http://www.nwda.co.uk/pdf/SDF

November 2003

Sustainable Development Framework of England’s Northwest - Case Studies The purpose of this Newsletter is to promote awareness of the strategic Sustainable Development Framework of England’s Northwest and to showcase some of the initiatives that are being undertaken in the region. The region has developed a Regional European Framework for Action (REFA) which aims to maximise opportunities for sustainable economic, social environmental and cultural activities for England’s Northwest within Europe.

England’s Northwest is actively seeking links with other EU region’s to share experiences and best practice.

Employment, Infrastructure and Image. Sustainable development has been considered in each priority area: Business development - improving business performance to secure economic growth must be a priority for the region.

The Agency believes it is sensible to develop a broad portfolio of sectors for sustainable growth, to recognise the region’s diversity of strengths. In addition, the Agency is also developing programmes of business advice aimed at improving business competitiveness, reducing costs and improving the image of businesses by increasing their positive environmental and social impacts on the region.

Strategy for a Sustainable Economy The Northwest Development Agency (NWDA) is responsible for the sustainable economic development and regeneration of England's Northwest.

Through a wide consultation exercise, the NWDA has developed a Regional Economic Strategy.

The aim of the strategy is to improve the region’s competitiveness and encourage economic growth, while at the same time protecting and enhancing its diverse environment, using resources wisely, tackling the causes of social exclusion and recognising the needs and contribution of everyone.

The Agency has worked closely with the Regional Assembly, Government Office Northwest and Environment Agency on the review of Action for Sustainability (AfS), the Region’s Sustainable Development Framework. The objectives of AfS link closely to those of the Regional Economic Strategy, this cross-linking can only improve regional clarity of direction.

The Northwest Development Agency manages an annual budget of £345m (506m Euros) and influences a regional budget of £1.2bn (1.8bn Euros). The Agency has 5 key priorities: Business Development, Regeneration, Skills &

Regeneration – Reflecting its industrial past, the Northwest still has a legacy of aging infrastructure, obsolete and redundant buildings, poor environment and housing, concentrated in particular locations. Environmental upgrading is crucially important for the region in attracting investment and for the attraction/retention of a skilled workforce. This includes measures to reduce derelict land, improve building design for resource efficiency and to ensure that sustainable construction practices are promoted.

Skills and Employment - Strong demand is needed to attract and retain a skilled workforce. Strong supply provides sufficient numbers of highly skilled workers to meet employer requirements. The region’s key partners will be developing new methods of linking business support services to a greater commitment from employers to skills development. This will ensure that supply provision is influenced, achieving more effective integration between the supply and demand elements of the regional labour market.

Infrastructure – In addition to physical infrastructure improvements, the broadband infrastructure of the region is incomplete, particularly in rural locations. An action plan for ICT in Cumbria has been produced and is now being implemented. Project ACCESS (Advancing Communications for Cumbria & Enabling Sustainable Services) is a multi-million

pound project designed to promote and provide affordable access to broadband services across Cumbria. Over 22,000 businesses from both the public and private sector and over 245,000 individuals will be able to benefit from Project ACCESS having the opportunity to take up broadband services.

Image - The region must be marketed in a coordinated way to promote its assets and tackle negative perceptions. Marketing of the region will be targeted around the themes of business, culture, education, environment and tourism. The region’s natural environment is a major but undervalued asset. The Agency has commissioned a study of the economic and regenerative value of the natural environment that quantifies the potential economic benefit of delivering a portfolio of

Business Sectors Business Competitiveness & Productivity Knowledge Base

Business Development

Develop and Market the Region's Image

Image

Urban Renaissance

Portfolio of Sites Regeneration

Infrastructure

Rural Renaissance Skills & Employment Economic Inclusion

Strategic Transport & Communications

Healthy Labour Market

2000, and is now charged with the furthering its development, implementation and monitoring.

Action for Sustainability acts to translate the concept of sustainable development into practical action for the North West, bridging the gap between national issues established through the UK strategy, and local issues arising through Local Agenda 21. It contains a set of regionally agreed objectives which reflect stakeholder values, goals and aspirations.

The Action for Sustainability programme is delivered through 4 functional work areas: 1. Awareness raising and education for sustainable development: ensuring that stakeholders can be more fully engaged in the sustainability agenda for the region.

Regular engagement events with stakeholders are held to gauge opinion and share experiences of putting sustainability into practice in such diverse areas as the construction industry, the health sector, and faith communities.

2. Action Planning: AfS contains a regionally agreed set of objectives for a more sustainable region, based on environmental protection, economic progress, social equity and wise use of resources. A series of 3-year action plans establish shorter-term targets which will contribute to longterm goals and objectives.

3. Monitoring and sharing information: regular monitoring reports ensure that regional progress towards targets can be assessed. This is also a vital mechanism for disseminating best practice and case studies within the region, and beyond.

The regional sustainable development framework For the North West of England.

4. Sustainability tools for implementation: To put sustainability into practice we have developed a range of tools, including the Integrated Appraisal Toolkit for appraising the contribution of projects, policies and plans to regional sustainability. A computer-based learning simulation, Planet North West, to help professionals in the public, private, and voluntary sectors to balance conflicting demands is currently being rolled-out within local partnerships and the health sector. We are developing a Sustainability Portal to signpost to best practice and case study information for those embarking on the road to sustainable development. And to encourage businesses to engage further with sustainability, a Corporate Responsibility Index for the Northwest is also under development.

Action for Sustainability: Current position Action for Sustainability (AfS) fulfils the requirement for regional sustainable development frameworks established in the UK strategy for sustainable development: “A Better Quality of Life� produced by UK Government in 1999. The North West Regional Assembly adopted AfS on behalf of partners in

Future direction Since its adoption, a major review of AfS has been undertaken. Over 700 individuals and organisations have engaged with AfS through events and workshops, a further 1,500 regional partners have been consulted on the development of the second AfS Action Plan.

strategic natural environment initiatives, capitalising on the economic value of enhancing our biodiversity.

For further details contact: Mark Atherton Head of Environment and Sustainable Development Northwest Development Agency E: Mark.Atherton@nwda.co.uk T: +44 (0) 1925 400283 Action for Sustainability

The key question for this action plan, and indeed for the region, is how progress can be made towards issues which are not only cross-cutting and have infinite connections with other issues but which are also frequently global and longterm in nature. This will be the key challenge which the Action Plan due to be launched in Spring 2004 will address.

Further Information Sue Dean Sustainable Development Manager North West Regional Assembly, Wigan Investment Centre, Waterside Drive, Wigan WN3 5BA Tel: +44(0)1942 776 723 Email: s.dean@nwra.gov.uk Or visit the AfS website: www.nwra.gov.uk/afs Envirolink – Environmental Technologies Sector The Northwest Development Agency established Envirolink two years ago with private sector partners, it continues to be funded by the Agency. Their aim is to develop the region’s environmental technology sector (ETS) by making it a competitive force to provide sustainable solutions to environmental problems. Essentially, Envirolink is a forum where regional ETS organisations can meet with similar organisations and share information and experiences. They link customers to suppliers, organise inward and outward trade missions and help existing manufacturing companies to diversify into environmental technologies, including power generation. Through their Active Networks programme, Envirolink have developed a number of initiatives in areas such as sustainable demolition, clean energy technologies, remediation of contaminated land and environmental monitoring. A short brief on one of their projects is given below.

Case Study - Transformation of Waste into Products This £2m (2.9m Euros) project will demonstrate that industrial waste when evaluated properly and with the application of particular technologies can be converted into a useful resource which can then economically be added to other materials to improve their properties or made directly into products which can be sold.

The project will initially concentrate on three manufacturing sectors which produce the most waste – Paper, Food and Chemicals and three demonstration companies will be used as appropriate in each sector. By re-using the waste produced we aim to reduce the amount sent to landfill by more than 20 000 tonnes per year and reduce the overall footprint of landfill in North West England.

For more information please contact: Jackie Seddon at j.Seddon@envirolinknorthwest.co.uk

Counting on community woodlands for a new kind of renewal England’s Northwest is the trial region for a fresh kind of regeneration that has new urban spaces and vibrant community woodlands at its core. The Northwest Development Agency (NWDA) and the Forestry Commission have developed and launched a new regeneration initiative Newlands. The sustainable regeneration of derelict land, often in or around deprived neighbourhoods, is its primary goal.

The new £25m (36.6m Euros) Newlands scheme is the result of a groundbreaking, joined-up partnership of Government bodies, and is set to bring about huge physical change to a region that is home to one quarter of England’s derelict land.

Under the first phase of work, 435 hectares of new woodland are to be created – good news for a region that also has a tree cover of only 6.8 per cent, compared to a national average of 8 per cent and a European average of 33 per cent.

The first step and foundation of the Newlands scheme was to identify the region’s pool of derelict land. Aerial photography and computer mapping were used to catalogue all areas of derelict, underused or neglected (DUN) land across the region.

The survey identified 3,868 ‘DUN’ sites across the Northwest, amounting to around 26,000 hectares of blight equal to an area twice the size of the city of Manchester. Initial work of this innovatory scheme will pay particular attention to the economic theme of improving gateways and transport corridors.

But with such a large number of sites, the partnership still needed to prioritise its target sites. To do this, an innovative ‘Public Benefit Recording System’ (PBRS) was developed to identify priority sites for attention. The PBRS is a unique method of enabling stakeholders to strategically target initiatives, such as Newlands, to optimise impact in social, economic and environmental terms.

An Additional Impact Assessment, delves deeper into a site’s true future potential, a rationale which means no two sites will ever be treated the same. Crucially local people are engaged to have their say on what ultimately takes place.

Through Newlands, areas blighted by decades of contamination and dereliction are being rejuvenated with new community woodlands, acting as a catalyst for improved economic performance, recreational facilities, local amenities, and health, providing quality places across the region. Delivery partners for the first phase of the scheme, which covers the Mersey Belt area, include The Red Rose Forest, The Mersey Forest, The Pennine Edge Forest, Groundwork Northwest and Forest Enterprise.

For more information go to www.forestry.gov.uk/newlands

NWDA and the Constructing Excellence Agenda

Making Environmental Practice Profitable

The UK construction industry has been blighted with low innovation, adversarial relationships, and the fragmentation of functions, leading to high levels of waste. This, in turn, leads to late delivery, budget overruns and low levels of client satisfaction with the completed product. These issues have been recurrent themes in UK Government Reports stretching back over the post-war period.

ENWORKS is a unique environmental business support programme charged with improving the competitiveness of small to medium sized companies in Northwest England.

The programme is helping to make environmental good practice profitable for thousands of companies by providing access to high quality, relevant and affordable business services. Practical support is provided by local business advisors in areas such as waste and resource efficiency, environmental management, legal compliance and pollution control.

Recent reports from both Government procurement bodies and the UK National Audit Office have identified procurement as a key driver of project success. Traditional lowest cost tendering reinforces the problems of poor delivery by fragmented supply chains who struggle to make profits. This has lead to public sector projects being delivered late (75%) and over budget (66%).

The ENWORKS programme has four main elements: Rethinking Construction identified similar problems. It developed a simple model of cultural drivers, processes and performance measurement designed to support industry in supporting change. The change agenda was supported by capturing best practice through demonstration projects and communicating this throughout the industry.

Achieving Excellence is the response to Rethinking Construction from the Government’s Construction Clients Panel. This supported the goals of Rethinking Construction and placed targets for procurement using quality approaches such as partnering, integrated supply chains and performance measurement as central tenets of Government Procurement.

The Northwest Development Agency has embraced the change agenda through a wide ranging training programme internally and for strategic partners, as well as support for procurement and supply chain management. This approach is expected to lead to better, more transparent relationships reducing the waste that is generated through the traditional approach. Sustainable integrated delivery teams will enable learning to take place and innovation to be applied across multiple projects. A performance measurement regime will ensure that the benefits of this approach are evaluated at the organisational and project level in terms of health and safety, quality and certainty of cost and time.

For further Information contact: Graham Cliff, Senior Estates Surveyor Northwest Development Agency E: Graham.Cliff@nwda.co.uk T: +44 (0) 151 242 1074

• co-ordination of six Business Environment Associations (BEAs) providing practical support and advice to companies; • a Training Programme providing opportunities for staff within companies to gain the skills and knowledge required to increase competitiveness; •

A Resource Efficiency Programme designed to boost production and process efficiency by reducing waste, energy and raw material use;

• co-ordination of seven beacon Green Business Parks, where neighbouring companies can work together for mutual benefit.

With support from the Northwest Development Agency and a range of local and regional partners, a total investment of over £25m (36.6m Euros) is being made in the programme, which is managed by the North West Business Environment Partnership.

Contact: Todd Holden, Regional Manager todd@enworks.com www.enworks.com

Northwest Development Agency

www.nwda.co.uk

PO Box 37, Renaissance House, Centre Park, Warrington, WA1 1XB Tel: +44 (0)1925 400 100 Fax: +44 (0)1925 400 400 e-mail: Information@nwda.co.uk NWDA D10-39

October 2003