Rebalancing Britain: The northern metropolis on the south coast

Posted On Aug 4, 2019 By admin With Comments Off

Today CapX starts a major brand-new project with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation are concentrated on how the next Prime Minister should tackle the longstanding inequalities in the British economy. The programme will focus not only on the well-documented North/ South divide, but on the way smaller towns and cities are often left behind in national policy debates.

To kick off the sequence, CapX’s Acting Editor John Ashmore saw Portsmouth to find out the challenges facing the’ northern metropolitan on the south coast’- and the policies that can help address them.

On first inspection, Portsmouth might seem an singular plaza to report on the challenges of rebalancing the British economy.

My first impression stepping off the set at Portsmouth Harbour is of self-confident prosperity.

Tourists converge on the HMS Victory and the Mary Rose, while the Emirates-sponsored Spinnaker Tower looms on the water’s edge. Bestriding the waterfront is Gunwharf Quay, formerly a key defensive bastion for the dwelling of the Royal Navy, but now a 33 -acre development of upmarket browses, powers and upmarket flats.

Look the other way, though, and you are greeted by the tower blocks of Portsea, an country that was once residence of millions of neighbourhood dockers.

Those grey 60 s constructs crop up all over the island city and are a reminder that while it might have world-class pulls, and it might be in affluent Hampshire, this city is also home to some of the most deprived places in the country.

HMS Warrior docked alongside the city’s historic dockyard( Photo: Gareth Milner/ CapX)

It is often referred to as “the northern city on the south coast”. That’s partly an aesthetic see- long Victorian terraces certainly make “youre feeling” more as though you’re in south Wales or the industrial northward than the Home District. And like those areas, Portsmouth has suffered from the slow drawdown of traditional industry. Where formerly the neighbourhood dockyard applied 40,000 beings , now there are only a quarter of that number.

Though the city is medium-sized, with about 215,000 inhabitants, it is part of a much wider Solent financial neighborhood that is home to 1.3 million people, taking in Southampton, the New Forest and the Isle of Wight.

Wage degrees and the unemployment rate in Portsmouth are average by national standards, but they lag behind the rest of the south-east.

Donna Jones, who is heading the regional congres between 2014 and 2018 and is now the Conservative PPC for Portsmouth South, says her home town stands out in the cozy richnes of the wider region.

“Our average room tolls, average employment, median education is much lower than the remainder of the south-east, the demographics of municipalities are often even more difficult than the demographics of the countryside around.

“Portsmouth and Southampton are both very working class, elbows out, they’ve got a bit of an margin to them.”

Unlike some now down-at-heel onetime industrial cities, though, Portsmouth’s is not a legend of steep reject from a exhilarating epoch of shared prosperity. Duties of the city have always been poor, with a large working class population sustained by working at the docks. Conversely, areas such as Old Portsmouth and Southsea have been rich for a long time.

That disparity is reflected in the huge variation in mansion prices- a four-bed end of terrace in Buckland might name you back PS200, 000, while a similar-sized property in Old Portsmouth is on the market for just shy of PS1. 4 million.

Old Portsmouth is jam-pack with high-pitched terminate home and tourist attractions such as the Spinnaker Tower( top left) and the Royal Garrison Church( Photo: Gareth Milner/ CapX)

After the Second World War, when Portsmouth suffered sustained bombing, huge shanties were cleared and represented highway for committee estates in the central areas of Buckland, Landport and Somerstown, as well as Paulsgrove, which is north of small island developing but still was just thinking about as one of the purposes of Portsmouth.

Back in 2014 David Cameron’s government was moved to create a Minister for Portsmouth when BAE announced the end of shipbuilding operations and the loss of approximately 1,800 jobs- a persona replenished variously by Michael Fallon, Matt Hancock and Mark Francois. Several hundred more followed at the end of 2017.

Those job losses were a big blow to a city which includes vicinities which grade in the bottom 10 per cent of the members of the UK exploiting the government’s Indices of Multiple Deprivation.[ envision Figure 1 ].

The disparity in richnes is clear in health outcomes. A citizen of affluent Drayton in the north-east corner of the island can expect to live fully 10 years longer than someone just a few miles away in Charles Dickens ward( named for the novelist’s birthplace ).

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Figure 1- How Portsmouth compares to the nation on the Index of Multiple Deprivation

Nor are the poorer parts of town tucked away or demoted to the margins: Portsmouth is the UK’s most densely populated city and its poorest areas rub privilege up against much more affluent ones.

As I walk around primary areas such as Somerstown and Fratton, the differentiate is quite striking.

While the waterfront has been lavished with care and cash to reel in the tourist pound, further inland boarded up supermarkets and forgot houses speak to some of the deep-seated economic challenges facing the city.

Despite these various kinds of divergences, Portsmouth also feels like a place with a strong sense of itself and its long record. Flick Drummond, who represented Portsmouth South between 2015 and 2017 describes a cohesive, tight-knit community.

“It’s not a partitioned community because we all work together. We all live on top of each other so we all know how the other half lives and there’s a community spirit, ” she says.

Politics

Politically the city is a real mixed bag. Labour prevailed Portsmouth South for the first time ever in 2017, while Defence Secretary Penny Mordaunt views a 10,000 -odd majority in Portsmouth North.

No party has overall controller of members of the security council, which is led by the Liberal Democrats’ Gerald Vernon-Jackson with Labour support. His predecessor, Donna Jones, is now the prospective parliamentary candidate for Portsmouth South, as well as passing the opposition group.

Portsmouth South is exactly the kind of seat the next Conservative leader will have to win back in a future poll if they are to have any hope of a Tory a majority.

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And if they are to win, the Tories must focus on the concerns of those on low incomes, whose elects are very much up for grabs. New research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and academic Matthew Goodwin shows that Britain’s least affluent people are more engaged in politics and less steadfast to special defendants than ever before.

Ten times on from the financial crisis, these voters are still feeling the pinch. Goodwin’s research pointed out that those in low income households are as likely to say they are struggling financially as they only after the recessions of 1992 and 2008.

Long rows of Victorian terraces hold Portsmouth the gaze of municipalities much further north( Photo: Blom UK via Getty Images)

Struggling to get by

One person who sees that belt-tightening up close on a daily basis is Sandy O’Neill, the chief executive of Portsmouth’s Citizens’ Advice Bureau.

Last year the charity’s Money Advice Team cured over 2,500 local residents, primarily with debt problems. Answers straddle from formal weighs- proclaiming bankruptcy, Individual Voluntary Arrangements or Debt Relief Orders- to simply asking creditors to relent.

The causes of business misfortune are familiar: high-pitched home costs and rising utility proposals and an increase in transient, short-term work have all contributed. O’Neill says her patrons are more likely to be living in the private hired sphere than in social housing.

The constant struggle to clear intent also has a profound mental wallop, O’Neill says.

“In some areas parties feel powerless. They feel that’s their parcel and there’s nothing they can do about it and nobody’s listening to them.

“It’s born out of having duelled for such a long time and nothing’s changed, they just feel like it’s pointless.”

Something has clearly gone badly inaccurate when people living in a relatively job-rich municipality in one of the country’s most affluent fields feel they have no way of improving their lives.

Frustrations dealing with government can add to the energy-sapping financial difficulties. For instance, some buyers wait weeks really to get through to a Department for Work and Welfares consultant on the phone.

Being in arrears on Council Tax may also invite an extra charge if a client is taken to the magistrates court, something O’Neill describes as a postcode lottery.

“Charges in Portsmouth are very expensive, so when someone fails to pay Council Tax the local authority can take them to Magistrates and they accuse approx PS95, in London it’s PS1 10. When you look at Fareham it’s PS4 5, in Havant it’s PS6 0.

“We believe it merely expenses PS25 to the local authority so they’re elapse on a cost to the resident…to be bill on a profit basis just seems to be ludicrous.”

Council leader Gerald Vernon-Jackson agrees that there is a “large group who feel disenfranchised by the system”, something which was partly reflected in a 58 -4 2 split in favour of Brexit.

He more relates living as a major issue. He points to the experience of one local wife who has had to move flat 17 meters in the cavity of nine years, despite holding down the same job for seven years.

But, as the presence of affluent expanses alongside the poorer ones shows, their own economies here has a great deal going for it. The Royal Navy has contributed to a thriving ecosystem of tiny, specialised engineering firms. While some work the defence sector directly, there is still houses working with Formula 1, pharmaceutical products and accuracy engineering.

In calls of bigger supervisors, IBM did at a time have their European headquarters in Portsmouth, but have been gradually scaling down their presence. The likes of Airbus, Rolls Royce and BAE Systems are here too.

SMEs

The problem, Vernon-Jackson reasons, is attracting fellowships in between the big conglomerates and the smaller outfits.

“We’ve got a few big companies and we’ve got lots of little ones- what we don’t have is as many medium fellowships as we should have and that’s the area where we need to grow the economy of the city.”

Attracting medium-sized fellowships is one thing, but the city likewise needs to do more to make sure they are bringing the kind of highly-skilled jobs that improve productivity and payments. In the Centre for Metropolis ranking of urban areas based on their share of knowledge-intensive service rackets, Portsmouth came 50 th in a roster of 62.

“In the context of other metropolitans it hasn’t done well in attracting these kind of jobs. That has implications in terms of jobs, wages and occupation advancement, ” says Paul Swinney, the Centre’s plan director.

Swinney says the issue is not so much knowledge- where Portsmouth accomplishes reasonably well- but the poor condition of the city centre. In that respect, it’s a challenge shared by numerous similar-sized towns and metropolis in the post-industrial north of England.

The Centre for Cities exponents using a portion of the PS31bn National Infrastructure Fund specifically for city centres, which areas like Portsmouth would then be able to apply for.

However Vernon-Jackson says that even if dictations are successful, the whole model of local government bidding for wedges of Whitehall’s cash is an exhausting, counter-productive process.

“We waste such huge quantities of money dictation for substance, positioning substance up and then when the money finishes three years later winding it all down again and the money would be much better depleted if we were able employed it in the locate budget and we knew what we were spending it on.”

Another concern is an over-reliance on public sphere employment, which signifies vulnerability to cuts in central government. At the moment the biggest employers are the Queen Alexandra hospital north of the island, the Navy base and the council itself, which between them have nearing 30,000 personnel- this in an area with a working-age population of about 145,000.

Retail woes

That parts of the private sector are struggling is evident in areas such as North End, where many of the patronizes on the central freeway, London Road, are boarded up or in a state of disrepair.

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Caroline Collings, who chaired the city’s branch of the Federation of Small Business for 15 years, places the finger squarely at the tax system.

“The business rates are ridiculously high for retail and have decimated our high-pitched street so at one point the business paces were higher than the tariffs being charged.

“London Road is categorized as a’ high street’ so it was being accused exorbitant charges. It has a main road going through it, but that doesn’t make it a high street.”

Disused shopfronts, including a onetime snooker corridor on London Road( Photo: Gareth Milner/ CapX)

The demise of some retailers and the fact numerous shopfronts are left more or less abandoned originates a vicious circle. The kind of high-wage middle-sized business the council wants to attract are not keen to locate in a city centre that is not the most attractive and shortcoming high-quality agency space.

In an attempt to rectify that, the council has recently given the green light to spend PS100m to buy up a 120 -acre site in the north of the city. It’s not a move that’s been met with unanimous approbation, to say the least. Morgan, the local Labour MP, has described it as a “very risky gamble”. On the Tory side, Donna Jones is feared that Lakeside’s biggest tenant, IBM, is dialling down its operations at the site.

Infrastructure

Inadequate infrastructure is also holding Portsmouth’s economy back. It’s a challenge the city shares with swathes of the country waiting for a better bus service, a road to be dualled or a train line to be electrified. Smaller towns in particular are often forgotten in a national transport debate that has in recent years become fixated with mega-projects like Crossrail and HS2.

The train from London takes precisely under two hours on the “fast” service and a little over on the finish one. It may be in the south-east, but in terms of transport to the capital, Portsmouth might as well be in the Midlands- except that it’s actually much quicker to travel the 120 -odd miles to Birmingham.

Although getting to the country’s fiscal powerhouse quickly is clearly attractive, of much greater importance to most Portsmuthians is ferry within the city and the wider Solent region

It’s such issues that will only become more important having regard to the rarity of land available to build new mansions on the island, which signifies brand-new house is liable to be north of small island developing. Local buses are not cruel but could be improved. Ideas for a tram or a light-rail system have been floated in the past, only to wither and die on the vine of close-fisted budgets.

In terms of what economists call’ agglomeration benefits’, the Solent region could be doing a lot better more. The set between Portsmouth and Southampton takes about an hour to crawl merely 20 miles along the cost. That makes parties in both cities are forced into their cars.

“Lots of beings work in Southampton, so the motorway is busy every day, it’s like a carpark in the morning because the motorway is so overcrowded, ” Donna Jones observes.

There’s little compassion lost between the two municipals- especially when it comes to football- but closer, quicker links between the two would clearly benefit the whole of Hampshire’s economy.

Local government

The way services are provided is also clearly a source of annoyance. A common theme talking to regional legislators was a feeling that the council could administer many services more efficiently and responsively than Whitehall departments, some of which have competing and sometimes actively irreconcilable policies.

Gerald Vernon-Jackson quotes knowledge as a prime example. “Government has 42 different agencies delivering knowledge trash and the transactional payment between all those organisations is enormous and the waste of public coin and all their stuff is done on a national basis and different places have different needs for different abilities, ” he says.

Bus services are another area he would like to see brought under neighbourhood govern- and one where improvements could have a marked impact for those on low incomes. As the Local Government Association has pointed out, there are some five billion bus outings a year in the UK– three times more than made by train.

Policy solutions

Where do we go from here? The’ rebalancing’ debate in the UK often seems to boil down to a crude regionalism, with jobs such as the Northern Powerhouse dominating the conversation. Although redressing the asset imbalance between the north and south is certainly a required health with a view to improving the UK’s economic concert, it is far from sufficient.

There are other similarly pulping imbalances- between coastal communities and those further inland, between big cities and small cities, and between built-up areas and the countryside.

And just as the north is far from uniformly expropriated, so too the south of England is far from universally affluent. As a town like Portsmouth amply supports, some of the most deeply ingrained poverty can be found in places that appear to be doing alright.

As Matthew Goodwin’s recent experiment illustrates, addressing the needs of low income voters is a political imperative for the next Prime Minister.

The next Chancellor, whoever he or she may be, will too have the chance to shape longer term priorities with the Spending Review, which will conclude at the same time as the Budget in the autumn.

The good information is there are a great many pro-market, conservative public policies that the next inhabitant of 10 Downing St can put in place to deal with people’s concerns and revitalise the parts of the country that might need a helping hand.

Among the most prominent priorities will be coming up with a post-Brexit regional growing plan to supplant the EU structural funds on which some areas have relied heavily. Millions of voters who backed a campaign based on do back verify want to see that reflected in concrete contrives- and fund- for their local expanses.

One post-Brexit programme which could benefit Portsmouth and other coastal cities is free ports– fields treated as outside the UK for customs purposes, symbolizing goods can participate and re-exit without being subject to import procedures or excises.

Reforming taxes to help the poorest is crucial. One of the policies put forward by CapX’s parent organisation, the Centre for Policy Studies, is originating sure parties on the lowest incomes no longer have to pay national guarantee, a stair which would vastly improve expendable incomes for the least well off laborers.

The CPS has also called for a reduction in the lessen charge for Universal Credit, as recommends to the CPS’ Making Work Pay report, would greatly boost the incomes of the working inadequate and ensure beings are always better off in exertion.

Dealing with concerns over living by both liberalising the planning system to increase supply, while also offering more secure tenancies for those in the private rented sphere.

Small jobs, often the lifeblood of our town centres, also have an unnecessarily hard time– and their struggles have serious knock-on effects that must be taken into account. While it’s encouraging that reform is now high on the political agenda, the next “Ministers ” must be bold and certainly tackle what has become the scourge of small-scale retailers, ousting a organization that is both complex and iniquitous with one that is simple and fair.

A simpler, praise fund plan for local government would be welcome, more, so that committees do not have to waste their duration and limited resources bidding for central government money and can concentrate on actually coming things done.

The next “Ministers ” is required to continue the decentralisation plan which begun with the introduction of Metro Mayors, and recognise that local government is often much better placed than Whitehall departments to deliver services.

Over the coming weeks CapX will be publishing a series of responses from MPs and commentators as part of the Rebalancing Britain series, beginning on Monday with a piece from Mansfield MP Ben Bradley.

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