Most people’s experience of Thetford is the grey single carriageway of the A11, crowded with caravans in the summer and lorries in the week. Few venture off the road into the town, once home to warrior queen Boudica.
But newly formed regeneration vehicle Moving Thetford Forward has grand plans to put the ancient market town back on the map.
Set up in April after Thetford was awarded growth point status – a relationship with the government to drive wide-scale regeneration – it is tasked with delivering an ambitious 15-year regeneration of the area.
This will see 24,000 homes delivered by 2021 and 5,000 jobs created by 2026. The banks of the River Thet, home to uninspiring concrete blocks of shops, will be revitalised. In a town of 22,000 residents, this a brave call.
But with businesses braced for a recession and developers bunkering down and even pulling back from commitments, why is Thetford launching its grand regeneration effort now and how can it deliver it?
The body is a partnership between four councils – Breckland, Norfolk, Thetford and Croxton – as well as the East of England Development Agency and English Partnerships. It will receive £2m pa from central government coffers, but is well aware that this will not be enough.
In its business plan, MTF states: “The extremely limited amount of available revenue funding is a cause for concern. Despite Breckland council more than matching growth point revenue funds, the revenue funding available to Moving Thetford Forward is a fraction of what some (perhaps most) local delivery vehicles have available.”
Turning to the private sector could be tricky. “Developers are not prepared to take a risk in the way they would have done,” says Caroline Morton, head of commercial agency at Savills in Norwich. “Developers are prepared to build only on a prelet basis. In those cases, you need to have the confidence that demand is going to be there. But for a market like Thetford’s, it is not until you put an opportunity to the market that you understand how strong demand is.”
The need for regeneration is not doubted. James Buxton, senior partner at Bidwells, points to difficulties in terms of unemployment and social problems.
“It needs high-quality housing as there is a lot of poor-quality 1970s stock,” he says. “If the town attracts a lot of new people, that will help with improving the retail provision. These processes take a very long time, so one hopes that the economy and public sector finances will be in a better state by then.”
He adds: “Getting funding for any large-scale residential would be difficult. What Moving Thetford Forward should not do is raise expectations about what realistically can be funded by the private sector.”
MTF is taking a long-term view. Richard Kay, principal officer for Thetford Growth Point, says plans are only at the first stage. “We won’t see major housing growth for at least two or three years,” he says. “We have not chosen the sites and we are not aiming to get the plan adopted until 2010. We hope the downturn doesn’t last beyond then. Housebuilding is at half the historic rate and, if that continues for three or four years, our plans may be more difficult, but we think we’ll be lucky with our timing.”
Options for an area action plan were announced in June, with the first consultation closing a few weeks ago. The MTF team is now wading through a startling 800 responses.
Mark Stanton, head of Breckland council’s economic development unit, politely refers to the responses as “an element of high expectations from the public about future growth. Thetford’s been in decline since the turn of the 20th century.”
He adds that there was a growth spurt in the 1960s when housing supply rocketed as the town became a London overspill, but that brought social issues with it and development created as many problems as it solved.
“The jobs we have are not necessarily high-skilled, high-salary ones. We want more of the latter, even if it means fewer,” he says.
Thetford was dealt a blow when pig-meat processor Tulip closed its local factory last year, with the loss of around 350 jobs. The town has faced other closures in recent times.
“We have not had any growth in unemployment, which tells us that most of those made redundant were hired by other companies,” says Stanton. “The closures also create brownfield sites, which we lack.”
Breckland council is targeting advanced engineering, high-end manufacturing and distribution. It has put its might behind the Crown Estate’s 40-acre Thetford Enterprise Park to the north of the town and hopes to bring it to market soon.
Underlying the need for a local delivery vehicle, Stanton says: “If Thetford Enterprise Park had not had public intervention, there would just be a 40-acre site. The market has done nothing with it. There is nothing on it except perhaps a donkey.”
He says the site has generated significant interest from developers and occupiers, and Century Logistics has already signed up for 10 acres to accommodate 150,000 sq ft of offices, with the potential to extend this by another 100,000 sq ft.
MTF is keen that any profit from growth is spread across the town. Kay says: “We are creating a new Thetford, and it is easy to allocate a piece of land for housing. But what happens to the rest of the town?”
As a result, it is looking at a tariff-based system modelled on Milton Keynes’ roof tax, where developers are charged £20,000 per house. While the amount Thetford will charge is undecided, payments will be on top of section 106 agreements.
“We are in the early stages,” says Kay. “Public money won’t pay for everything, and developers know they are not going to sell 6,000 houses if there is nothing else in the vicinity.”
These are wise words, but getting developers to dig into their pockets may be easier said than done.
