News - Midlands
Black is bright
These look like being brighter times for the Black Country. For years the region could just as easily have earned its name from living in Birmingham's looming shadow as from its traditional heavy industries.
While Birmingham's star rose ever upwards, the industrial towns and villages surrounding it seemed to sink under the weight of fading heavy industries and become lost in endless hectares of brownfield land. It had become an area of low skills, low pay, low investment and low expectation.
But the past few years have seen an upsurge of optimism in the area. This year alone a run of major announcements - waterside developments, big inward investments, landmark art projects - have reinforced the point that the Black Country is on the way back up.
Mike Bushell, head of regeneration at Black Country Chamber and Business Link, says business optimism in the area is at its highest for a decade. "There is a buzz about the place. The Black Country works best when it's got something to aim for, and now we're developing a vision for the next three decades," he says.
"For once, the region is acting together. Too often we've been split between rival boroughs or neighbouring villages, while Birmingham steamed on ahead. Fortunately businesses and people don't think about local authority borders - they cross them every day without knowing."
The vision Bushell talks of came a step closer in February with the publication of the Black Country Study. The 28 page booklet - supported by all of the area's major business groups, councils and regeneration bodies - was both grim in its assessments and upbeat in its aspirations.
It claims that without major investment and regeneration the Black Country will lose 65,000 of its remaining traditional manufacturing jobs by 2031. By then typical wages could fall to just 75 per cent of the UK average. The population could also fall by more than 84,000 to less than 1 million, with the young, the educated and the motivated leading the exodus.
Black Country Investment's (BCI) director Grant Seeley says that, despite having vast hectares of brownfield land, too little is ready for investors. Sites that do become available - such as the 12 acres at Apollo Park in Oldbury and Walsall's 16-acre Green Lane - are quickly snapped up on, or even before, completion.
But the fact that land is being readily snapped up shows faith in the Black Country's future, notably in two of its most deprived boroughs - Sandwell and Walsall - each of which has an Urban Regeneration Corporation (URC) to oversee recovery.
One of the most exciting examples of this new optimism came in February when cutting-edge developer Urban Splash signed contracts to turn 17 acres of derelict canalside in central Walsall into the Waterfront. The £3180m project will bring flats, cafes, wine bars and offices to the area, using Walsall's landmark art gallery as an anchor.
Tom Bloxham, Urban Splash's chairman, says: "It's the most exciting challenge we've had. We've got this iconic art gallery and a huge area of virgin land on which to create a whole new quarter for Walsall. This really will be a world-class development."
Such is the importance put on the Waterfront that Walsall Regeneration Company (WRC) claims it is "fuelling a revolution" in the town. It hopes the project will create a canalside quarter with the prestige of Birmingham's Brindleyplace and act as a catalyst for wider regeneration.
WRC chief executive Peter Cromar says: "This is just the start. Over the next ten to 15 years we need to attract about £3600m of investment - 80 per cent of it private - for an area of about 780 hectares that covers places like Darlaston, Pleck, Alumwell and Leamore.
"The Black Country has traditionally tended to undersell itself but we can be confident about the future. It's time to stop talking about what Walsall used to be and focus on the opportunities ahead."
Those opportunities are coming to Walsall at a rapid rate. This April, retail group TK Maxx moves into a new 250,000 sq ft processing centre, built on the site of the former Sterling Tube factory, and creating 1,200 jobs.
In the longer term, the Tempus Ten development at Junction 10 of the M6 offers even greater opportunities, with hopes that it could create up to 2,500 jobs. A large De Vere hotel is open for business on the site, to be followed shortly by 80,000 sq ft of office accommodation and possibly a second, budget hotel.
Tempus Ten is an important indicator in other ways. Andy Venables, partner at GVA Grimley's office team, says: "Although major developments are taking place in the town they're well away from the eyes of most people. This is a big, public statement that Walsall is serious about changing."
And Tempus Ten is proof that Walsall is genuinely attractive to business: private sector developers Lingfield and Mowlem are wholly funding the £350m development.
Lingfield director Jonathan Hart says: "The fact we've privately pump-primed this site for redevelopment is a measure of the confidence felt by us in the project."
Sandwell is Walsall's conjoined twin. Not only are the two Black Country boroughs attached, but they also share much of the same history and therefore many of the same issues. Little surprise then that many of Walsall's proposed solutions are mirrored in Sandwell: big public art projects, waterside living along canals, landmark hotels by the motorway, revitalised shopping centres, large-scale brownfield reclamations and big, brazen statement developments.
Ros Kerslake, chief executive of Sandwell's URC RegenCo, says: "Many factories and jobs have gone, but because they were fairly small there haven't been the big dramatic closures that hit the headlines. There are buildings so rundown you wouldn't believe anyone would work there, but if you look inside there's a successful business. There are some real jewels in Sandwell and we need to look after them to make sure they're not forced out by rebuilding or higher rents.
"However, we also need to create about 20,000 jobs and attract about £31.6bn of investment over the next ten to 15 years. We also need more high-density developments and more big buildings that make a clear statement that you're in Sandwell," says Kerslake.
Fortunately, Kerslake's first "clear statement" is nearing completion. At a cost of £340m The Public - reputedly Europe's biggest public art project - is set to become as iconic a building as Birmingham's Selfridges.
The striking, four-storey, black and pink complex of cafx8es, restaurants and performance spaces is a major show of confidence in Sandwell and, like Walsall's art gallery, will be an anchor for the planned £3400m regeneration of West Bromwich town centre.
And it is just the start. The next few months will see the opening of another statement building - the nearby multi-storey, multi-winged health clinic, said to be Britain's biggest.
Like Walsall, regeneration in Sandwell is a matter of stitching together many disparate projects and sites to make a coherent, sustainable whole.
So for one side of Junction 1 of the M5 there are proposals for a flagship business park providing quality office space - and hopefully some more statement buildings.
However, RegenCo wants to balance work with play, so on the other side of the junction there are proposals for a sports village that - in addition to the existing West Bromwich Albion ground, cricket pitch and golf course - may see tennis, skiing and rock climbing centres built.
And tying both sides of the project together is the £327m Sandwell academy - a super-school focusing on sports and
business studies - due to open next year.
One of the areas that has Kerslake really animated is a bleak 100 hectares of land in Wednesbury called Hill Top. RegenCo plans to turn it into an environmental technology park and semi-rural residential area. She says: "It's a huge area that offers massive potential that's largely forgotten because it's virtually an island that has been cut off by transport routes around it."
Not all the regeneration action is within the URC's boundaries. Recently developers The Junction received planning permission for a £3100m regeneration of 13 hectares on the edge of Oldbury town centre - in Sandwell, but off RegenCo's patch. The focal point will be a sports attraction with a soccer dome, ice rink, climbing wall and fitness club, along with 30,000 sq m of shopping space. The project will create an estimated 1,000 jobs.
Similarly, the nearby Swallowfields development is providing more of the office space that Sandwell badly needs, and is another indictor that the Black Country can attract major private investment. Says GVA Grimley's Venables: "Swallowfields shows the area is succeeding. The development has already attracted a major investor who could just as easily have gone to South Wales, Shropshire or Lincolnshire. A few years ago Sandwell would not have been in the running, but now the Black Country is being considered seriously for inward investment, rather than being rejected or ignored altogether."
But big projects, a central location and lots of reasonably priced land will not by themselves secure the Black Country's future. To do that there are at least three other major issues the region needs to address, namely housing, infrastructure and workforce.
Peter Murray, English Partnerships' West Midlands area director, says: "The Black Country has a great deal of brownfield land that's ideal for redevelopment. Three quarters of the region's new homes must be built on this land, which is far more than the national target of 60 per cent.
"The regeneration issues facing the Black Country need to be addressed both on a physical and economic level, securing the long-term investment and transformational change that is needed to build a new future for the region."
Chamber and Business Link's Bushell says: "Local physical infrastructure is the biggest single issue holding us back. Unless it's sorted then a lot of things that need to happen won't."
This was the conclusion the former Black Country Development Corporation came to when it built the Spine Route through the area in the late 1990s. Although most people agree it was a major step in making a lot of brownfield land available, it did not properly address the issue of how people would get to their new places of work.
Hence the importance Kerslake puts on expansion of the region's Metro tram system - 40 per cent of homes in Sandwell do not have a car. And Cromar's anger in March when the Strategic Rail Authority revealed it might axe the train line between Walsall and Birmingham. He fears this could jeopardise plans to regenerate 120 hectares at Darlaston, which straddles the M6 and is set to account for 15,000 new jobs.
Cromar adds: "Darlaston was where companies like GKN started. Back in the 1950s it employed 175,000 people - if 10,000 people worked there now I'd be amazed. We're trying to take this area from a 19th century industrial economy to a 21st century one based on knowledge. That means a wholesale review of our infrastructure and developing the access roads, rail and broadband connections needed for a modern economy."
Despite the concerns over skills standards - in Walsall 40 per cent of the adult population has not reached NVQ Level 1 - many pundits praise the quality of the Black Country workforce.
As Bushell points out: "It's a very loyal and skilled workforce."
Wayne Taylor, Royal Bank of Scotland's associate director of business development and commercial banking in Wolverhampton, says: "We are witnessing a strong determination to develop market advantage and trade with the advantages that the location of the Black Country provides - one of a strong available labour force and good-quality transport links."
Wolverhampton businesses booming, claim employment specialists
Wolverhampton's economy is booming, with confidence amongst businesses on the up, according to a leading recruitment agency in the city.
Able Recruitment closely monitors the region's economic trends to keep abreast of the local jobs market, and says the last six months have seen the demand for staff dramatically increase.
Gilly Grateley, managing director of the Waterloo Road agency, which has a £31m annual turnover, says the number of permanent vacancies they processed in the second half of last year was significantly more than temporary positions, a strong indicator of a good economy.
"When business confidence is low, people are unwilling to take on permanent staff, and the emphasis for recruiting is on temporary positions," said Grateley.
"But we have seen very strong trends in the last six months of 2004, continuing into the New Year, of firms opting to take on permanent staff.
"This has also been repeated across all commercial and manufacturing sectors, indicating it is not just a seasonal trend."
Margaret Corneby, Wolverhampton chamber director of Black Country
Chamber of Commerce, says the city is undergoing a great transformation, and the signs for the future are extremely positive.
"While I would not expect all sectors to report a steadying of the economy at this time, there are many positive signs that Wolverhampton is a city which is really going places," she says.
"There is a great deal of regeneration work going on, and inward investment, as people realize the many advantages of locating in Wolverhampton. These will all create job opportunities, making this a very exciting time for the city."
Latest figures from the Black Country Observatory show that the number of jobs in the area has been increasing, with Wolverhampton showing the largest growth of the Black Country boroughs.
"Such a buoyancy in the local economy is great news, not just for Able Recruitment, but for the city as a whole and we are delighted as a Wolverhampton company to be enjoying this time of prosperity," says Grateley.
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While Birmingham's star rose ever upwards, the industrial towns and villages surrounding it seemed to sink under the weight of fading heavy industries and become lost in endless hectares of brownfield land. It had become an area of low skills, low pay, low investment and low expectation.
But the past few years have seen an upsurge of optimism in the area. This year alone a run of major announcements - waterside developments, big inward investments, landmark art projects - have reinforced the point that the Black Country is on the way back up.
Mike Bushell, head of regeneration at Black Country Chamber and Business Link, says business optimism in the area is at its highest for a decade. "There is a buzz about the place. The Black Country works best when it's got something to aim for, and now we're developing a vision for the next three decades," he says.
"For once, the region is acting together. Too often we've been split between rival boroughs or neighbouring villages, while Birmingham steamed on ahead. Fortunately businesses and people don't think about local authority borders - they cross them every day without knowing."
The vision Bushell talks of came a step closer in February with the publication of the Black Country Study. The 28 page booklet - supported by all of the area's major business groups, councils and regeneration bodies - was both grim in its assessments and upbeat in its aspirations.
It claims that without major investment and regeneration the Black Country will lose 65,000 of its remaining traditional manufacturing jobs by 2031. By then typical wages could fall to just 75 per cent of the UK average. The population could also fall by more than 84,000 to less than 1 million, with the young, the educated and the motivated leading the exodus.
Black Country Investment's (BCI) director Grant Seeley says that, despite having vast hectares of brownfield land, too little is ready for investors. Sites that do become available - such as the 12 acres at Apollo Park in Oldbury and Walsall's 16-acre Green Lane - are quickly snapped up on, or even before, completion.
But the fact that land is being readily snapped up shows faith in the Black Country's future, notably in two of its most deprived boroughs - Sandwell and Walsall - each of which has an Urban Regeneration Corporation (URC) to oversee recovery.
One of the most exciting examples of this new optimism came in February when cutting-edge developer Urban Splash signed contracts to turn 17 acres of derelict canalside in central Walsall into the Waterfront. The £3180m project will bring flats, cafes, wine bars and offices to the area, using Walsall's landmark art gallery as an anchor.
Tom Bloxham, Urban Splash's chairman, says: "It's the most exciting challenge we've had. We've got this iconic art gallery and a huge area of virgin land on which to create a whole new quarter for Walsall. This really will be a world-class development."
Such is the importance put on the Waterfront that Walsall Regeneration Company (WRC) claims it is "fuelling a revolution" in the town. It hopes the project will create a canalside quarter with the prestige of Birmingham's Brindleyplace and act as a catalyst for wider regeneration.
WRC chief executive Peter Cromar says: "This is just the start. Over the next ten to 15 years we need to attract about £3600m of investment - 80 per cent of it private - for an area of about 780 hectares that covers places like Darlaston, Pleck, Alumwell and Leamore.
"The Black Country has traditionally tended to undersell itself but we can be confident about the future. It's time to stop talking about what Walsall used to be and focus on the opportunities ahead."
Those opportunities are coming to Walsall at a rapid rate. This April, retail group TK Maxx moves into a new 250,000 sq ft processing centre, built on the site of the former Sterling Tube factory, and creating 1,200 jobs.
In the longer term, the Tempus Ten development at Junction 10 of the M6 offers even greater opportunities, with hopes that it could create up to 2,500 jobs. A large De Vere hotel is open for business on the site, to be followed shortly by 80,000 sq ft of office accommodation and possibly a second, budget hotel.
Tempus Ten is an important indicator in other ways. Andy Venables, partner at GVA Grimley's office team, says: "Although major developments are taking place in the town they're well away from the eyes of most people. This is a big, public statement that Walsall is serious about changing."
And Tempus Ten is proof that Walsall is genuinely attractive to business: private sector developers Lingfield and Mowlem are wholly funding the £350m development.
Lingfield director Jonathan Hart says: "The fact we've privately pump-primed this site for redevelopment is a measure of the confidence felt by us in the project."
Sandwell is Walsall's conjoined twin. Not only are the two Black Country boroughs attached, but they also share much of the same history and therefore many of the same issues. Little surprise then that many of Walsall's proposed solutions are mirrored in Sandwell: big public art projects, waterside living along canals, landmark hotels by the motorway, revitalised shopping centres, large-scale brownfield reclamations and big, brazen statement developments.
Ros Kerslake, chief executive of Sandwell's URC RegenCo, says: "Many factories and jobs have gone, but because they were fairly small there haven't been the big dramatic closures that hit the headlines. There are buildings so rundown you wouldn't believe anyone would work there, but if you look inside there's a successful business. There are some real jewels in Sandwell and we need to look after them to make sure they're not forced out by rebuilding or higher rents.
"However, we also need to create about 20,000 jobs and attract about £31.6bn of investment over the next ten to 15 years. We also need more high-density developments and more big buildings that make a clear statement that you're in Sandwell," says Kerslake.
Fortunately, Kerslake's first "clear statement" is nearing completion. At a cost of £340m The Public - reputedly Europe's biggest public art project - is set to become as iconic a building as Birmingham's Selfridges.
The striking, four-storey, black and pink complex of cafx8es, restaurants and performance spaces is a major show of confidence in Sandwell and, like Walsall's art gallery, will be an anchor for the planned £3400m regeneration of West Bromwich town centre.
And it is just the start. The next few months will see the opening of another statement building - the nearby multi-storey, multi-winged health clinic, said to be Britain's biggest.
Like Walsall, regeneration in Sandwell is a matter of stitching together many disparate projects and sites to make a coherent, sustainable whole.
So for one side of Junction 1 of the M5 there are proposals for a flagship business park providing quality office space - and hopefully some more statement buildings.
However, RegenCo wants to balance work with play, so on the other side of the junction there are proposals for a sports village that - in addition to the existing West Bromwich Albion ground, cricket pitch and golf course - may see tennis, skiing and rock climbing centres built.
And tying both sides of the project together is the £327m Sandwell academy - a super-school focusing on sports and
business studies - due to open next year.
One of the areas that has Kerslake really animated is a bleak 100 hectares of land in Wednesbury called Hill Top. RegenCo plans to turn it into an environmental technology park and semi-rural residential area. She says: "It's a huge area that offers massive potential that's largely forgotten because it's virtually an island that has been cut off by transport routes around it."
Not all the regeneration action is within the URC's boundaries. Recently developers The Junction received planning permission for a £3100m regeneration of 13 hectares on the edge of Oldbury town centre - in Sandwell, but off RegenCo's patch. The focal point will be a sports attraction with a soccer dome, ice rink, climbing wall and fitness club, along with 30,000 sq m of shopping space. The project will create an estimated 1,000 jobs.
Similarly, the nearby Swallowfields development is providing more of the office space that Sandwell badly needs, and is another indictor that the Black Country can attract major private investment. Says GVA Grimley's Venables: "Swallowfields shows the area is succeeding. The development has already attracted a major investor who could just as easily have gone to South Wales, Shropshire or Lincolnshire. A few years ago Sandwell would not have been in the running, but now the Black Country is being considered seriously for inward investment, rather than being rejected or ignored altogether."
But big projects, a central location and lots of reasonably priced land will not by themselves secure the Black Country's future. To do that there are at least three other major issues the region needs to address, namely housing, infrastructure and workforce.
Peter Murray, English Partnerships' West Midlands area director, says: "The Black Country has a great deal of brownfield land that's ideal for redevelopment. Three quarters of the region's new homes must be built on this land, which is far more than the national target of 60 per cent.
"The regeneration issues facing the Black Country need to be addressed both on a physical and economic level, securing the long-term investment and transformational change that is needed to build a new future for the region."
Chamber and Business Link's Bushell says: "Local physical infrastructure is the biggest single issue holding us back. Unless it's sorted then a lot of things that need to happen won't."
This was the conclusion the former Black Country Development Corporation came to when it built the Spine Route through the area in the late 1990s. Although most people agree it was a major step in making a lot of brownfield land available, it did not properly address the issue of how people would get to their new places of work.
Hence the importance Kerslake puts on expansion of the region's Metro tram system - 40 per cent of homes in Sandwell do not have a car. And Cromar's anger in March when the Strategic Rail Authority revealed it might axe the train line between Walsall and Birmingham. He fears this could jeopardise plans to regenerate 120 hectares at Darlaston, which straddles the M6 and is set to account for 15,000 new jobs.
Cromar adds: "Darlaston was where companies like GKN started. Back in the 1950s it employed 175,000 people - if 10,000 people worked there now I'd be amazed. We're trying to take this area from a 19th century industrial economy to a 21st century one based on knowledge. That means a wholesale review of our infrastructure and developing the access roads, rail and broadband connections needed for a modern economy."
Despite the concerns over skills standards - in Walsall 40 per cent of the adult population has not reached NVQ Level 1 - many pundits praise the quality of the Black Country workforce.
As Bushell points out: "It's a very loyal and skilled workforce."
Wayne Taylor, Royal Bank of Scotland's associate director of business development and commercial banking in Wolverhampton, says: "We are witnessing a strong determination to develop market advantage and trade with the advantages that the location of the Black Country provides - one of a strong available labour force and good-quality transport links."
Wolverhampton businesses booming, claim employment specialists
Wolverhampton's economy is booming, with confidence amongst businesses on the up, according to a leading recruitment agency in the city.
Able Recruitment closely monitors the region's economic trends to keep abreast of the local jobs market, and says the last six months have seen the demand for staff dramatically increase.
Gilly Grateley, managing director of the Waterloo Road agency, which has a £31m annual turnover, says the number of permanent vacancies they processed in the second half of last year was significantly more than temporary positions, a strong indicator of a good economy.
"When business confidence is low, people are unwilling to take on permanent staff, and the emphasis for recruiting is on temporary positions," said Grateley.
"But we have seen very strong trends in the last six months of 2004, continuing into the New Year, of firms opting to take on permanent staff.
"This has also been repeated across all commercial and manufacturing sectors, indicating it is not just a seasonal trend."
Margaret Corneby, Wolverhampton chamber director of Black Country
Chamber of Commerce, says the city is undergoing a great transformation, and the signs for the future are extremely positive.
"While I would not expect all sectors to report a steadying of the economy at this time, there are many positive signs that Wolverhampton is a city which is really going places," she says.
"There is a great deal of regeneration work going on, and inward investment, as people realize the many advantages of locating in Wolverhampton. These will all create job opportunities, making this a very exciting time for the city."
Latest figures from the Black Country Observatory show that the number of jobs in the area has been increasing, with Wolverhampton showing the largest growth of the Black Country boroughs.
"Such a buoyancy in the local economy is great news, not just for Able Recruitment, but for the city as a whole and we are delighted as a Wolverhampton company to be enjoying this time of prosperity," says Grateley.
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