Building a better Black Country - multi-million pound project is on the right track

Twelve months to the day since Prime Minister David Cameron promised £162 million of Government funding to back a £500m growth deal for the Black Country, the Express & Star can reveal the state of progress so far.

New buildings are going up and ground is being cleared to make way for new housing, while plans are being drawn up for a string of schemes, including a revamp of Wolverhampton's Civic Halls, which will see work starting early next year.

Across the Black Country, new facilities are being built at colleges while Wolverhampton university is designing a £10m new technology centre to open in 2017.

Derelict former industrial land in Sandwell and Bilston will be cleaned up to make way for new housing, while in Walsall, former industrial land is already being used to build new houses. Work has started this summer on the first of the next 400 homes that will be built on the Goscote site in Walsall.

The £500m Black Country Growth Deal brings together funding from the Government with more money from local councils, agencies and private businesses such as developers with the aim of creating 5,000 jobs and 1,400 new homes over the next six years.

Plans are being currently drawn up to expand Junction 10 of the M6, one of the region's biggest traffic blackspots, although work will not actually start until 2018.

But the £64.5m funding has already been secured through the Growth Deal, the Department for Transport and the Highways England agency.

The six-year Growth Fund scheme is being overseen by the Black Country LEP, or local enterprise partnership, which brings together all four councils in Wolverhampton, Walsall, Sandwell and Dudley with local business leaders to promote investment and growth in the area.

Stewart Towe, chairman of the LEP, said: "Today is the first anniversary of Prime Minister David Cameron's announcement at of the Black Country LEP's Growth Deal with Government. A year on, we can celebrate the progress with many of the projects becoming shovel ready.

"The historic scale of our Growth Deal, with £162m Government funding leveraging nearly £500m total investment from project partners until 2021, is a clear vote of confidence in the Black Country's dynamic economic future.

"It follows a year of hard work by the LEP board and all our project partners: Dudley Council, Sandwell Council, Walsall Council and Wolverhampton City Council, the University of Wolverhampton, Dudley and Halesowen Colleges, business organisations and training providers.

"We received approval for 14 of the proposed 16 projects submitted in the Black Country Strategic Economic Plan 'Made in the Black Country, Sold around the World.' Since July 2014 the LEP board undertook a detailed business planning process for each project, including project management, outputs, funding arrangements and risk assessment.

"The Black Country Joint Committee approved a number of Growth Deal projects to proceed to the grant agreement contracting stage in December 2014, followed by other projects in early 2015. The LEP established a programme office to manage the delivery of the Growth Deal programme.

"As the projects start to become reality, reaching the construction phase; the Black Country Growth Deal will create 5,000 jobs and at least 1,400 new homes. It will improve the transport infrastructure, develop the skills needed by business and provide targeted support for business growth across the Black Country.

"The LEP bard is calling for a pipeline of new projects for local growth funding to leverage commercial investment over the next five years.

"We are confident the Black Country economy will prosper by building on our unique position as the UK manufacturing heart and competing globally by ensuring more products are Made in the Black Country and sold around the world."

The Growth Deal was launched by Mr Cameron when he came to Halesowen College exactly a year ago, underlining the importance of education, skills and training to the Growth Deal project.

He said at the time, Mr Cameron said: "This is the end of 'Whitehall knows best'. Halesowen College is getting £3m as part of the local growth deal and that will mean more apprentices. Young people are a key part of local growth deals. I don't want an economy where London is booming and the rest of the country is behind."

"We are seeing re-industrialisation in Great Britain," the Prime Minister said.

"Growth Deals are a crucial part of our long-term plan to secure Britain's future.

"For too long, our economy has been too London-focused and too centralised. Growth Deals will help change all that. They are about firing up our great towns and cities, boosting local economies and driving growth across the country.

"This historic deal means real change with exciting plans for the Black Country including better transport links for both road and rail, building hundreds more homes and helping to give people the skills they need to get on and the local economy the workforce it needs to prosper."

Twelve months on in Halesowen work is about to start on a £3.1m new advanced science, engineering and technology centre at the college, on Coombs Wood Business Park. Meanwhile, design work is under way for the £12 million Centre for Advance Building Technologies at Dudley College, which is due to be completed in 2017. The project team, including the builders, are already working on the scheme.

Between them they will train thousands of additional young people for careers in construction, engineering and science, providing the skilled workforce of the future.

Transport:

One of the biggest schemes in the whole Black Country Growth Deal will see a congestion-busting revamp to Junction 10 of the M6. But this is making slow progress.

The £64.5 million to pay for the scheme has already been secured, with half is coming from the Growth Fund and rest from Highways England and the Department for Transport.

But, a year down the line, the project team from Walsall Council and roads agency Highways England is still working on the plans for the overhaul and they say a final design won't be chosen until next year.

Despite this, the team says it is still on track to hit the target of starting work in 2018. But it was revealed earlier this year that if the project over-runs its 2020 deadline it will be frozen and any unspent funding will probably be withdrawn.

The plan aims to cut down on the chronic congestion that cripples the island and motorway every day, improving traffic flow by doubling the number of lanes and building bigger bridges.

Meanwhile, securing £13.5 million from the Growth Deal has proved the final piece in the £120m jigsaw of funding for Wolverhampton's ambitious Interchange scheme.

The plan links bus, rail and Metro services with a revamped train station while new offices and shops are built around the site. Wolverhampton council is working with Neptune Developments on the scheme, with work already under way on i10, a 50,000 sq ft office and shops building, which is due to be completed this winter.

Just before Christmas they also unveiled plans to add 520 spaces to the railway station's multi-storey car park, taking its total to 900. Planning permission was rapidly secured and work starts towards the end of this year.

Meanwhile, the city is now awaiting the results of a public inquiry held last month into extending the Metro from Bilston Street, along Pipers Row and down to the railway station.

Centro chairman Councillor John McNicholas said: "We hope to have a decision from the Secretary of State by the end of the year.

"If that decision is positive then we intend to start work as soon as possible and have the extension up and running in 2018."

At the same time, a £12m fund has been created under the Growth Deal to help local councils pay for smaller transport schemes – costing £500,000 to £5m – that would improve access to employment sites or 'strategic centres'.

Another £4.6m will pay for improvements along the canal towpaths around the Black Country, starting with Stourbridge this summer, to make them easier for cyclists and walkers to use.

Venues:

Thousands flock to Wolverhampton's Civic Halls every month to see top names on tour.

And the city's Grand Theatre regularly attracts packed houses for the latest touring productions.

But a cash injection from the Growth Fund is helping pay for a series of improvements that should enable them to attract even bigger acts, in turn attracting more visitors in a major boost for the Black Country's leisure industry.

Together they are the biggest cultural businesses in the Black Country and generate a total of £7.9 million for the local economy. Now around £400,000 is to be spent on the Grand Theatre, but the Civic and Wulfrun halls are to get a £10m makeover thanks to the funding. Around £6.6m will come from Grow Deal funds.

The payback for the area is that the improvements are expected to help generate another £1.7m a year for the Black Country economy, safeguarding 60 jobs and creating another 100 through the increasing number of visitors attracted to the area.

The work on the Grand Theatre over the coming months will see a re-imagined layout of the stalls bar, turning it into the Encore Lounge to make the best use of space, provide more seating and create a small stage for extra performances.

Theatre chief executive Adrian Jackson said: "The Grand Theatre's summer refurbishment of the foyer and stalls bar area will in the main be funded by the theatre with a small contribution made by the LEP's Growth Deal."

The work at the Civic Halls is due to begin early next year, and will see the Civic Hall given a second balcony – raising standing capacity from 3,000 to 3,600 and seated capacity from 2,026 to 2,700.

The Wulfrun Hall will also get a balcony, increasing its standing capacity from 1,134 to 1,334 and seating from 641 to 841.

Bar, circulation spaces and toilet facilities will be revamped to give visitors a much improved experience and disabled access improved.

Councillor John Reynolds said: "The refurbishment of these venues will open up further opportunities for hosting conferences and putting on bigger shows."

Skills:

Skills are an urgent problem in the Black Country. For decades the region has come bottom of national league tables for the skills of its workers, and that problem has become more pressing as firms demand staff with more technical know-how.

As a result, millions of pounds from the Growth Fund are being pumped into colleges across the Black Country, building centres of education to train young people as engineers or builders.

In Halesowen, work is about to start on a £3.1 million advanced science, engineering and technology centre at the college, on Coombs Wood Business Park, due to be completed in September.

Prime Minister David Cameron chose to unveil the Black Country's Growth Deal 12 months ago at Halesowen College, underlining the importance of education, skills and training to the Growth Deal project.

He said at the time that young people were a key part of local growth deals and he did not want an economy where London is booming and the rest of the country is behind.

The new centre at Halesowen aims to meet the skills needs of local industries through apprenticeships, traineeships and bespoke training schemes built around the needs of employers.

Keith Bate, college principal, said: "The creation of the Advanced Science, Engineering and Technology Centre is an opportunity to respond to the government's priorities for apprenticeships, meet the needs of employers and offer students' first class training to bridge the skills deficit in the Black Country."

Meanwhile, design work is under way for the next phase of development at Dudley College.

Following the opening of its new Advance engineering centre, by celebrity scientist Professor Brian Cox earlier this year, it is now planning a £12m Centre for Advanced Building Technologies.

Dudley College is working with a team including Metz Architects, Pick Everard, Fulcro Engineering Services, Speller Metcalf Construction and Derry Building Services to ensure that the project goes smoothly.

Work is due to start this Christmas and the project is on target for completion in the spring of 2017.

Among its new construction training facilities will be a four-storey high 'hangar' in which students will learn how to fabricate and assemble buildings.

There will also be a digital centre in which innovative Building Information Modelling (BIM) and digital environment software packages will be used by students.

Other facilities include a carbon-friendly technology centre.

By 2021 the Dudley Advance scheme is expected to have created 390 jobs, safeguarded 765 more, helped 1,400 business, worked with 3,250 students and helped 725 youngsters start apprenticeships.

Housing:

Large areas of the Black Country stand disused and empty, often because of the high cost of cleaning them up after decades of industrial use.

The funding from the Growth Deal is intended to break the log-jam that has left some sites derelict for decades.

The money is already making a difference in Walsall, where it has helped kick-start redevelopment of the Goscote Lane area.

Walsall Housing Group is working with Keepmoat Homes on a project that aims to build 741 homes over three brownfield sites covering 52 acres in the Blakenhall area by 2021.

The total cost of the scheme will be £87.4 million, and the £8.82m from the Growth Deal will pay for preparing the site and improving the local public open spaces.

The first phase of work saw 29 new homes finished by March and another 412 will be built over the next three years as part of the Waters Keep development. As well as the jobs created by the housebuilding, local people have taken up apprenticeships that will see them trained through Walsall Housing Group's Skills Centre and then working for Keepmoat Homes.

Carole Wildman, the group's corporate director for growth, said: "The Goscote Lane Corridor Regeneration is the biggest regeneration project we have ever undertaken and will breathe new life into an entire community.

"We are extremely grateful for the support of Black Country LEP, who are contributing over £8.82m towards the project. It's a partnership that will make a real difference to the lives of hundreds of families in Walsall over the coming years."

Growth Deal funding is being used in Sandwell to make the Woods Lane industrial estate a more attractive prospect for housing. This means demolition work, cleaning up the site and building an access road at the junction of Cradley Road and Macarthur Road. Work is scheduled to get under way later this year on this £48.9m project.

The clean-up work on the site is due to be completed by spring 2017, with around 350 homes built by 2021. Another scheme getting fresh lease of life thanks to a Growth Deal boost is the Bilston Urban Village. The ground is now being prepared to make it ready for development, with Kier Homes set to build the first 80 homes.

Around £65m has been invested in the scheme, with more to come, says Wolverhampton council. When it is finished the site should be able to accommodate up to 500 new homes.

Jobs & Business:

Boosting jobs and business was a key platform in the Black Country's bid for Growth Deal funding, and the money is set to be spent on a wide range of schemes to make that a reality.

One of the biggest will be the £10.14 million Science, Technology & Prototyping Centre, at the University of Wolverhampton's Science Park in the city. The Growth Deal will provide £4.8m of the money.

The university says design work for the new building is progressing well and the tendering process to choose a contractor starts this summer. It is due to be completed by early 2017 and will offer a combination of laboratory, workshop and high quality office space.

It is intended to support science and technology related businesses, giving them access to research and development activity that is not currently carried out anywhere in the Black Country.

Nigel Babb, commercial director at University of Wolverhampton Science Park, said: "The investment in the Science, Technology & Prototyping Centre by the University of Wolverhampton demonstrates its commitment to knowledge transfer with industry and the wider economic benefits for the Black Country.

"It also further supports the science park as a focal point for leading edge companies to co-locate; not only benefitting from each other's knowledge, but also the community of like-minded entrepreneurial individuals and innovative firms."

Giving companies access to the latest manufacturing machinery and the training to use it is the behind the Fab Kit scheme. At Sandwell College, a Black Country Fab Lab will open at the Central Sixth campus in West Bromwich in August. A digital fabrication laboratory, it is being set up to inspire entrepreneurs to transform their ideas into new products and prototypes by giving them access to a range of advanced digital manufacturing technology.

Meanwhile, in Aldridge, training company In-Comm is investing £200,000 in a new training centre with Growth Deal funding for specialist equipment, such as computer-controlled mills and five lathes. Work started on the centre in June and the new equipment will go in this month, ready for the next in-take of apprentices on August 10. With the new equipment, In-Comm expects to be able to train another 20 engineering apprentices a year.

Growth Deal money has also paid for more modern equipment and machinery for the expanded engineering centre at PTP Training in Walsall. Work will be completed so the centre can become operational in August, meaning it can double the number of trainee engineers it to 30.

The Future:

After a year of detailed work by a wide range of partners, the Black Country LEP's Growth Deal projects are becoming a reality with many entering the construction phase.

But the board of the local enterprise partnership wants to build on its momentum by creating a pipeline of additional projects.

These could also gain growth funding to encourage commercial investment over the next five years.

In particular, with growth deal projects under way nationwide, it is thought a number of these schemes could fail which could leave more Government funding available for other projects in the Black Country. The LEP says it is also expecting further national funds to be released for fresh projects this year.

A spokesman said: "The LEP wants to develop a pipeline of potential capital regeneration projects that will enable the Black Country to take advantage of any opportunities.

"Commercial proposals to accelerate economic growth from £250,000 to £20 million will be considered."

The Government already has a track record of increasing funding for the Growth Deal schemes, adding £1 billion in January to the £11bn already promised nationwide. In the Black Country it added £24m to the £138m initially promised last July.

The extra money aided schemes such as the creation of a Light Rail Innovation Centre in Dudley, which will specialise in prototype vehicle design and construction, as well as providing education, and research and development facilities to local businesses. It will receive £4.5m to help to create public transport technologies for the future.

Wolverhampton College was given funding to help 3,000 students and 50 businesses while £6m was to help to develop land for housing and jobs, including £2.3m in Sandwell, and £400,000 towards the development of Walsall Waterfront.

With £12bn of the Government's Local Growth Fund now committed to schemes nationwide between 2015 and 2021, another £5bn remains unallocated and available for bids in the coming years.

Meanwhile, a £6m Growing Priority Sectors Fund, set up with Growth Deal money, is now open for business.

The money is for investment in Black Country businesses that are looking to expand and create new jobs.

Over the next three years the programme is looking to support over 30 businesses, attract in £17m of private sector investment and create 600 jobs.

The fund is available for businesses of all sizes, not just SMEs.

Grants will range from £100,000 to a maximum of £1m and is available for capital investment in plant, machinery and property. The beneficiaries of the fund will receive up to a maximum 30 per cent support towards the total project cost.

Previous rounds of the Black Country LEP Growing Priority Sectors programme, funded by the Regional Growth Fund, ran from September 2012 to March this year. The programmes were managed by Sandwell Council and successfully supported more than 45 companies, attracted £40m of private sector investment to the region and created or safeguarded 1,750 jobs.

One of the beneficiaries, Midshires Business Systems, was able to move its headquarters from Birmingham to the Black Country with Regional Growth Fund support. It moved into a 25,000 sq ft state-of-the-art facility that will cater for about 90 skilled staff and will be a base for a further 40 engineers.

The move is a result of a total £2.2m investment by the company including a £214,000 Regional Growth Fund grant. The investment in plant, equipment and buildings will have an additional capacity to accommodate another 40 staff in the medium term. The new facility has already created 20 jobs.

Paul Brown, the LEP board member who chairs the Access to Finance group, said "The Black Country Growing Priority Sectors Fund needs ambitious businesses with growth and job creation projects to come forward."

For information and to apply visit: http://www.blackcountrylep.co.uk/business/access-to-finance