Regeneration Sector
Industry Overview
Sustainable regeneration is about making development and investment decisions that are well informed and which will address an imbalance in the social, economic or environment setting.
ACTIVE's mixture of geographic, demographic, economic, and built environment skills, together with extensive experience in property, health, education, community safety and town planning offers regeneration professionals and practitioners like you a unique approach to better understanding the needs of and opportunities for regeneration, and the evaluation over time of the effectiveness of your decisions and actions.
How ACTIVE is used
ACTIVE products are used for a number of essential strategic and operational planning tasks:
Working in partnership with one of our regeneration consultancy partners, AMION Consulting, ACTIVE was commissioned to develop the URC Profiler product for English Partnerships, the national regeneration agency, in its role in managing the National Programmes across the country. URC Profiler acts as a dashboard for URC senior managers by offering simple trends in strategic indicators over time. It also provides a rich seam of data compiled separately for the unique geographic area of each URC which can be downloaded for further ad-hoc analysis.
The online system is accessed via the URC Extranet operated by English Partnerships and provides accounts for URCs, English Partnership and the ODPM.
To download an overview of ACTIVE's regeneration information support services, click here
To see a list of data sets we have access to, click here
Products
How you can engage us
Our Open Spaces offering is described under a separate website.
http://www.playstrategyservices.com/
Case Studies
English Partnerships: National Regeneration Strategy - the case for Assisted Area status
English Partnerships (EP) is the national force for regeneration and development in England. ACTIVE was commissioned by KPMG Management Consulting to assist EP by providing spatial information in support of the redefinition of Assisted Areas, one of a series of structural funding mechanisms for regeneration.
The project involved defining and mapping the need for regeneration – expressed by a range of population variables such as unemployment, deprivation, former occupation, etc. – and the opportunity to invest in projects - by way of showing the locations of sites that are known to be in need of investment.
Using geographic information to show where the need and opportunity overlapped enabled areas to be selected for recommendation for Assisted Area status.
Ultimately, detailed maps of the adopted Assisted Areas were produced, relating these at Ward level to a range of other area status that are important to EP in their day to day regeneration planning work.
Pfizer Ltd - Removing obstacles to the employment of key workers
With the development of a further substantial phase of its central research facility in East Kent, Pfizer wanted to ensure that adequate pre-school childcare places were available in those localities they expected new research team members to live.
By mapping the home locations of all existing research staff and matching these locations with Lifestyle categories, patterns emerged to strongly indicate 30 or so localities in which staff of this type choose to live. Overlaying the locations of nursery schools and collecting data about capacity revealed those schools in need of greater capacity to accommodate new children.
Pfizer were able to prioritise investment in those nurseries most in need of development to create additional capacity. As new staff were appointed their choice of new home locations largely aligned with the estimates and child places proved easy to come by.
London Development Agency - Longitudinal employment estimates by business sector
The LDA commissioned estimates of future employment levels in key business sectors from KPMG and Experian, in five year increments from 2001, at Local Authority Level.
ACTIVE provided geographic information for each time period to reveal the shift in employment levels and the clustering of local Authorities where decline in key sectors can be expected. Additionally, ACTIVE was able to break down the Local Authority Level estimates to Ward level to inform local interventions by the LDA.
As well as revealing the significant geographic shifts over time in key sectors like creative industries and transport, the LDA was able to relate sectoral employment change to its other initiatives.
Market town health checks for North West Development Agency
Lead Consultant: ERM Consulting
Regeneration Issue: What is the “health” of the market towns within the north west, and what priority should be placed on investment in market towns regeneration to stop decline and stimulate sustained growth?
Method: Determination of market towns from candidate urban centres on basis of public services, commercial vibrancy, citizen accessibility and dependency. Division of NW into rural hinterlands centred on each market town. Spatial clustering of indicator data into market town influence areas to determine rank of need.
Outputs: Maps, tables and charts exploring the relative health of the agreed market towns enabling prioritisation and further investigation into the underlying factors of growth and decline.
Outcomes: Influence over local authority based market town development renewal projects, and allocation of funding to need greatest need.
Sectoral employment forecasts for London Development Agency
Lead Consultant: KPMG
Regeneration Issue: How is the sectoral base of employment across Greater London expected to shift over in the years to 2021?
Method: Using employment counts by sector provided by Experian Business Strategies, map these to local authority wards at five year intervals to 2021, and explore the geographic ebb and flow of employment bases in five year intervals in the study period.
Outputs: Maps for some 30 different sectors at five year intervals (five versions) configure to a PowerPoint model to illustrate the geographic movement shift in sector base employment hot spots over time.
click to enlarge
Outcomes: Informed the LDA's sectoral skills development programme and targeting of investment intended to protect employment in sectors considered to be under threat.
Coalfield community study for English Partnerships
Regeneration Issue: What is the relationship between coalfield community areas and the availability of structural funds and are there areas where access to such funds is more or less equitable?
Method: Amalgamating boundaries describing the availability of all structural funds and overlaying these to the boundaries of the coalfield communities.
Outputs: Maps and tables describing for each coalfield community the extent of single or multiple overlap of available structural funds, highlighting those parts of coalfield communities that have none, some and many funds available to illustrate the inequity of fund availability.
Outcomes: Informed EP's influence over changes to the structural fund areas to achieve a more balanced availability of funding for regeneration across all coalfield communities.
Employment study for the New Mersey Crossing
Lead Consultant: Amion Consulting
Regeneration Issue: What will be the increased employment opportunities for labour and job markets either side of the Mersey cutting, and what will be the effects on the juxtaposition of deprivation that currently exists of the transience that the proposed crossing will bring?
Method: Model the impact on travel times between the populations north and south of the cutting, and analyse the extents of unemployment and deprivation within the improved travel potential.
Outputs: Maps and tables exploiting claimant count statistics at ward level and Index of Deprivation ranks at super-output area to illustrate the areas of potential maximum benefit from the improved travel network between north and south of the cutting.
Outcomes: Supported New Mersey Crossing's case for building the bridge and informed the social and economic benefits of the development.
Strategic sites assessment for Durham County Council
Regeneration Issue: What are the accessibility issues of a range of strategic development sites across Durham in relation to the primary transport network formed of roads, airport and port?
Method: Mapping the location of the strategic sites over the transport network and identifying the locations of the points of access to the network and reporting upon the relevant convenience of each site to the transport network, including consideration of the primary social and labour market indicators for the area.
Outputs: Maps and tables describing the relative access to the primary transport network from each of the sites under consideration and their location to areas of unemployment and deprivation.
Outcomes: Supported Donaldsons' advice to Durham County on the order in which their strategic sites should be prepared to attract private sector investment for distribution and storage development.
PDF Downloads