WEST END 'REGENERATION' - LOCAL CONDEMNS 'DORMITORY' PLAN
By Chas Ambler. First Posted: 5/1/05

West End resident Chas Ambler has condemned the projected 'regeneration' plan for the West End of Morecambe, which he says will will turn the area into a dormitory for Lancaster and points South, with no economic life of its own.
In the first of a series of articles for Virtual-Lancaster, Chas highlights the fact that the Council have made no audit of the local population statistics and have built a flawed strategy on guesswork, which in fact will drive away the the young semi-professional families they hoped to attract...

What are the aims of regeneration?

The assumption that drives the so-called 'Morecambe Regeneration' is that poor old Morecambe is in need of outside help to recover from the apparently terminal decline it has been suffering for the last 40 years.

Of course, for most of those 40 years it has had outside help -- in a way. Ever since Local Government reorganisation in 1971, Morecambe has been effectively administered from Lancaster. Whether this has made a difference is not easy to say. On the occasions that Morecambe has asserted itself, it has not proved particularly edifying -- the Morecambe Bay Independents did not aid the recovery of Morecambe.

Enter Geraldine Smith MP stage left (or is it right?) and her gallant knights from the Housing Department with the Masterplan. Earlier on this year, three consultancies were commissioned (i.e. given £5000 each) to do a quick sketch of a possible regeneration plan. Two of the consultancies did a thorough (if, in my opinion, misconceived) job. The third put in a shabby little plan on A4 paper.

The committee judging these entries laughed at this latter consultancy when they made their pathetic contribution – and the consultancy laughed all the way to the bank with their £5000 made for a couple of day’s work. One thing is sure; before the regeneration is over, a lot of people will have made a lot of money out of it. None of them live in the West End.

Very few would deny Morecambe has problems. Any seaside town in England started having problems in the 1960s– Morecambe especially, reliant as it was on the very section of the skilled working class that evacuated to Spain, the section who thought itself just a cut above Blackpool.

Enter BNFL, with a plan to build a second nuclear power station in Heysham on the edge of a conurbation of 150,000. This was perceived by some as the cavalry come to save the boarding house industry of the area, and landlords -- and landladies -- enthusiastically let out their rooms to the workers who came to build Heysham B and who -- thanks to the customary overrun of nuclear building in this country (on average: 64%) -- stayed for longer than expected.

By the time they left, Morecambe had turned a good proportion of its rooming trade over to them -- they stayed all year -- and left no room for the residual holidaymakers. When they left, the only trade remaining was housing benefit-funded housing for the poor -- bed and breakfast for the homeless, resettled patients from the closing Lancaster psychiatric hospitals, ex-prisoners etc. As well paid, if somewhat rowdy, builders were replaced by people on benefit, the economy of Morecambe took a further dive and the West End effectively became a sink estate.

So now we have the exciting idea of regenerating Morecambe by building lots of houses and having lots of builders in the area again. Another short-lived boom, with the real money going into the pockets of builders.

The fact is that Morecambe has been regenerating of its own accord in the same way as Islington, for instance, did in the 1960s and 1970s. Big houses at cheap prices have attracted and continue to attract the slightly bohemian fringes of the professional classes. What is needed is thoughtful encouragement of this process.

What we are getting is a process run by people who have no other way of measuring 'regeneration' apart from property value. If the values go up (because you've knocked a load of cheap houses down and replaced them with expensive ones) the area is regenerating. Never mind that no-one spends the day time in the area any more because there is no work; never mind that few socialise in the area -- as long as property prices rise, all is well in Albion.

I will be returning to the question of employment subsequently but let's not forget that Heysham A closes in 2014 and Heysham B in 2023 – unless they decide to put us all at risk and run them past their designated dates. Do we want Morecambe to become a mere dormitory for Lancaster and points south or to have a viable life of its own?

The fact is, Lancaster City Council and its well-paid consultants have no real understanding of the social dynamics of a town like Morecambe and less of an area like the West End. They have not even attempted to take a social audit of the houses they are hoping to demolish. They don’t know who lives in them -- or even their housing status. Are they 'Houses in Multiple Occupancy' or are a considerable proportion in fact houses that have been converted to single family occupancy but not registered (at a cost of £300)?

Social cleansing is the blatant aim of the project -- getting rid of 'transients' (i.e. junkies, ex-cons etc); but how can you know this will succeed in any way if you don't even know who you’re getting rid of?

Chas Ambler
5 January 2005