Clitheroe the Future

Clitheroe the Future Market Town Initiative Single Programme Mid Term Evaluation

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Single Prog Project/Scheme Number: N0001582
Contract Manager/Monitoring Officer: Denis O’Connor
Name of Approved Project Scheme: Clitheroe the Future Market Town Initiative
Accountable Body/Company Name: Ribble Valley Borough Council
Grant Approved £1. 2 million
Approved April 2004 Closure Date March 2008

Introduction

This report has been compiled after discussion in the executive, with partners in the project and through a client survey of those companies and organisations that have received grant support from the Market Town Initiative. A qualitative assessment has been made against the achievements of the original objectives of the partnership. In the results section we look at the current level of expenditure and the achievement of the outputs contracted in the scheme. The results of the customer survey are discussed with appropriate actions listed.

Declared aims and objectives of the Partnership

Aims

• To enhance the quality of life for the people of Clitheroe and the surrounding area by improving health welfare, transportation, housing, community safety and the environment.
• To develop the local economy by enabling business to locate and expand in the area, creating affordable housing and new employment opportunities for the resident population.
• To ensure the people of Clitheroe and the surrounding area have access to first class facilities and services.
• To work in partnership with the public, private, voluntary and community sectors meeting the challenges of a modern rural community and fostering change, which is both achievable and sustainable.

Objectives.

• Economic Base:
  To strengthen Clitheroe economic base, by supporting existing economic sectors in the town and hinterland and through encouraging new business into the town.
• Service Centre:
  To ensure that Clitheroe fulfills its role as a local service centre for the town and its surrounding rural hinterland.
• Local Empowerment:
  To work with a Local Strategic Partnership to implement and monitor sustainable regeneration, engaging the local community to address issues of prime importance to the future of the town and its surrounding hinterland.
• Environment:
  To preserve and enhance the town’s cultural heritage and local environment.
• Transport and Access:
  To ensure that an adequate public transport system is developed and maintained to enable all residents in Clitheroe and its hinterland to access local and regional services and facilities.
• Visitor Attraction:
  To develop Clitheroe as a quality visitor destination within the Ribble Valley, with the infrastructure to support a viable and cohesive tourism industry.

Meeting the Aims

In looking at our aims we have contributed significantly towards the declared aims through this scheme. However we have not taken significant steps in relation to housing, older people or neighbourhood watch which fall outside the remit of things we are able to influence through this programme. We have also not carried out the review of the public transport system which we believed was necessary. Our ability to engage County Council representatives on issues of transport have been very limited and in practice those people originally involved in this aspect have drifted away from the partnership due to the lack of engagement.

Achievement of Objectives

Broadly speaking the partnership is on course to meet these objectives. However, many of the major projects such as the Castle are not scheduled to spend money until later in the project.

• In terms of strengthening the economic base, the Market Town Enhancement Grants Scheme proved very successful with 25 businesses taking advantage of the scheme and our target for increased floor area being exceeded. Significant private investment was also levered in through this scheme. The original amount allowed for this scheme was increased by £250000 to accommodate the level of interest. New businesses have been attracted to the area through the scheme and Business Start Up Grants. Rural businesses have been able to take advantage of the IT advice and training available through the Fair Access to Services Scheme and this together with the extension of broadband facilities to the rural areas of Ribble Valley will help these rural businesses to compete on a more equal IT footing with their urban counterparts.
  
  
  
  
• With regard to Clitheroe acting as a service centre to the rural hinterland support for the New Children’s Centre which will open later this year, support for the rail line Sunday service and projected support for the Grammar school in establishing a Language School are assisting in meeting this objective. Work with Roefield Leisure in securing expansion of the Sports facilities has received a setback with the unsuccessful bid to Sport England but alternative schemes are under investigation together with Roefield and the Borough Council. The grant to the Citizen’s Advice Debt Advice Service has been very helpful to that service in providing a window of opportunity to enable alternative grant funding to be obtained.
  
  Shirley Wallbank, Manager of CAB said “Thank you again for all your help and support, the grant has really proved itself to be the very best value, and the key to additional funding for this essential work” Over 125 clients have been helped in the last 6 months.
  
  The ambition to create an Arts and Community Centre on the Parish Hall site has proved difficult to achieve and this is regarded by many local residents as important as this is the only public space in Clitheroe which can accommodate a large audience. Funding appears to be plentiful to create “Community Resource Centres” in rural parishes but this does not appear to be plentiful in larger centres where the need is actually greater. We continue to be involved in discussion with Trinity Community Partnership who is managing St Mary’s as an interim venue until a more appropriate building can be realised on the site.
  2 million pounds of private capital is available for this scheme if matched funding can be achieved from other sources.
  
  
• The partnership has been a key partner in the local strategic partnership and has helped in the formulation of the community strategy and played a part in the theme groups which existed until recently. At the moment the LSP is going through a metamorphosis with several members of our executive playing a role in the proposed restructuring process.
  
  
• In terms of enhancing the cultural heritage and local environment work is almost complete on 2 public art projects in the Castle Grounds and a 3rd will be completed in Q1 2006-7 alongside the River Ribble. The proposed developments at the castle will add to this.
  
  Mosaic which will be incorporated within Castle Grounds Rose Garden Project – Public Art
  
  
• In terms of developing and maintaining public transport for Clitheroe and its hinterland, the only major project affecting this has been the Sunday Rail Service. Bus services which are controlled by Lancashire County Council have decreased over the project life in spite of trying to engage the transport section in a dialogue on buses this has not been progressed. A similar picture exists with regard to access within the town where a pedestrian audit commissioned with Living Streets by the partnership has been largely ignored by the Highways Department of LCC.
  
  
  
  
• Visitor attraction development will be primarily through the work at the Castle and in the Grounds. The work at Brungerley Park Sculpture Trail will also contribute to this. The partnership has also produced a series of circular walks’ leaflets taking walkers out from Clitheroe into the countryside and these have proved very popular.
  
  

Results
Expenditure against forecast

Expenditure in year 1 was substantially below target partly due to a number of factors:

• The late approval of the performance plan by NWDA which only gave us 6 months to achieve spending targets.
• A lack of trained appraisers which meant that projects were queued for appraisal.
• One project which was above the delegated limit and took almost 3 months to get NWDA approval on.

Expenditure in Year 2 was almost exactly on target both in total terms and in the capital/revenue split.

Given the approval for 2006-7 being made on time, we are extremely hopeful in achieving our target expenditure.

Outputs against target

Targets (left hand blocks) are the agreed targets for the whole period of the scheme except in relation to public investment which does not include the Castle Project, Roe field and Language College which have still to be finalized.

In terms of delivery against targets, the partnership is very happy with the current position.

Jobs created or safeguarded
We would expect over the whole period of the scheme to exceed the target for jobs created. The current position is affected by the time delay between investment and the achievement of the expected new jobs.

Learning opportunities
As might be expected from the nature of the projects this is largely dependent on revenue funded projects and therefore outputs are broadly in line with the revenue expenditure and we expect to be on target at the end of the project.

New businesses created or attracted to the area
Again we feel that this is more or less in line with expectations and we would expect to hit the target by the end of the project.

Square metres of New Floor Space
We have already exceeded the target by over 180% and would expect that we can achieve more between now and the end of the project.

Businesses receiving specialist advice
We are slightly ahead of where we might have expected to be on this output and expect to hit the target at the end of the project.

Businesses assisted on skills needs
We are ahead of expected levels and should exceed the target by the end of the project.

Other public investment
This graph deliberately excludes the Castle Scheme and 3 other large public works projects as these will not be delivered until the final year of the project. In total we can expect a figure of approaching £6.5 million in terms of other public investment in the area which has been catalysed or supported by the NWDA scheme. In terms of the public spending so far on other projects this has been affected by the nature of the schemes included so far in the plan.

Other private investment
This has exceeded target and we can expect a figure of over a million pounds being shown at the end of the project on the assumption that private investment can be secured to support Clitheroe Castle Scheme.

Unexpected results
In assessing this area, the main achievements so far have been the new projects which have developed along the way which we have been able to integrate within the scheme.
One negative issue is the length of time taken to develop match funding from Heritage Lottery on the Castle and Sport England on Roe field for example. In the latter case we were affected by changes in the criteria used for funding, a funding holiday and the level of funding available for capital projects being drastically reduced. We were also treated to inexcusable delays in the final process which culminated in a refusal based in part on the level of local authority involvement in the scheme and the VAT position with regard to buildings of this nature funded through a charity. It is interesting to note that a local authority based scheme would have probably been able to reclaim VAT within its capital allowances and that had the extension been a separate building and not an extension VAT may still have been recoverable.

Project Management
Given the community and resident-based structure of the organisation, we believe that we have managed the project as a whole well so far. We have developed the necessary skills required to manage the programme (appraisals, business plans, reports etc). This could perhaps have been helped at the start by NWDA having appropriate systems in place to manage the programme.

Contributions to RES and LSP
All our projects have been tied to key themes in the RES and we believe we are achieving outputs in line with the RES. Our local LSP has been criticised for being a talking shop and information giving activity in the past. It is currently undergoing a metamorphosis to become much more key project focussed and this should align delivery by our partnership with some of these key projects.

Other delivery options
We strongly believe that having a community based partnership with independence from the statutory authorities has enabled us to deliver things which are important to the residents and community.

Risks
A risk which perhaps was not anticipated at the start of the process in 2001 with the Countryside Agency was the length of time to reach decisions and the level of bureaucracy involved. This has had the effect of damping the enthusiasm of some excellent early contributors to the scheme who have drifted away from the partnership. The inability to engage the County Council on road transport and highways issues has also had a negative effect on the functioning of the partnership.

Lessons Learned
We have to be flexible in our management approach in order to cope with the changing external circumstances.
Managing people’s expectations especially with regard to timescales is very difficult.

Equality and Diversity
These issues are considered in the appraisal of each project.

Sustainability
We have considered the issue of sustainability in respect of each project submitted to the partnership. However this is purely based on economic grounds. Sustainability in the wider context should consider social and community issues. This is more difficult to quantify.

Rural Issues
Although the bulk of our projects have been related to actions within the market town, we have monitored activity on 3 grant schemes and one other project to check whether these have had an impact within the hinterland. Fair Access to Services
(Rural IT) has had clients throughout the hinterland; Market Town Enhancement Grants were given to businesses in 3 local villages in addition to the market town; Business Start Up Grants have also been awarded mainly to businesses in the rural hinterland; the Youth Support Workers Project is also working well in the rural hinterland with activities occurring on a regular basis in several villages and support through the rural youth bus in all villages.
Market towns have also been excluded from the Leader + grant scheme. Although included in the original scheme bid in Lancashire, guidance by DEFRA and GONW meant that the market towns themselves were excluded from these schemes. Given that the market towns themselves were positively encouraged to spend money within the rural hinterland as well as in the town itself and, indeed many of our projects reflect this ambition, this omission from the European Scheme means that an opportunity for match funding was not available.

Additional work
Through the employment of a Project Manager the partnership has been able to support many other actions outside the remit of the NWDA scheme. These include

• The partnership officer facilitating Whalley Action Group in the preparation of their Parish Plan and continues to support follow up actions.
• Sawley Village Hall has been able to fund a play area in the village for children through the support in writing funding applications.
• Whalley Youth Drop-In Centre has received advice and support on funding applications.
• The partnership officer has worked closely with Edisford School on a community multi-use games area in the school grounds.
• The partnership is involved in a regeneration scheme to create a local wildlife habitat on derelict land adjacent to St James Primary School.
• The partnership has issued 4 walks leaflets taking people out into the countryside round Clitheroe.
• The partnership organised a public meeting to discuss the future of healthcare in the Ribble Valley.

The partnership sees projects such as these as important to the social fabric of Clitheroe and its hinterland even though they are not delivering direct economic outputs. We will continue to support these types of actions in the future.

Publicity
The partnership enjoys a close relationship with the Clitheroe Advertiser and Times and has had many articles printed over the last 2 years.
2 newsletters have been published in the last 8 months and these have been circulated with Castle View, the local free newspaper which goes to every house in Clitheroe. It is intended to issue a regular newsletter in future.
Several articles have also appeared in Ribble Valley Update – the newspaper of the Ribble Valley Borough Council which goes to every household in Ribble Valley.
The partnership officer also wrote an article for Lancashire Magazine entitled “Enterprise in Market Towns” which was published in the January/February Edition.
2006.

We are sponsoring a day on Ribble Valley Radio in June which will enable representatives from the projects to be interviewed on the local community radio which is running its second trial month and will be applying for a permanent licence later this year.

Stakeholder Feedback - Customer Survey
It was decided that we should invite those people who had received grants to respond to a customer survey. All clients who had received a start-up, market town enhancement, rural IT support or community small grant was sent a simple questionnaire (see appendix 1 attached).

Conclusions

• 29 out of 80 questionnaires were returned (36%) which was perhaps somewhat disappointing.
• The principal route for finding out information about the schemes was personal contact. All schemes have been advertised in the local press but only 2 applicants came through this route.
• One respondent regarded the processes involved as complex and this perhaps related to the planning issues on what was allowed within the conservation area.
• 24% stated that they were unaware of Clitheroe the Future’s and NWDA involvement. This is in spite of documentation provided containing evidence of the support process.
• 83% of businesses said that this grant had positively assisted their businesses in improving or expanding.
• Only 48% of those responding seemed to be fully aware of the work of the partnership. This point needs some serious attention as in addition just over one in four people claim to have never heard of it before.
• 72% of people claimed to read the Clitheroe Advertiser and seven (24%) did not read any of the local papers. All this latter group of people was either unaware of Clitheroe the Future or was unsure what we did.
• Only 21% of respondents had visited our web-site. This appears to be in contrast to the large numbers of hits and visits the site gets so perhaps these may not be from local people.

For Graphs See Appendix 2

Signed on behalf of the Partnership
Jeremy Grout-Smith - Chairman and Richard Jackson - Project Manager

Appendix1

Questionnaire

Clitheroe the Future has a number of projects which it is supporting through funding by the North West Development Agency. In order to assess the benefit and support this is providing we would be pleased if you would complete the enclosed questionnaire and return it in the enclosed prepaid reply envelope to us.

1) Of which grant scheme have you been a beneficiary?
a) Fair Access to Services (Rural IT Project) □
b) Market Town Enhancement Grant □
c) Business Start up Grant □
d) Small Grants Scheme □

2) Where did you hear about the scheme?
a) Newspaper □
b) Flyer □
c) Telephone Call □
d) Personal Contact □
e) Presentation to a society you are a member of □
f) Other (Please specify) □

3) Was the process of receiving a grant simple to follow?
a) Yes □
b) No □
(If no please explain what was wrong or could be improved)

4) Were you aware that this grant scheme had been enabled through the work of Clitheroe the Future and the backing of North West Development Agency?
a) Yes □
b) No □
c) Any comments

5) Did the grant/ support you received assist your business in starting or improving?
a) Yes □
b) No

6) How aware are you of Clitheroe the Future Partnership?
a) Never heard of it before. □
b) Heard of it but not sure what it is trying to do. □
c) Heard of it and aware that there are a large □
number of projects underway.
d) Thought it was part of the Borough Council □

7) Which of these papers do you read?
a) Clitheroe Advertiser and Times □
b) Lancashire Evening Telegraph □
c) Castle View □

8) Have you ever visited Clitheroe the Future Web-site?
a) No □
b) Yes (If yes have you any comments about it) □

9) Do you have any other comments which you would like to add?

10) Would you like to receive a newsletter about the work of the partnership?
If yes please fill in your contact details.
Email address (for enews) ………………………………………………………..
Postal Address (hard copy)

Richard Jackson
Project Manager
Tel 01200 421049
Email rjackson@clitheroethefuture.co.uk

Appendix 2