantages. Many have seen a decline in their traditional core industries, most notably domestic tourism, but also fishing, shipbuilding and port activity. Much of the economic activity is linked to seasonality, and their location on the periphery of our country—literally at the end of the line—places them on the periphery of the economy, bringing consequential social problems. The case we made, based on the evidence we received, is that what makes these areas distinct is the combination of industrial decline and geography, and that it is this combination of challenges that warrants dedicated attention and special intervention and support for those communities.
However, although the Government’s response acknowledges that coastal communities are at a particular disadvantage, sadly it failed to give its support for many of the targeted interventions suggested by our report. The response indicates that the Government will act on some of our recommendations, including around transport costs for young people, accessing education and apprenticeships, and considering a town deal for Blackpool; and that they will consider the points we raised on coastal flood risk investment decisions, as part of the preparation for the next flood and coastal erosion risk investment programme, due to start in 2021. We clearly welcome these commitments.
The short introduction to the Government’s response emphasises existing efforts to improve seaside towns, referring to the role of the 146 coastal community teams in providing coastal towns,
“the opportunity to think about what makes them distinctive”.
However, we were clear that, to tackle the persistent issues faced by seaside towns, action and support is needed at all levels, from Government downwards and the community upwards. We welcome the Government’s commitment to reinstate the cross-Whitehall official-level meeting, which we hope will help provide a more strategic approach to coastal communities’ policy-making. There was, however, no detail provided on when these meetings would commence, how regularly they would occur—they have not occurred for nearly 10 years—and what format they might take. A meeting in Whitehall is not a solution to the problems experienced by people living by the coast.
LEPs are tasked with playing a central role in determining local economic priorities and undertaking activities to drive economic growth and job creation, improve infrastructure and raise workforce skills within the local area. They should, therefore, have a significant role to play in the regeneration of seaside towns. However, we heard widespread concern that LEPs, in their focus on job creation and economic improvement, tend to favour building on known successes rather than tackling more problematic areas. We saw a significant opportunity, in the development of local industrial strategies, for LEPs to have a renewed focus on promoting economic growth in seaside towns and for greater collaboration between LEPs that cover coastal areas. We were, therefore, disappointed to see that the Government’s response failed to acknowledge either the concerns raised by the committee about the support offered by LEPs to seaside towns or our recommendation for how this support could be strengthened.
Our recommendations on housing included a comprehensive package of measures aimed at tackling the distinct housing issues residents of seaside towns feel. These relate to the prevalence of poorly managed HMOs. The Government’s response listed the tools that local authorities can use to tackle problem HMOs but failed to take into account the evidence we highlighted that suggested that local authorities in some areas feel that they do not have the resources to use those tools effectively.
Our report made a range of recommendations on higher and further education, highlighting the fact that limited access, in particular to FE and HE institutions, is severely restricting opportunities for young people living in coastal communities.
We welcome the Government’s positive response on post-16 transport. We will be interested in the outcome of the plans laid out in the response for action at ministerial level to address the question of how to ensure that young people are not deterred from taking up apprenticeship opportunities due to travel costs.
We urge the Government to take note of the concerns the committee highlighted as to how well the apprenticeship scheme functions in some areas and sectors with high levels of seasonal employment.
Our report highlighted the shared prosperity fund as a key opportunity to help support coastal business development, particularly in sectors that are often fundamental to seaside towns, such as tourism and retail, and to tackle deprivation in those coastal communities. We recommended that any future plans around the operation and priorities of the fund must set out a clear indication of how our deprived communities will benefit. We also recommended that coastal local authorities must be consulted on how the fund might support regeneration in their areas. The response indicated that the Government,
“would welcome the views of coastal communities on how the UK Shared Prosperity Fund can deliver coastal regeneration, including responses from local authorities and Coastal Community Teams”.
It would be helpful if the Minister could outline how the Government intend to ensure that the views of those living in coastal areas will be heard in this process and how those views will impact on policy development.
With regard to town deal and enterprise zones, we welcome the Government’s commitment to consider a town deal for Blackpool. We feel strongly that support for struggling seaside towns such as Blackpool should involve a strategic approach between national and local authorities and LEPs to address the more intractable economic and social challenges that are causing persistent disadvantage.
The committee recommended that enterprise zones in seaside towns could offer these areas a package of place-based interventions, including financial and practical benefits for business location that could support long-term, sustainable change. As part of this, we also made a plea for arts-led regeneration, which we think the Government have ignored to a greater degree. The Government’s response suggested that there were no plans for additional enterprise zones, and listed programmes such as the coastal communities fund and the coastal revival fund as measures already in place. Although these funds provide a welcome source of support for coastal towns, the report is clear that deprived coastal areas would benefit from a distinct package of measures aimed at promoting local economic activity to ensure that long-term, sustainable improvements can be achieved.
The report stands as a critique of current public policy, in so far as it exists, on coastal communities. It points to the real problems that continue to exist and have worsened over recent years in health, housing, economic prosperity, transport disconnection and education. It is a shocking fact that over the last seven years educational aspiration in coastal communities has regressed, with 27% fewer young people from coastal areas getting into university and no evident signs that training and apprenticeship opportunities have taken up the slack. Social mobility is lowest in those communities. There is real sense that seaside areas, the end-of-the line places we all love, are missing out on the wealth generated in our metropolitan centres and heartlands. Residents of such areas feel left behind. Given that some 4 million people live on the coast and that the coast is a major tourist opportunity for the nation, we need urgently to reverse many of the trends bedevilling coastal prosperity and social inclusion. Our report is a starting point and a way forward. I beg to move.
I acknowledge that our inquiry found that significant amounts of public funds were being spent. The problem I felt was that we found it difficult to establish how many jobs had been created and in what way businesses had been “boosted” as a result of these significant investments of taxpayers’ money. Could the Minister come back to me on the percentage contribution to the local economy in terms of jobs and business support which these funds have provided so far?
Cutting through some of the negative statistics that the Select Committee heard in relation to the social and economic position of many, but by no means all, seaside towns, and avoiding the frustration I personally felt at the somewhat casual responses received to questions as to how public funds were being deployed, one positive aspect of assistance which had made a difference to other struggling towns was the establishment of enterprise zones as part of the Government’s wider industrial strategy to support businesses and enable local economic growth. The Government mentioned enterprise zones in their response to our report, but I believe I am right in saying that in the list of current enterprise zones there is only one that could help a seaside town: Great Yarmouth.
I hope that the Government will consider further in the future my proposal that they might establish specific seaside town enterprise zones, or “seaside zones”. Seaside zones, like other enterprise zones, would give clear financial benefits from day one. Seaside zones could be more specific in terms benefiting the hospitality industry, for example, which is one of the largest employers in the seaside economy, accounting for around one in seven jobs, as well as focusing on infrastructure and broadband to help develop business growth. Will the Minister undertake to look again at this proposal?
I also propose that the way in which enterprise zones are currently awarded is thought through. The bidding process by its nature tends to advantage those towns which have a plan and a certain amount of leadership, rather than perhaps those towns which are in most need of the benefits of a zone. Are there any plans in the pipeline to review how enterprise zones are awarded? Will more seaside towns be considered in the future?
At the start of our report, details of the regeneration of New Brighton’s Victoria Quarter are detailed. The committee was struck by this substantial seaside town project being undertaken by a privately funded scheme. While its ultimate outcome is unknown, the early signs of success are evident and we were impressed and persuaded that the project’s characteristics were worthy of amplification. Indeed, they chimed with many of the elements of successful regeneration that we had already identified.
Daniel Davies, whom I know personally in his role as chairman of the Institute of Licensing, has financed this scheme under Rockpoint Leisure. He set out the familiar background of his home town. New Brighton had been a quintessential Victorian seaside town, flourishing until the 1960s. However, a decline in tourism combined with a range of other factors had seen the town’s fortunes dwindle and its image suffer. Mr Davies explained that evidence suggested that the seaside towns which have seen most success in shaking off a negative image are those which have identified their special character and unique selling points. This did not, however, demand reliance on a generic seaside image, which is outdated in some respects and can be unattractive to a large part of the population who consider the whole world to be relatively accessible as a destination. Instead, people need a reason to visit their seaside towns and their motivation should not be dependent entirely on tourism.
On the specifics of the project in New Brighton, the proposal was to provide small, affordable business units and shared-space rental opportunities to encourage small, independent businesses and start-up ventures. The company has now acquired seven premises within the district of the town. All were previously closed and in varying states of dilapidation. Two hospitality venues and a retail venue are currently trading, with a further two hospitality concepts set to open later this year, in addition to a creative hub. To date, the scheme has created more than 100 jobs, with a large proportion of those recruited coming from the local area. Employment numbers are set to rise in 2020.
Much of this success has been due to entrepreneurial skill and the fact that a private individual has been prepared to invest money, but Rockpoint Leisure has also attracted partners in the public sector, harnessing local pride and energy to produce a theme of improvement and stimulating dialogue between all stakeholders to promote community engagement. Much can be learned from this New Brighton venture, which would clearly be an ideal candidate to qualify as a seaside zone if such a zone could be considered. Private and public partnership schemes seem to be the best solution. When the private and public sectors are not engaged with each other, the rate of long-term success would appear to be low.
As we said in our report, visionaries made the seaside what it was. We still have the same entrepreneurial spirit within those communities. We need to harness that energy and local pride and combine it with effective investment from local and central government to deliver once again the needed improvements. In that way we can educate everyone who either does not know or has forgotten about the extraordinary quality of life and leisure time that can be had again beside the seaside, beside the sea.
Our report gives the opportunity for a well-co-ordinated, focused approach to the problems facing our seaside towns. As an example of the collegiate approach fostered by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, when the committee started, the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and I were rather at opposite ends of the spectrum, with me looking to public intervention and him espousing private initiative. By the end, I think we were in close agreement that the partnership he mentioned in his speech is necessary for success, as, too, is the kind of initiative he cited in respect of New Brighton, where an individual with a commitment to the locality and a vision for the future can make an enormous difference.
Given its previous success, changes in holiday patterns together with the decline of the historical industrial base meant that Blackpool had a harder fall and was left with bigger problems. It is the very severity of Blackpool’s problems which caused me to argue that giving Blackpool specific and concentrated help was not special pleading. Success in Blackpool could provide the template for dealing with similar problems in other coastal areas. Nor is Blackpool simply holding out the begging bowl. As we found when the committee visited the town, a strong partnership between the private and public sectors is having a major impact on investment and facilities. I look forward to the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, whom the Prince’s Responsible Business Network drafted in to give help and advice. She has just finished her term there having had a tremendous impact on local attitudes.
We have seen in Blackpool new hotels, a new conference centre and new leisure attractions, including a new museum to celebrate Blackpool’s unique place in the history of our entertainment industry. This morning, I heard about a plan for a national entertainment academy in partnership with Blackpool and The Fylde College and Lancaster University’s creative arts department. That kind of vision means that Blackpool is very close to the tipping point between being part of the problem of our seaside towns and providing a template for their success.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th in Blackpool, a partnership between a progressive local authority and far-sighted entrepreneurs created 20th century Blackpool, with the building of the tower, the tramway, the Pleasure Beach and the illuminations. I believe a similar partnership now exists. That is why the committee supported the suggestion of a town deal for Blackpool. By blending existing work with new commitments from partners and government, a town deal for Blackpool would deliver a strong, holistic response to the town’s needs.
As well as a positive Whitehall response, we must also ensure that government really is joined up, so that one department is not undoing the good work being done by another. For example, will the Minister press the Ministry of Justice to make an early decision on relocating Blackpool courts? MoJ delay is delaying the release of £300 million of private sector investment and the creation of 1,000 new jobs via the Blackpool Central leisure development, in which the courts still squat. Can we have an early decision from the Cabinet Office, the DWP and the Ministry of Defence about the consolidation of Civil Service jobs in a new Civil Service hub in Blackpool town centre? That consolidation should include retention by the Ministry of Defence of the Norcross-based Veterans UK unit, which has been serving the social and medical needs of veterans for three generations. Individual departments have to look at the social implications of what they are doing, not just do a tick-box exercise. That will bring civil servants together in what looks like a logical suggestion but will have a devastating effect on an area such as Blackpool, which had and still has a massive concentration of civil servants’ departments. I think I have told the House before that the first job I was ever offered, when I was 16, was in the land registry in St Annes. Who knows where I might have ended up if I had joined then? Probably at the land registry in St Annes.
One of things the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, did, in his collegiate way, was to offer us all an opportunity to write a little block in the report. Noble Lords will have seen that my piece is not about Blackpool but about Fleetwood. That is in part because, during our deliberations, the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, convinced me that the well-being of our ports should also be of concern. In my piece, and in the evidence we received when visiting Fleetwood Dock, we outline the problems that have hit Fleetwood over the past 40 years: the loss of the deep-sea fishing industry, the rail link and the ferry services to Ireland and the Isle of Man. These came on top of the other factors hitting seaside towns, already identified. Following the committee’s visit to Fleetwood, I accepted the chairmanship of the Fleetwood Trust, a charity formed by local church, community and business leaders to restore the old and derelict Fleetwood Hospital as a community hub meeting social, health and community needs. It is a good example of a community making its own weather, and I put on record my thanks for the advice the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, gave us, drawing on his own vast experience, not least in Bromley-by-Bow. Associated British Ports owns a large expanse of derelict land around the old dock area and it is essential that the company shows social and corporate responsibility, as well as its profit motive, in discharging its responsibilities in determining how that land is developed.
Joined-up government and good private and public partnership are the essentials of regeneration success, which is why I worry about the plethora of bodies one has to negotiate with. Is this a matter for Whitehall or the LEP, for the county council or the local council? In the 1960s there was talk of a city of the Fylde between the Ribble and the Wyre. Certainly, it will need a sense of vision and a certain generosity of spirit between the Fylde coastal bodies to maximise the benefits of any central government initiative. I put on record here my thanks to the Prince’s Trust and the Prince’s Responsible Business Network for the help they have given both Blackpool and Fleetwood in this respect. I was less impressed, on our visit, by the Duchy of Cornwall. We were shown a very impressive housing estate, but I did not leave Cornwall with the feeling that the Duchy was showing the kind of leadership I had expected in the area. Likewise, the Crown Estate could show a lot more responsibility, considering its interests in seaside assets.
I give the last word, however, to the estimable Sarah O’Connor of the Financial Times. Following our report she wrote a second article, reflecting on what we had said, in which she said:
“Real solutions to the problems would include more long-term funding for health, education and social care in seaside towns that reflect the complex needs of living there; physical and digital infrastructure investment; and power and resources for local people to reform their economy and housing markets”.
I could not agree more. We are about to have a new Prime Minister. The Duke of Wellington, when he became Prime Minister, came out of his first Cabinet meeting and said that it was all “Talk, talk, talk”. I think we need a little more from the new Administration. I prefer Churchill’s “Action this day”.
Their chances of higher education need major attention—we have seen the difference that the University of Sussex made to the economy of Brighton. Of course, that is not going to happen in many seaside resorts, although the chance of having outlying hubs of learning from inland universities should not be dismissed. It is all the more important that online, part-time and distance learning get strong government support—suggestions endorsed by the recent findings of the Augar report on post-16 year-old study. This would of course be enhanced if the Government seriously addressed the shortcomings in the availability of wi-fi in many communities. We were discussing this six years ago when I sat on the Communications Committee. Progress is sluggish. Why?
My second interest is in the arts and entertainment. I recently had the pleasure of presenting Worthing with the pier of the year award—I am one of the patrons of the National Piers Society. At that event, the mayor emphasised how much the pier and its theatre contributed to the town’s identity and appeal. This is so for the approximately 50 piers around England and Wales. Many of them are thriving: Cromer, Clacton, Southend and Deal are all enjoying new investment. Individual entrepreneurs—the kind of people referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Smith—take a personal delight in making them a success. Councils are keen to help but struggle to find funding. Piers remain a ready-built, attractive and popular destination for thousands of visitors. They deserve more support from heritage funding.
More broadly, we heard how the arts in general help to regenerate and rejuvenate a coastal resort. The south coast is known for what the Arts Council has referred to as its string of pearls: art galleries stretching along the south coast from Margate, Hastings and Bexhill to Eastbourne, are all thriving. Artists looking for affordable studios are coming in increasing numbers to such seaside resorts and are themselves becoming a hub of cultural activity. St Ives is perhaps our most celebrated and long-term success. Margate is another. Deal is growing in popularity too. It is a spontaneous social movement that is making such resorts more popular in general.
It is a given for investment by the Government, and they can already see the benefits such investments are bringing. I urge them to grasp the opportunities so evident in this field, seize the day and make seaside resorts the destinations we want to visit in ever greater numbers.
Dull and technical this certainly sounds, but herein lies an enormously important matter that the Government’s response to the committee has not covered.
I had the real pleasure of visiting Blackpool in March and was greatly impressed by the commitment, energy and determination of the council’s staff handling housing matters. I was equally impressed by the team from the council’s subsidiary body, the Blackpool Housing Company, which is doing fantastic work acquiring and upgrading truly awful redundant tourist accommodation. However, I discovered that, like many other seaside towns, Blackpool’s efforts are being hopelessly undermined by the way the housing benefit system is operating there. The system, based on local housing allowance which sets the figure that the DWP will pay in housing benefit to cover rent, has incentivised the worst kind of landlord to buy up and let out really appalling slums while simultaneously making it impossible for the council and its partners to upgrade the quality of the housing in central Blackpool. How has this situation come about?
The local housing allowance, LHA, fixes the level for housing benefit payments at the rent being charged for properties in the cheapest one-third of all rented properties that are located in that broad rental market area. Because Blackpool lies within a broad rental market area that covers a number of more upmarket locations, a high proportion of all Blackpool’s rented housing falls easily within the 30% cheapest of the whole area. Moreover, this very unsophisticated local housing allowance does not distinguish on the basis of space standards or the condition of the property, so a tiny flat in dismal condition in a dilapidated terrace has the same local housing allowance—which housing benefit will cover—as a decent apartment in a restored avenue.
Nor does the allowance pay any regard to the quality of the management and maintenance service: the absentee slum landlord is treated in the same way as the most conscientious local landlord. As an example, a minute one-bedroom flat in Blackpool in a property divided into eight such units commands a local housing allowance of £85 a week; £680 per week from the DWP for the whole house, with no improvements and no maintenance. Conversion by the Blackpool Housing Company into four decent one-bedroom flats let at market rents would produce half the income for infinitely better appointed and managed accommodation. Because rogue landlords—I was told that a number of those coming into town pay for their properties in cash—can get such a high return, they will always pay more for those properties than responsible, decent providers. The Government’s housing benefit is fuelling the business of disreputable operators and preventing real solutions.
In other parts of the UK, the LHA figure for housing benefit causes quite different problems, greatly compounded by a freeze since 2015: in so many places the LHA level is lower than actual market rents for virtually any available property, so there is a gap or shortfall between the payment obtainable from the DWP for rent and the actual rent that must be paid. The tenants reliant on the state in these places must cover this shortfall from their other benefits, which were meant to be for food and heating, et cetera. But this shortfall is not the problem in many seaside towns, with their legacy of cheap, run-down guesthouses and B&B properties. Rather, in Blackpool and similar towns, your rent will be fully covered, making these places magnets for DWP claimants and a place for other councils to send their vulnerable claimants. Every year, around 5,000 households eligible for housing benefit move into Blackpool, many of them with personal problems—of physical and mental health, drug abuse or alcoholism. Blackpool’s suicide rate is the highest in the country. A system that concentrates the most vulnerable in one place and incentivises this trend into the future is a disaster for that place’s health and well-being.
Of course, I greatly encourage councils to use all their powers to enforce proper standards; government has recently introduced some tough extra measures to enable local authorities to tackle rogue landlords. However, this is attacking the problem after the event, not preventing it, and reductions in funding for local authorities and the priority that must go to social care and other essentials has meant cuts in personnel, including environmental health officers and trading standards officers. Enforcement against bad landlords will not be enough while the housing benefits system continues to undermine all the council’s efforts.
The solution for Blackpool and other seaside towns is to make this local housing allowance truly local by engaging with councils such as Blackpool to set the LHA level dependent on the market within the specific locality, and the property’s condition, space standards, management and maintenance. The intention must be to remove the current incentives for the very worst kinds of landlords who concentrate as many vulnerable people as possible into appalling conditions, and instead to create a level playing field for the vital work done by social landlords and other not-for-profit and genuinely responsible operators so that they can transform these seaside towns.
The problem is that these places are on the periphery of the economy and their problems are dispersed. My noble friend Lady Bakewell talked about the string of pearls—whatever they are, they are a string of issues. If they were concentrated together, we would all know about them a lot more. To some extent, they are concentrated in Blackpool, which is why the media picks on Blackpool unfairly. But that dispersal makes them easy to ignore. How will we get those aspirational, graduate-level jobs and careers? It is about culture, decent coffee and places to get nice food, a night-time economy that suits such people, and—if they are then going to have families—decent schools and health facilities.
These areas have a positive offer for quality of life. There is a fantastic quality of life in Weymouth and those other communities around the country. They also have cheap housing, but that is also a negative, because that is what has brought in those rogue landlords the noble Lord, Lord Best, talked about. From my experience as a constituency MP in South Dorset, what follows for the people living in those concentrations of houses in multiple occupancy is a terrible quality of life due to neighbourhood nuisance caused by some of the problems of those places that spill out. The classic regeneration solutions of residential planning gain or getting an anchor retail development do not quite cut it because of the periphery and because in a lot of these places the land values are not there to drive much commercial development.
To my mind, the answer is around the place-based approach that the report talks about, but led by education. Of course, I am biased—your Lordships will be aware of my interests in education, particularly as I work for TES Global. But I see the future—we are talking about the future of these places, not the halcyon days of the past—and it is in human capital development. That is what education is all about; the future economy will value human capital. We need to build talent pipelines in these places and not have education systems that are funnels which filter people out. The disadvantaged will always lose out from that filter. Bear in mind what employers are now starting to do when they hire; they are moving away from filtering on the basis of educational qualifications and starting to use talent analytics to work out what people can do, not accepting certificates as proxies for what they can do. That presents opportunities as well as challenges for the established status quo of education.
Where should we go in education? First and foremost, we need to focus on adult skills. There are great talents latent in these communities that need to be brought back in through a proper adult skill system. I would love to see a return to individual learning accounts—obviously, on a fraud-free basis.
We need a revival of part-time higher education. What has happened to the Open University, thanks to the way the funding system has been constructed, is a tragedy for such places. We need decent connectivity so that online learning, such as FutureLearn, run by the OU, can help in those places. We need integration with further education. We need apprenticeship ladders into the sectors that can offer aspirational graduate-level employment, so that a degree apprenticeship can be developed for sectors such as tourism and energy production with a sense of pace.
We also need a balanced curriculum in our schools, because employers are frustrated by our narrow focus in the school system. There is an obsession with the academic, with cognitive development at the expense of social and emotional development. That comes from study of the humanities and creative subjects, from more application of knowledge as well as its development. That is what employers want. We see that in the UTCs—the Scarborough UTC is mentioned in the report—and some of the innovative higher education development in places such as Coventry and Scarborough. That is very much to be welcomed.
The Government will say—I have read their response—that they are doing some of that place-based work in education through the opportunity areas. I was disappointed by the copy-and-paste approach from the Department for Education in the government response. It read just like a bunch of lines to feed to Ministers for questions. Instead, we need something that tries properly to understand what the committee was getting at.
There is freedom to innovate and I would love to see that deployed in our coastal areas to build collaboration, more vertical integration between school and further and higher education, an opportunity to remodel our teaching workforce around a different, more practical curriculum, that workforce enhanced by technology and able to do things previously inconceivable pedagogically, because they are being fed the raft of information that technology can now give teachers in the classroom. That innovation—that freedom from regulation and the stranglehold of our accountability system—in places such as Weymouth, where all our secondary schools are fundamentally struggling, would be a real liberation and a basis for the sort of coastal challenge strategy that the committee is after.
All that needs leadership, and others have talked about the need for leadership vision. Teach First was kind enough to bring some teachers up to Westminster to meet us, and we met one from Weymouth, who has come back to Weymouth having been brought up there. That is the only reason she came back as a graduate: she came to work in that seaside town because that is where she grew up. She was familiar with it, she knew about the quality of life, she knew she could get cheap housing and had already bought her first house. She was an example of the great offer for professionals, but she came back only because there was public sector employment.
We can get this right for seaside towns. We have a hugely divided nation at the moment. We need to give people on our periphery hope. If we can get it right for our seaside towns, we can get it right everywhere. Let us deliver the place-based approach and devolve power to leadership—be it private, voluntary or public sector—in those places so that they can get on and lift their communities.
That is what the report refers to as,
“the restoration and enhancement of the public realm and cultural heritage assets through capital investment”.
A lot of it has been done by volunteers and backed by local small business.
In this context, I mention another small Northumberland seaside town, Amble. It was a friendly but declining former coal mining and coal-exporting town, but now it is a lively and popular place to live and visit, with many small craft and food businesses, making Amble Harbour Village a growing attraction.
Berwick’s economy benefits greatly from tourism, probably much more than it did in Victorian times, particularly because of the large number of visitors in the caravan and holiday parks in and near the town and the increasing number of holiday lets, although they create housing problems of which the noble Lord, Lord Best, is aware.
Tourism can contribute even more if we get investment in underused attractions, such as Berwick’s early 18th century barracks. New funding initiatives such as the tourism deal and the Borders growth deal, a cross-border initiative, need to include not just very big projects near centres of population but projects in more isolated seaside towns, where a little can achieve a lot. I hope it is understood by the north-east local enterprise partnership and the combined authority, in their bid for funding for a tourism zone in the region under the Government’s tourism sector deal, that those small communities need to share in those projects, because it all seems a bit remote from us. Northumberland County Council, in evidence to the committee, warned of too much emphasis on honeypot sites in VisitBritain’s work, with not much trickle-down to seaside towns.
However, the future of seaside towns is not just about tourism, important although it is: it is about deprivation, underprovision and lack of opportunity, and how we tackle them. It is about young people leaving the area because of our lack of opportunity, and consequently limited aspirations and low wages for those who remain—a point to which a previous noble Lord referred.
The only population growth in our area is from people who retire to the area, attracted by its beauty and lower house prices. Many are active contributors to the life of the community and to the very volunteer initiatives I spoke about earlier, but they cannot replace the lost generation of young people. In many areas, the presence of a university or college brings more young people into the area, some of whom stay, which in turn increases the opportunities and aspirations of local young people.
I cannot think of anywhere in England as far away from a university or further education college as Berwick-upon-Tweed. The report refers to limited access to education, in particular to FE and HE institutions, which severely curtails opportunities and dents aspirations for young people in some coastal areas. That is our story; it is very much what we experience. In paragraph 148 the report accepts that there is never going to be a bricks-and-mortar offering of higher education in every coastal town. No, but no town should be as far from such things as Berwick is. A higher education presence in the town, and a bigger further education presence—given that at present there are only elements provided by a distant college—would be hugely beneficial. We also need a new-build and newly administered high school. Academy status did not solve the problems of Berwick’s only post-13 school, and in some respects made it more difficult to secure the improvements needed. The target investment recommended in the report for secondary schools in seaside communities is certainly needed in Berwick.
Post-16 transport, which the committee refers to, has been a great problem for us. The only alternative to the local high school that became an academy is to go to a very distant further education college in Newcastle or Ashington. When the Liberal Democrats were running the council as a minority administration, we introduced free transport for those journeys. The next administration removed that provision, and it is time that we went back to dealing with the denial of opportunity that that means. There is no comparison between the position of someone within cheap or free daily travelling distance of further education and someone deprived by the very high cost of getting to a distant college.
Local authority funding in general affects the provision of so much in seaside communities. We all know how severely it has been restricted in recent years; it threatens many of the services on which we depend. Capital funding of projects has an important part to play in restoring and increasing the community assets of seaside towns, but it cannot replace the day-to-day funding needed to provide essential public services as well as to maintain and make use of those assets. There are few things more frustrating for seaside communities than to see restored facilities falling back into decline because the funding to maintain them or to promote continued activity in them has dried up.
We see similar issues in the National Health Service. We are awaiting a long-promised new hospital, but the issue for local people will be whether it is funded well enough to provide the widest range of health services that can be provided safely locally, since we are 50 miles from any of the main hospitals.
When you live in an attractive seaside town, you have great opportunities to enjoy the scenery and the presence of the sea, but that is not sufficient compensation if you need, and do not have, many of the opportunities and public and social services which, if you live in larger towns and cities, you can rely on or even take for granted. I do not think the Government’s response goes far enough in tackling these unfair disadvantages of many seaside communities.
This, for me, is the key to turning around the communities that face particular socioeconomic problems. To be clear, it is not an abdication of responsibility on the part of government. On the contrary, it is about the need to be much clearer about and more focused on how and where support is given to towns. While I agree that Whitehall needs to be far more joined-up—although we say that in every debate we ever have—our recommendation that the Government reinstate a cross-Whitehall meeting about seaside towns comes with a caveat from me. Be very clear about what the centre can and cannot deliver. Take swift action where clearly needed. We have heard about a number of policy recommendations at a central level, all of which are sensible. But the Government’s job is to empower, rather than micro-manage, local communities; we can be more diligent, first, and then more creative in how we do that.
On diligence, I would like to see a much clearer evaluation of the outcomes of distribution of public funds and the plethora of strategies, deals and zones we have heard about. I support the point that my noble friend, Lord Smith, made about that. We often had to push too hard when we were taking evidence from departments and public bodies to get concrete examples of successful outcomes. A more joined-up, cross-government approach can address this, but lines of responsibility must be very clear: who is going to grip this? And of course, the political will must be there. I believe that it is, but we need to see direction from the very top of government from day one of the next Prime Minister taking office, whoever is chosen.
We can also be more creative, though, and work harder at thinking about policy from a people-centric approach. Of course, the committee addressed some critical issues such as housing, transport infrastructure and broadband, all of which are fundamental to unlocking potential within many of the towns we discussed. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out, structural improvements will not by themselves turn around a lack of confidence in young people who have never seen anyone go out to work. Better broadband and transport links will not in themselves give a mid-life or older person the confidence to retrain, or give anyone the courage to try a new venture and achieve the entrepreneurial spirit we talked about. Hard policy interventions will not end the sometimes snobby attitudes to the hospitality industry which mean that young people do not know about the brilliant opportunities for fast career progression.
For that, we need campaigners, role models and an education system that has the resources, the space and the contacts to prepare young people and support older people to find and work for the best employers, and to aspire themselves to be the best employers. In their response, the Government recognised the need to attract outstanding teachers to seaside towns and set out a number of pilot initiatives on offer, albeit limited to certain subjects. I agree to some extent with the points that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, made: it did feel like a slightly piecemeal approach. I hope that the Government will act quickly to assess the success of the initiatives and extend them if they are demonstrably driving up numbers. I am by nature very cautious about calling for more taxpayers’ money. If ever there is a case for investment, though, it is in people who open up the world for others.
Of course, there is also an onus on local education and business leaders and other employers to work more closely together to provide exposure to opportunities in the world of work at an earlier age. Something that annoys me in politics and in debates such as this is when people talk about areas that are economically deprived and say, “There is real poverty of aspiration”. It is hard to aspire to something if you cannot even see what is on offer and how the world is changing. We should not believe that these people are any different from us or that they do not want better lives for their children; we need to open that world up to them.
On that point, we were forced to ask ourselves whether we are educating people to stay or to go. If we get things right, people will stay, or leave and come back, or leave—but, crucially, to be replaced by others who want to work in a vibrant, thriving community. In theory, the fourth industrial revolution should be a great opportunity to reinvent and revitalise: base yourself anywhere, set up a business in an area of great beauty, teach and bring up children by the sea, and stay close to your extended family, or come back to them. I urge the Government to pick up the pace because I genuinely believe that for our seaside towns, based on many of the inspiring local leaders and local people we had the pleasure to meet, the sky can be the limit.