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Protect local jobs through planning system, urge MPs

Planning contracts for new housing developments should prioritise local employment and ensure that training and job opportunities are maximised around new projects according to a new report by the All Party Urban Development Group.

With some believing unemployment could surge past three million next year, the cross party group of MPs and peers wants planners to use section 106 agreements with developers to ensure that locals benefit fully from regeneration.

The group believes regeneration should be more than just bricks and mortar.

This approach would enable skills and earnings to be reinvested in communities as the projects are built and then used afterwards. Hiring local people for construction work and developing people’s skills to equip them to work in completed developments would reduce the skills gap and build up employment opportunities from within our towns.

The report, ‘Building local jobs’, says that councils, health trusts and other public sector agencies should lead by example and promote use of local labour on their own property development projects. Local planners should assess a planning application’s potential to spark employment in a regeneration area and ensure employment commitments through their negotiations with the developer.

Construction has fallen off dramatically over the last year, with the Local Government Association predicting that one in five construction workers could be redundant by 2011. The cross party group believes that this approach of protecting jobs through contracts agreed before building commences would have many long term benefits associated with protecting employment and removing the need to hire from abroad.

Clive Betts MP, chairman of the All Party Urban Development Group, said:

“It is crucial that during these difficult economic times, councils and businesses do everything they can to protect jobs for local people. The planning process provides a prime opportunity for councils to negotiate with private developers, thereby providing good training and job opportunities to local unemployed.”

“Regeneration isn’t just about bricks and mortar; it’s about the legacy and economic certainty of the decades to come. Local people bear the costs of new development, so it’s only fair that they should benefit the most. We just need the government to support this and for councils to want to make it work by showing real innovation in how they plan.

“Real training opportunities can be provided through existing planning agreements but cities need more control over their skills funding. A top down approach is unworkable, we need cities and employers to be able to build bespoke training programmes that enable local people to access the jobs created by regeneration projects.”

The report also recommends that:

·         councils work with employers to provide useful training to local people and monitor those newly hired through the first five years of the employment;

·         funding for adult training is given to local councils rather than administered centrally; and

·         the private sector develops an accreditation scheme that identifies the businesses best at hiring locally.

Trevor Dorling, head of economic development, Greenwich Council, said:

“We have managed to secure over 200 Section 106 agreements that include a local employment element. We use them to get a commitment from developers, end users, construction companies and so on to use their best endeavours to recruit locally, but crucially we have the service to enable them to live up to that commitment. More than 8,000 local people have gained work as a direct result. 

“We also use Section 106 Agreements to get a financial contribution which goes to Greenwich Local Labour and Business and effectively creates a flexible pot that they can use which is unfettered by output requirements and targets imposed upon us.  That gives them the means to operate in a very fleet of foot manner to reflect both employers’ requirements and those of individuals.”

Wahed Nazir, assistant director of regeneration, Birmingham City Council, said:

“Our experience has been around making the offer make business sense rather than trying to force the developer or the construction company to recruit locally.  What we have done in other parts of the sector is set up bespoke training.  At the end of the day the companies need the labour force and if we can put in bespoke training and engage those client groups that we are targeting and put resources in to do that it makes it more feasible for the company to recruit those appropriate groups.”

Notes to editors

This report is the fifth inquiry of the All Party Urban Development Group.  It will be available to download from http://www.allparty-urbandevelopment.org.uk/. 

For media enquiries, please contact Andrew Teacher, head of media at the British Property Federation on 020 7802 0113 / 07968 12 45 45 / ateacher@bpf.org.uk

For non-media enquiries, please contact Kurt Mueller, clerk to the group and British Property Federation public affairs manager on 020 7802 0128 or 07841 080 991

1. About the All Party Urban Development Group

The All Party Parliamentary Urban Development Group is a dynamic non-partisan Parliamentary body of MPs and Peers committed to progressing urban renewal and sustainable development in the UK. It is chaired by Clive Betts MP [Lab], Rt Hon Nick Raynsford MP [Lab], Lord Richard Best [C-bench] and Robert Syms MP [Con].

The group was formed to raise the profile and understanding within Parliament of the urban regeneration process and the role that can be played by the private sector, particularly the property investment community.

The group's remit is to take a holistic approach in the examination of all the constituent elements that bring about truly sustainable communities, and to review policies that will increase the quality and pace of urban renewal and sustainable development nationally.  

The British Property Federation (www.bpf.org.uk) provides secretariat services for the Group, and the Centre for Cities (www.centreforcities.org) conducts independent research for the Group’s inquiry sessions.