DIY Urban Regeneration

Bradford, and particularly the city centre, is in need of regeneration.  Parts of the city have a youth unemployment rate that is more than double the national average, the city centre is near the top of the charts for vacant shop units and stalled development projects have blighted the city centre, a place which faces competition from other centres across West Yorkshire and beyond.  The textile industry in the city has left a legacy of many empty mill buildings, some of which have fallen victim to fires and some have been subject to stalled development proposals (such as Midland Mills, below).


The city is forecast to have one of the fastest rising populations in the UK over the coming years, which presents a challenge as to how all these people are housed.  Property developers are not wanting to take any risks in these turbulent times, so are opting for what seem to be 'safe bets', greenfield and low density houses with gardens and space for cars, a Castle for the Englishman - or Mondeo man.

The mechanisms for delivering regeneration have changed in recent years.  Large scale regeneration projects led by the public sector do not fit with the Government's austerity policies, changes to the availability of finance mean that large scale city centre apartment development, driven by speculators, are a thing of the past.  But the city still has empty buildings, people to house and needs to be a place where companies can start-up or want to move in to.

Community Led Development
Non for profit mutual societies can be set up to secure development.  Brixton Green has issued shares to the community to secure the redevelopment of a council owned site close to the centre of Brixton.  FC United  have issued shares to the community to build their own stadium at Newton Heath.

The Creative Foundation is Folkestone is a charity that has acquired dis-used buildings in the town, leading to the establishment of a Creative Quarter.

Closer to Bradford, the LILAC eco housing scheme in Bramley is currently under development.  This is a mutual home ownership society, where members have joined the co-operative and twenty homes are being built.  LILAC has secured investment through loanstock, where investors can lend the co-operative funds over a fixed period.  In Slaithwaite, the Green Valley Grocer (below) has thrived after the village's greengrocers was bought by the community, following a share issue and the shop provides an outlet for locally produced food, which would not have been possible without the community buying into the venture.

Bradford does have some co-operatives already, the 1 in 12 club and Brances and The Hive housing co-operatives. 

But in the meantime...

The meantime phenomenon has certainly not missed out in Bradford, as demonstrated by Fabric's Pop Up Art Space, Urban Garden and Hand Made in Bradford. The Pop Up People report looked at how vacant spaces have been used temporarily, a theme that was explored in an earlier blogpost.  With Bradford's number of empty shops, this needs to be pursued.

Bradford is yet to have its multi-million pound Westfield shopping mall, but those hipsters in Shoreditch made a whole shopping area out of shipping containers, Boxpark (above).  If shopping in shipping containers seems a bit too far fetched for Bradford, there is certainly scope for small scale intervention.  I walk through Bradford Interchange everyday, it must have one of the highest levels of footfall in the whole city, it will be the first thing that many people see in the city... but just look at it:



Get some greenery on the top of the walls, a climbing plant up those poles and add a bit of colour to those glass panel things and it would just look a whole lot less drab and just a bit more welcoming!

Can we do DIY Regeneration in Bradford?
Why not?  How much confidence is there in other forms of regeneration at the moment, in fact do these even exist any more?  Banks aren't lending money and developers aren't taking risks, but regeneration still needs to happen and someone needs to fill that gap.

Imagine if it was the people who had regenerated places like the Goitside area (below), which had a high number of residents and workers occupying the empty buildings.  Imagine if the community owned and operated the Odeon building and large vacant buildings like Highpoint and Sunwin House were handed over for a large range of retail, arts and entertainment venues - that'd be amazing!

The squeeze on local government finances and the recession require an innovative and adventurous response, particularly in Bradford where the need for regeneration is so acute.  Community led development would help improve Bradford's image, reinforce its identity and help the city centre sustain a larger residential population, which in turn would support shops and services.

So, over to us.

So what is everyone doing?

The last post was about working together, responding to the words of the Chamber of Trade and the Council.  I am aware of what the council are doing in the city centre and I know what the Chamber of Trade think, so I was keen to see what they're planning to do in the city centre.  I don't know if there is any formal meetings of city centre retailers, so I was keen to meet a few and see what they're looking to do about what issues they face.  I went to the Insight With Passion retail roadshow on Monday night, after hearing about in the local media, I thought this would be an ideal time to see what retailers are aiming to do and even do some 'networking'.  No retailers turned up.  A free event, one of many being held across Yorkshire, giving free advice to retailers and not one retailer turned up.  No one from the council was there, no one from the Chamber of Trade.  It might have been a bad night to have the event, it might not have been marketed well, but it will be interesting to compare this with the events in other towns.  I was actually the only Bradford representative there, who wasn't from the Telegraph & Argus.  The organisers of the event had said that they'd personally approached retailers asking if they wanted to attend and as things were looking, Bradford was probably going to have the lowest turnout despite being one of the biggest centres and having the highest vacancy rate.  My first few posts of the blog talked about the  Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats facing the city centre.  Its got problems that need addressing, but there are heaps of reasons not to give up and why giving up is not an option, I can't accept that people have just given up.

Retailers

Who are you? What do you sell?  People say Bradford is so bad now that they don't even bother coming into shop, they'll head straight to other neighbouring cities.  So they're not even walking past your shops in the first place.  Where is your online presence?  Are you on Twitter?  I haven't seen many of you yet.  How much does it cost to set up a blog like this? £0, Twitter account £0 - you could even all do one collectively.  Or tell me things to put on here, or other sites like Bradford Buzz.

Things are so much cheaper online, people don't want to pay 60p to park in the city centre - but you're in the city centre already, so what's so special about coming to you instead of online, even if you're not the cheapest?  How do we know you have a specialist knowledge?  How do you demonstrate great quality customer service?  What does great customer service cost to implement?  You could even  host an event for a small cost, maybe even do that collectively?  Do you talk to one another?

Chamber of Trade

To be honest, I'm a little confused about the difference between The Chamber of Trade and Chamber of Commerce, apart from the latter has a much better website.  The Chamber of Trade's website hasn't been updated since 2003.  Maybe the Chamber of Trade could have a City Centre Retail competition?  Best customer service, best shop front, innovater of the year?  I don't know, do they do this already? Then they need to shout louder.  

I know the Chamber of Trade don't like Car Parking.  On street parking is more expensive in Huddersfield and Halifax, the independent retail scene appears to be more thriving there - what is the difference to Bradford?  Is it more fundamental than car parking and do the retailers and Chamber of Trade have a role to play themselves?

The Council

The council collect lots of data, monitoring shop occupancy and footfall - how do they share this with retailers?  Car Parking is an issue in the city centre - do the council have any data about how many people actually travel to the centre by car and how does this compare with neighbouring cities?  Do people overstate the problem of car parking tickets?  Parking enforcement is a source of income to the authority, but this needs to be measured against the attractiveness of the city centre.  The centre has a myriad of bus lanes, areas with different parking restrictions applying - how can these be communicated more effectively?  The council website has easy to find information about off street parking, but what about where you can drive or where you can park on the street?  Even if parking wasn't free at somewhere like Meadowhall, how do you think they would communicate such information to visitors?  

The Council and The Police

Does the council have an alcohol exclusion zone? Why do I see people drinking super strength lager in the street every night if they do?  Why when I go out on a night am I being asked for 'spare change mate'?  It doesn't bother me so much, I see it a lot in other cities, but it seems more frequent in Bradford and this presents a very poor image, especially at night when there aren't many other people around.

Property Owners and Others

The topic of pop up shops has been debated at great length. Some artwork from schools went up at the bottom of Darley Street - it looked good, less so six months later.  There's some great photos online of different parts of Bradford, some great photographers, some great architectural heritage in the city to celebrate, this would cost relatively little and make empty shops look a bit more presentable, so why not?  These could take on a bigger role for more formal events, like the International Film Festival.

Large groups of shops are vacant, like on Market Street and at the Rawson Quarter.  If the Fabric scheme at Zavvi is going to be a place for budding retailers to set up shop, where do they go after that?  Property owners could offer reduced rents to businesses who've come through the Fabric scheme or such schemes, who could receive business plan advice from the Chamber of Commerce / Chamber of Trade, or from the College or even from the Council.  Could people like Spacemakers Agency help?  There's likely to be financial pressures in Local Government in the coming years, but assitance could be provided to fit out shops, as it has down in Rotherham.  What is the reason why landlords should receive a lower rent, instead of no rent at all plus business rates?

A lot of questions here, what are the answers?

There's something about Mary...

Bradfordia is a few weeks behind everyone else, largely because its a new blog, but the Mary Portas review into the High Street was big news at the start of December.  That said, the Government aren't publishing their response until the Spring.  The review contains 28 of Ms Portas' recommendations to save the High Street, the impact of a celebrity figure somewhat trumps the '100 Ways to Help the High Street' published by, amongst others, the Association of Town Centre Managers.  But its time to do what others were doing over a month ago and analysing the Portas Review, but from a Bradford City Centre perspective.

Many people will look to Westfield and the delays over the construction of the new shopping centre as one of the issues that impacts on retail in the City Centre.  Mary Portas should come to Bradford and look at this, though there may be a conflict of interest with her work for Westfield.



1. Put in place a “Town Team”: a visionary, strategic and strong operational management team for high streets - Town Teams have been successful in other towns and cities, such as Scarborough,  to bring a range of different people around the table and to find creative ways to improve their centre.

2. Empower successful Business Improvement Districts to take on more responsibilities and powers and become “Super-BIDs” - Not relevant to Bradford now, but a BID might be something to look at in the future.  Preston is an example of a BID which has made improvements to the City Centre 'offer'.

3. Legislate to allow landlords to become high street investors by contributing to their Business Improvement District - As above

4. Establish a new “National Market Day” where budding shopkeepers can try their hand at operating a low-cost retail business - Not sure how successful a 'National Market Day' would be, but there is lots of space in Bradford which could be used on a trial basis for budding retailers.

5. Make it easier for people to become market traders by removing unnecessary regulations so that anyone can trade on the high street unless there is a valid reason why not - Unaware of how difficult it is to obtain a Market Trading Permit - and is it really fair to call regulations unnecessary?

6. Government should consider whether business rates can better support small businesses and independent retailers - This is something that can't be controlled on a local basis, but rates are often cited as a barrier to entry for independent retailers.

7. Local authorities should use their new discretionary powers to give business rate concessions to new local businesses - A Rate Relief Fund will be rolled out in Bradford to support businesses who commit to employing and training local people.

8. Make business rates work for business by reviewing the use of the RPI with a view to changing the calculation to CPI - CPI is forecast to be a lower and more steady rate of growth than RPI.

9. Local areas should implement free controlled parking schemes that work for their town centres and we should have a new parking league table - Difficult to see how this would work in practice?  If every city centre had free parking, it wouldn't give Bradford a competitive advantage over them.  It would still be difficult for the city centre to compete with out of town sites, due to the scarcity of parking and traffic issues.  A review of car parking provision and more favourable charges to entice car based customers could work.

10. Town Teams should focus on making high streets accessible, attractive and safe - This is what Town Teams in towns and cities that have them do anyway.  It would certainly be a good thing for the city centre.

11. Government should include high street deregulation as part of their ongoing work on freeing up red tape Some of these regulations will be absolute necessary, others less so but are still in place for a reason.


12. Address the restrictive aspects of the ‘Use Class’ system to make it easier to change the uses of key properties on the high street  If this is a genuine issue stopping investment into the city centre, then it should be changed.  The city centre already has a lot of Betting Shops and Amusement Arcades, so the 'use class' hasn't been a barrier to these, plus in the Planning system it is impossible to differentiate between a high quality and low quality end user.

13. Put betting shops into a separate ‘Use Class’ of their own - This is particularly pertinent to Bradford, though the 'horse may have already bolted'.  Betting Shops are currently in the same 'Use Class' as banks and estate agents (Class A2).  Since the gambling licensing laws were changed, more and more betting shops have taken advantage of vacant Class A2 shop units.

14. Make explicit a presumption in favour of town centre development in the wording of the National Planning Policy Framework - National Planning Policy has contained a presumption in favour of town centre development since the 1990s.



15. Introduce Secretary of State “exceptional sign off ” for all new out-of-town developments and require all large new developments to have an “affordable shops” quota - The Secretary of State has to oversee most out of town retail developments.  Its difficult to see how an affordable shops quota in out of town locations would help city centres, especially ones such as Bradford where there is a high proportion of existing vacant stock.

16. Large retailers should support and mentor local businesses and independent retailers - Difficult to understand what this would mean in practice, but they should all be working together as part of 'town team' or  in city centre partnership.

17. Retailers should report on their support of local high streets in their annual report - What will this mean in reality and who will actually read the annual reports?

18. Encourage a contract of care between landlords and their commercial tenants by promoting the leasing code and supporting the use of lease structures other than upward only rent reviews, especially for small businesses - This is something that could well help lower the number of vacant promises in the city centre.

19. Explore further disincentives to prevent landlords from leaving units vacant - You would have thought not receiving rent and having to pay business rates was an incentive to get a tenant in, so what are these issues that make landlords leave units vacant?

20. Banks who own empty property on the high street should either administer these assets well or be required to sell them - Not sure what the extent of this problem is in Bradford.

21. Local authorities should make more proactive use of Compulsory Purchase Order powers to encourage the redevelopment of key high street retail space - Not sure how this would work in Bradford.

22. Empower local authorities to step in when landlords are negligent with new “Empty Shop Management Orders” - Define negligent?  Are properties empty in Bradford because of this, or just because of market forces?

23. Introduce a public register of high street landlords -It would mean people would know who to hold to account if properties were 'neglected'

24. Run a high profile campaign to get people involved in Neighbourhood Plans - Difficult to see how Bradford, a city of many neighbourhoods, would have plans that impacted on the city centre.

25. Promote the inclusion of the High Street in Neighbourhood Plans - As above.

26. Developers should make a financial contribution to ensure that the local community has a strong voice in the planning system - Developers have to make contributions towards transport and the provision of infrastructure, there is a danger of asking too much of them.

27. Support imaginative community use of empty properties through Community Right to Buy, Meanwhile Use and a new “Community Right to Try” - Letting out vacant properties at a discounted rate on a trial basis would be a good thing in the City Centre, but how would it work out in the long term?

28. Run a number of High Street Pilots to test proof of concept - And if Bradford could get something from Central Government for this, why not?