Agenda item

To consider an end of project report on the North Walsham High Street Heritage Action Zone Programme.

Suggested time 30 mins

Councillor Dixon reminded the Committee that there had been a site visit prior to the committee meeting to take a look at all the different parts to this project.

Councillor Vickers asked what further evaluation there would be of the economic benefits of the scheme that could be used for similar schemes in other towns in the district.

Councillor Toye stated that the Council was always looking for economic benefits but there needed to be ongoing cultural and other activities to continue to draw people to the towns. The real opportunities come now as the project laid some good foundations which are starting to be built on with the arrival of new businesses and visitors to the town.

The Assistant Director Sustainable Growth (ADSG) commented that the ongoing evaluation of the market towns was vital to assess North Norfolk’s economy and it would be worthwhile putting in periodic checks to assess the drivers for change in the towns.

Councillor Toye added that there was some measurables such as footfall, but you could often tell by walking into a town how the town is working. Regular engagement with businesses was also important. At this stage it was not intended to do any measurement in a structured way.

The Economic Growth Manager added that the key to the scheme and the biggest learning experience to unlocking the funding was finding local champions for the scheme.

Councillor Penfold thanked officers for their work in getting the scheme delivered and there had certainly been an improvement in a feeling of pride and ownership of the town. It was surprising though that there had been no measurable objectives put into the project at the outset and it would be good for objectives such as footfall and transport use to be measured and come back to the committee in twelve months time and asked what evaluation Historic England had asked for.

The ADSG advised that Historic England were a very late entrant to the project and their evaluation template which was largely about the financial spend was after the work on what evaluation was needed had already been considered. For this type of project, it would be good to have some objectives that were clearly measurable, could provide a project baseline and be monitored to provide evaluation. It is built in other schemes that are happening now such as the Coastwise project, but in this project it didn’t happen which were largely down to resources which were extremely stretched for this scheme.

Councillor Toye stated that it could come back in twelve months’ time but it may be information as there was a lot of collaboration and it may be difficult to measure.

Councillor Penfold added that it was looking at the scheme in a holistic way rather than just how the council performed and asked whether there was additional funding from Historic England to do this.

The ADSG stated that he was not aware of such funding, but town centre health indicators included footfall, vacant shops and rents/yields. That data was reasonably available, and the council had purchased software to measure footfall.

Councillor Penfold added that some form of residents’ satisfaction survey would also be useful.

Councillor Cushing asked about the lessons learned from this scheme for a similar scheme in Fakenham as well as other towns that a clear set of measurables could be used as a baseline at the start of such a project.

Councillor Toye advised that there was always continuous learning and the lessons had been built into the Coastwise scheme and the economic development team would use them to help seek funding for future schemes. It was important though to find the key players who wanted to help improve their town.

The ADSG added that the biggest success had been the relationship building and it was anticipated that the Town Council was going to carry on with some additional measures to build on the foundation the council’s scheme had created.

Councillor Hankins commented that a number of stalls in the weekly market had survived and that should be used as a measure of the success of the scheme.

Councillor Shires advised that the market was run by the Town Council and had shrunk for a while but there were now four new stall holders along with new pop-up stalls and a number of different market events being established.

Councillor Dixon explained that the Committee had sought to focus its consideration of this item into three areas of finance, evaluation and stakeholder engagement to assess what had worked and what hadn’t. An update in twelve months’ time would help the committee to pick up on those points.

Recommended that –

To update the Overview & Scrutiny Committee in 12 months time on the impact of the North Walsham High Street Heritage Action Zone initiative and learning from this, to establish a set of evaluation criteria, including baselines, that can then be used for similar projects in other towns in North Norfolk.