Local authority funding: what role and at what stake?

GREENING TOWN CENTRES THAT HAVE FRACTURED OCCUPATIONAL AND ECONOMIC NEEDS IS CHALLENGING, BUT ARE WE MISSING A BIGGER OPPORTUNITY?

TRANSFORMATION CHALLENGE

Dropping the low carbon and sustainability agenda into the mix adds to the complexity of town centre regeneration, but it absolutely needs to be at the heart of our thinking on transformation.

To simplify it: when thinking about major regeneration, there are two ways we could view sustainability on the high street:

• The physical location and buildings themselves and their performance
• The uses and occupiers of these spaces

In terms of the physical aspects, there are underlying sustainability credentials for intervention in our town centres. They are a logical place to accommodate growth. They generally have good access to sustainable transport (walking, cycling, public transport), they are previously developed places, have assets (vacant buildings) that can be reused, investment here can reach many people and have a big impact, they can be developed at higher densities, plus they can be mixed use and so help deliver homes near jobs and reduce unsustainable commuting and travel patterns. As such, development in our towns have sustainability benefits by taking the pressure off undeveloped areas.

The challenge comes in making the existing buildings more efficient, delivering new infrastructure networks at scale, and building around the complex web of development. Buildings can be retrofitted one by one, but some of these interventions are more effective than others.

In terms of uses, town centres and buildings need to be developed to be flexible to accommodate changing uses, so they remain relevant in the long term. Many cannot be easily repurposed, and some buildings need to be demolished and redeveloped, which is both costly and damaging for the environment. Creating spaces that can transform, for example, from retail to leisure, office to community service, or accommodation that can be adapted from student to older living, or from flats to larger units, will be imperative.

Another key issue for uses in our towns are the focus on mass consumption and fast fashion which are some of the most unsustainable, high carbon, and environmentally damaging activities. It’s not sustainable, and a growing number of environmentally conscious customers are seeking value in locally produced or recycled goods, including recycled fashion.

ECONOMICS BEFORE ENVIRONMENT

With both aspects, physical and uses, there is a market failure that needs to be addressed. The private sector alone cannot enact the scale of change needed in our towns due to the complexity of issues. This creates a need for public intervention.

There are already public funding pots available to support change and transition including Future High Streets Fund; Brownfield Housing; Town Deal; and now Levelling Up funding. All of these funds clearly articulate the need to consider sustainability and environmental credentials in line with local, regional and national strategy to transition to a low carbon economy.

However, none of these are purely focused on the transition to low carbon economies and environmental or sustainability improvements on the high street or via regeneration. They are also not of the scale to enact transformational environmental change in our towns.

At the same time, the building standards, and even emerging standards may not be going far enough and there is a risk that as part of the transformational plans for our town centres we are putting together now, we are missing the opportunity for radical advancements in the sustainability of our towns. Are the interventions planned now already out of date or obsolete in terms of sustainability?

There is the need to go further, push harder, and capture the opportunities now while we are planning for transformational growth in our towns. The current approaches to regeneration of our towns and cities is focused on trying to redesign our places to capture economic opportunities, which often prioritises over net-zero objectives.

ENVIRONMENT BEFORE ECONOMICS

There is another train of thought that by focusing on environmental benefits, social cohesion and local pride of place, the economic benefits will in turn be reaped.

Malmo in Sweden has been working towards reinventing itself as an ecologically sustainable city with plans to become the first net zero city by 2030. Its transformation hasn’t been an easy journey: the city isn’t without its social problems and had a heavily polluted past. However, it is now a place that people want to live, and businesses want to locate to. Copenhagen, 15 miles away across the Øresund Bridge, is on track to become the world’s first carbon-neutral city by 2025 and is setting a green standard for urban centres worldwide. These cities are now two of the ‘happiest’ places in Europe. The benefits for the wider economy are clear: improve the environment and you will improve the economy.

Perhaps the best UK example is Islington’s GreenSCIES project¹ which will deliver a detailed design for a smart energy system that integrates new low carbon energy technologies across heat, power and mobility. The London borough plans to be carbon neutral by 2030.

Enfield Council’s district heating company, Energetik, has received a £1.2 million share of the Mayor of London’s Green Deal fund. The package will be used to finance a strategic network expansion of the Meridian Water heat network. Initially intended to supply 10,000 homes and businesses with low carbon heat and hot water generated at the Edmonton Eco park, this additional funding will considerably increase distribution capacity and provide the required infrastructure to supply the borough of Haringey with 20MW of low carbon energy, essentially creating a multi-borough heat decarbonisation operation.

Eon is working with councils across the country, including Coventry, Exeter and Islington, on large scale regeneration or urban energy improvement projects. This may form part of town centre repurposing and regeneration, or edge of centre housing developments, but in each case there are clear benefits to clustering different property uses, such as through district heating projects. In Sheffield, a CHP plant provides energy to a number of large commercial sites, including Meadowhall Shopping Centre, with plans to provide district heating to residential developments on adjacent sites.

PARALLEL PRIORITIES

We are at a critical time in the transformation of our towns and cities, with a oncein-a-generation opportunity to face the challenges with a longer-term sustainable transformation in mind. To do this will require more public sector intervention than we are seeing now that mirrors the needs of both environment and economy.

At present there is a significant amount of pressure on local authorities to deliver this type of transformation, but in reality, many of them are poorly equipped to respond. They have essential services to deliver, are resource constrained and not funded like they used to be. To deliver the change we need will require multi-stakeholder responses (see box).

There are major opportunities now for transformational sustainable change in our town centres. However, these changes cannot happen without longer term and more sizable public sector funding and intervention. The benefits of this transformation needs to be recognised through both economic and environmental sustainability investment principles and multi-stakeholder approach is needed in order to unlock major funding and private investment.

Places that have focused on putting environment first have demonstrated that economic growth will follow. It’s likely that this relationship will only continue to grow as we all become more aware of the importance of sustainable practices.