Bradford Regeneration and Economic Development

Bradford partners have agreed to considerable investment taking place for the following:

• Regeneration of the Manningham area, focusing on the Lister's Mill redevelopment, but extending to benefit the wider community - www.mymanningham.org.uk
• Creating economic growth in Airedale through the Airedale Partnership and supporting the recommendations of the Masterplanning exercise which has recently been commissioned - www.airedalepartnership.org.
• Supporting the regeneration of the city centre through Bradford Centre Regeneration, the URC, in implementing the Masterplan for Bradford City Centre - www.bradfordurc.co.uk

Funding has been allocated to support these spatial (and some business support) projects through the Sub-Regional Action Plan, SRIP, European Objective 2, Bradford Council and other private and public sector partners.

Current and planned actions/developments include:

• Broadway redevelopment as part of the improvement of the retail infrastructure of the City Centre.
• Eastbrook Hall redevelopment for homes.
• The development of a television gallery at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television.
• Lister Mills refurbishment to provide living, employment and social facilities.
• Lightwave - a National Centre for Creative industries, to be based in the City Centre, and will become a 'hothouse' complex integrating 'factory works' and talent campus for creative arts and enterprise in a lively social scene.
• Digital Park and the Advanced Digital Institute in Airedale.
• The Airedale Broadband project.
• The Sustainable Waste Park in Airedale.

The skills needs related to these activities have been identified as a priority within the Bradford Skills Action Plan; in the first instance to support the regeneration activities, and in the second, following regeneration to ensure that local people benefit from the spatial investment and regeneration. This will include supporting the following, without pre-empting the Masterplan development and agreement in Manningham and Airedale:

• Supporting the renaissance of the City Centre, Airedale and Manningham through ensuring that local people can benefit from employment opportunities in the construction and refurbishment activities.
• Ensuring that local communities and organisations can connect to the developing long-term economic opportunities and are actively involved in developing working linkages between the developments and the local community fabric. This element will include interventions to identify the future skills needs and to support the supply of skills, staff and services for the future activities and businesses to be located in the developments, at all the appropriate levels. As a minimum it is expected that future businesses and employers in these developments will need a range of vocational and occupational skills within the digital, cultural, advanced manufacturing, retail, hospitality and education sectors, including the high level skills required.

It is recognised that the current labour market and local skills supply is not geared up to take full advantage of these opportunities and much work needs to be undertaken to ensure that local people benefit from this investment.

In addition to these "flagship" regeneration activities there is considerable additional regeneration activity taking place supported through previous Yorkshire Forward funding - SRB - and New Deal for Communities. These include:

• Bradford Trident, a community-led company running the New Deal for Communities £50 million ten year regeneration scheme in the Park Lane, Marshfields and West Bowling areas of Bradford. Existing skills-related programmes include a training awards scheme, college and university bursaries and support for construction industry training through Youthbuild. It is expected that such training schemes will also link to the new developments taking place elsewhere in the District.
• Regen 2000 is a community-led regeneration scheme using a £28.5 million award from the Government's Single Regeneration Budget to regenerate the Barkerend and Leeds Road areas of the city along with parts of the city centre.
• Local Development and Employment PACTs covering 10 areas of high areas of high unemployment in the District, where community partnerships have been set up to create jobs and help people into employment and training. Over the past three years, with the help of £4.5m of Neighbourhood Renewal Funding, the pacts have set in training/access to employment projects to the value of £26m (including £13m European funds) to generate 493 new jobs, bring 653 jobless people into work and provide training to 1576 in these communities. It is envisaged that the good practice developed by these pacts, will continue to be supported as part of the skills development infrastructure in the District.
• The Bradford Canal Project is an emerging joint venture between Bradford Council, Bradford URC and British Waterways linking the Manningham and Airedale Masterplans to the city centre, providing a green corridor for existing communities and new attractions for visitors.

Public Sector Investment and Opportunities

There are recruitment issues and opportunities relating to potential and planned investment by Government Departments and Services, in particular, the relocation of Government Departments and the investment to support the National Health Service for the implementation of the Health Plan.

Government Departments Relocation: As a result of the Lyons Report and the recommendation that Bradford is an appropriate location, considerable work is currently taking place to attract Government Departments to the District, primarily based on a package of available offices, the number of un/under-employed graduates with relevant skills (but currently with limited local employment opportunities), affordable housing and lifestyle. The Plan will seek to build on this current work and ensure that local people can access employment at the range of levels that are likely to be available, not only in direct employment, but in employment with suppliers to the Departments.

Health Service Investments: There are currently around 53,000 staff working in the 25 NHS organisations in West Yorkshire. This represents around 6% of the total West Yorkshire workforce and makes the NHS the largest single employer in the sub-region. There are healthcare staff employed in the independent and voluntary sector in addition to this figure. There are plans to grow the numbers of NHS staff significantly over the next 10-15 years, this will apply to all staff groups, clinical and non-clinical. As the population is predicted to remain static, or fall, over this same period of time, it will become increasingly important to recruit from a wider range of areas than has happened in the past. It will be more important than ever to encourage and support existing staff to develop new skills and enable them to progress into new work roles. This creates opportunities both for existing staff and for those looking to join the NHS in entry level or more senior posts.

Of the 53,000 NHS staff in West Yorkshire, around 24% are employed in the Bradford health economy. There are a number of issues which relate to the Bradford patch specifically, including the need to continuously support and develop the diversity of the workforce, from entry to senior management level.

Sectoral Developments, Opportunities and Issues

Much of the Area Regeneration activity has a particular sectoral focus, building on the strengths and opportunities within those specific localities. However, those sectors already specified, along with others, tend to be important across the whole of the District because of cluster, supply chain linkages, location and based on employment figures and output. The sectors where there are opportunities for employment, particularly in new jobs in the District and the surrounding area are:

• Digital
• Food
• Cultural, creative & media industries
• Tourism & hospitality
• Specialist engineering
• Social and health care
• Retail
• Construction

Interventions at both the sub-regional and local level will be included in the Bradford Skills Action Plan to enable providers to respond to the specific skills demands and needs of these sectors.

Within the District there are sectors that were previously seen as growth sectors and supported but are now increasingly affected by globalisation and the impact of cheaper sourcing overseas. These include:

• Electronics
• Call Centres

Bradford Skills Action Plan needs to look at interventions which support the employers and individuals involved in these increasingly vulnerable sectors, in particular to enable employees to take up opportunities that make use of their skills in other sectors. An example of this is to ensure mechanisms are in place for those currently involved in call centre work in vulnerable companies to access any similar work through the potential relocation of the Government Departments in Bradford and surrounding area.