INTRODUCTION

  English Partnerships (EP) welcomes the opportunity to give evidence to the Committee's inquiry. This brief Memorandum concentrates on EP's role and in particular its experiences of working with British Waterways in recent years.

THE ROLE OF ENGLISH PARTNERSHIPS

  English Partnerships is the national regeneration agency helping the Government to support high quality sustainable growth in England by creating well-served mixed communities where people enjoy living and working. In collaboration with the Housing Corporation, the Academy for Sustainable Communities and Communities and Local Government we are establishing the new Homes and Communities Agency that will begin operating in 2009.

  We have 5 core business areas and deliver our objectives through:

—  Developing our portfolio of strategic projects;

—  Acting as the Government's specialist advisor on brownfield land;

—  Ensuring that surplus Government land is used to support wider Government objectives, especially the Sustainable Communities Plan;

—  Helping to create communities where people can afford to live and want to live;

—  Supporting the urban renaissance by improving the quality of our towns and cities.

HOW ENGLISH PARTNERSHIPS OPERATE

—  We always work in partnership with the public and private sector;

—  We insist on the highest standards of design, construction and environmental sustainability;

—  We act as a catalyst for development, involved at an early stage to prepare sites for development by our public and private sector partners—eg land acquisition, site assembly, land remediation, and masterplanning;

—  We devise and encourage innovative methods of dealing with difficult problems;

—  We insist on early and active involvement by the local community

REASONS FOR HAVING CONTACT WITH BW

  English Partnerships has enjoyed a long and productive working relationship with BW from our very beginning in the 1990s in projects including the restoration of the Rochdale and Huddersfield Narrow canals using land reclamation and gap funding powers to common good which transformed the waterways for leisure use and surrounding areas.

  We are both national organisations with strong links at national, regional and the all important local levels where we have worked closely and productively on a number of projects across England in the context of our shared sustainable regeneration objectives.

EXAMPLES OF RECENT JOINT WORKING

  1.  Under the direction of the Nottingham Waterside Ltd (NWL) partnership EP and ISIS (BW's joint venture with Igloo and AMEC) have been focusing their efforts on assembling a 10 ha site at Trent Basin to facilitate the regeneration of the Nottingham Waterside area. In 2004 land assembly began involving EP ISIS and BW around the Basin allowing EP, ISIS and the other NWL partners to promote a high quality mixed use development at Trent Basin which will create circa 2200 homes and 5,000sq m of workspace with planning consent granted late last year. The Trent Basin scheme will act as a catalyst to kick start Nottingham's housing growth aspirations on 100ha of brownfield and industrial land alongside one of the best river frontages in the country.

  2.  EP is working alongside BW in the Gloucester Urban Regeneration Company area in the centre of Gloucester, and is providing a package of interventions centred on a new campus for Gloscat College on a site known as Gloucester Quays. The new college opened its doors in September last year. BW is in a joint venture with a private sector partner and EP to develop a factory outlet centre, homes, together with leisure and retail units. English Partnerships is providing further funding towards infrastructure improvements in completing the much needed inner ring road in Gloucester, centred on the provision of a new canal bridge and related infrastructure, to help access the new Gloscat campus and the wider Gloucester Quays scheme.

  3.  BW is leading construction of a new section of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal Link linking Central Docks in Liverpool to the Albert Dock via the Pier Head in which EP is a funding partner the canal link having synergies with our massive investment in Kings Waterfront (where we have also had a very positive relationship with BW) where the new arena recently opened and in the housing market renewal areas of Bootle in Sefton which will be linked by the canal. Also in Liverpool we are providing land and have provided brokerage of a project around Clarence Dock, which forms part of Central Docks to facilitate a wider deal with Peel Holdings, Liverpool City Council and BW which will tie in a new cruise liner facility at the Pier Head with the construction of the canal link through Princes Dock and Central Docks.

  4.  EP along with BW, Cheshire County Council, the Environment Agency, NWDA and Vale Royal Borough Council have formed Northwich Vision, aimed at delivering a 10 year strategy of urban renewal in the town centre through unlocking third party private investment. The re-development of Northwich has been blighted historically by the legacy of its unstable salt mines. English Partnerships is meeting the £30+ million cost of stabilising the mines by later this year under the land stabilisation programme, allowing an ambitious re-focus of the town upon the River Weaver, an important but under utilised economic and leisure asset and BW is seeking development of its own land holdings through its joint venture with ISIS.

  5.  Finally, English Partnerships has worked closely with BW at the former Bickershaw Colliery, Leigh in the development of regeneration proposals which will maximise the regeneration benefit to the area and contribute to the outcomes from EPs' National Coalfields Programme, its Carbon Challenge proposals and British Waterways' strategy for the development of waterways in the north west. BW have to date provided a significant contribution to the Partnership of NWDA, Wigan Council and English Partnerships through their design input to raise the quality of urban design in canal front settings. English Partnerships has also been keen to share experience of design and environmental quality emerging from the Carbon Challenge and explore the longer term opportunities provided by surplus public sector land in the ownership of Wigan Council and British Waterways here and across the country.

  6.  An innovative development of canalside terraced houses and apartments is to be built in City Waterside, Stoke-on-Trent with Lovell being appointed by English Partnerships in early March to build the new homes to high environmental and design standards that have been required for the new City Waterside neighbourhood. City Waterside is a new urban neighbourhood where around 2,400 ew homes are planned over the coming 10-15 years, set on a south facing hill around the Caldon Canal, just south of Stoke-on-Trent city centre. City Waterside is being promoted by a partnership including the North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership RENEW North Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, the Housing Corporation, Advantage West Midlands and BW.

  7.  EP is still in negotiation with BW regarding a number of other joint initiatives including those aimed at taking forward the Bedford and Milton Keynes Waterway.

CONCLUSION

  8.  We hope the Committee will see the benefits being realised through the work of BW with organisations such as ourselves and we hope the excellent work can continue.

English Partnerships

March 2008