A mixed bag of grant awards and road-building schemes mean varied prospects for Lancashire and Cumbria, but both are dominated by infrastructure needs and slow private investment. Paul Strohm reports.
For a region said to be blessed with about a third of the UK’s motorway mileage, it might seem fair to assume that communication worries are low down the list of causes for concern for companies in the North West. Not so. A recent Grant Thornton report, North West Business Barometer, said that poor infrastructure is the biggest local issue to confront companies in the towns making up the M6 corridor.
At first glance, the claim does not evoke much sympathy. The road system in Lancashire and Cumbria is undeniably better than in many areas. The M6 provides a North-South spine linking the area with Scotland, the South East and South West, and the M58, M61 and M55 provide lateral links to Liverpool, Manchester and Blackpool respectively. While the policymakers’ mood has turned against road building generally, Lancashire and Cumbria still seem to be getting their fair share of new asphalt.
East Lancashire is being opened up by the 11-mile extension of the M65 from the M6 to Blackburn, a £66m project due for completion in late 1997. Improvements have already taken place on the M6 near Preston, where a £37.5m contract to widen a 6.6-mile stretch between junctions 30 and 32 was completed last August and a new motorway junction (31a) is under construction.
In Cumbria, routes to Scotland and Newcastle are being improved. A new scheme will extend the M6 by 5.5 miles from Carlisle to Guardsmill, while a 52.4 mile section of the A69 is being upgraded between the A1 Newcastle Western Bypass and junction 43 of the M6. But the main cause of worry for occupiers does not lie within the region itself.
“Proximity to the motorway network should be the biggest asset for these towns, but all too often congestion on the M6 and other motorways nullifies its beneficial impact,” explains Grant Thornton.
The accountancy firm’s assertions are backed up by a recent CBI report, Routes to Competitiveness – Infrastructure Priorities for the North West. According to the CBI, “bottlenecks on the M6 . . . are of great concern not just for North West business but for companies in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the North of England.” The CBI cites the anonymous example of a major fertiliser manufacturer for which M6 delays add £1.2m pa to costs.
Relief road plan
Part of the solution is the £300m development of the Birmingham Northern Relief Road which was included in the national roads programme but is under consideration for a private finance scheme. A public inquiry ended in October and the inspector was expected to report in the spring: there has been no news so far.
The CBI also wants to see the widening of the M6 between junctions 11a and 20, which will cost £622.9m, and construction of the A628 Woodhead route to fill the “missing link” between Manchester and Sheffield.
Despite the congestion problems, business confidence in the North West is higher than in either of the neighbouring regions – West Midlands or Yorkshire and Humberside, according to Jones Lang Wootton. Its annual property confidence review found that 57% of respondents were more confident about business prospects and only 6% less confident. JLW surveyed 274 companies with a total of 99,000 employees occupying 130,060m2 (1.4m sq ft) of offices in the North West.
This confidence is confirmed by other recent surveys. A CBI/BSL Regional Trends Survey published in May found that although orders are still flat, exports were expected to increase strongly in the following four months.
Lancashire has an unemployment rate of 6.6%, and Cumbria 7.4%.
For occupiers in Cumbria, the catchment area is dispersed and the county is one of the least densely populated in the UK – about 490,000 people are resident in an area of 6,798km (2,625 sq miles). The largest population centre is Carlisle which has almost 103,000 inhabitants. Kendal, the main town in the South Lakeland District, comes second with a headcount of almost 100,000. Lancashire’s catchment is at the other extreme and a population of more than 1.4m is squeezed into 2,999km2 (1,158 sq miles) – less than half the size of Cumbria.
As is the case in most UK towns, lack of speculative development and the gradual take-up of existing stock has led to shortages of modern space and occupiers turning to older stock in order to expand.
Agents say that many potential occupiers would move if grant aid was available. However, this is now limited in Lancashire and Cumbria. The coastal areas of Cumbria benefit from Intermediate Area status – the travel-to-work areas of Barrow in Furness, Whitehaven and Workington all being included. Grants are not widely available in Lancashire. Blackburn’s TWA is an Intermediate Area, and the town also benefits from City Challenge and Single Regeneration Budget funds. However, Accrington and Rossendale lost their grant aid when the assisted areas map was redrawn in 1993.
There are major opportunities for development. In Carlisle, for example, attention is focused on the former RAF station, 14 MU, where a partnership of Cumbria county council, Carlisle city council, the MOD and English Partnerships wants to develop about 183ha (452 acres) when the base closes in March 1997.
There is now little vacant industrial space in the better estates around Preston, according to Nick Kos of Bailey Deakin & Hamiltons. However, the creation of junction 31a will improve the location of land at Haighton, Red Scar and Roman Way. A further 40.47 ha (100 acres) of land owned by the Commission for the New Towns will be released by the completion of the new junction.
The CNT controls much of the land supply in central Lancashire, with 12.14ha (30 acres) at Preston North, 2.83ha (7 acres) at Roman Way and 22.26ha (55 acres) at Broughton near junction 1 of the M55; it also has about 40.47 ha (100 acres) available further south at Skelmersdale.
Motorway opening
Agents expect the opening of the M65 extension to have a profound effect on the economy of east Lancashire – Blackburn, Accrington and Burnley – but as yet there is little sign of anticipatory moves. “A number of people are sitting on their hands pending the opening of the motorway,” says Paul Dobson of Storey Sons & Parker. He adds that some companies in the service sector made initial inquiries, but that is as far as it has gone. “They are waiting until we have actually got a motorway, which is a little short-sighted because there is not much quality accommodation immediately available.”
Blackburn has four main development areas, one beside each of the town’s M65 motorway junctions, currently under construction. These are largely controlled by the council – which is one of only two authorities in Lancashire to get unitary status in the recent local government reorganisation, the other being Blackpool. This change becomes effective in 1998.
In Blackpool, construction of the Squires Gate Link Road which has provided a dual-carriageway from junction 4 of the M55 to the south shore area has helped the industrial market on that side of town, according to Richard Wharnton of Robert Pinkus & Co.
However, plans to extend the M55 to the North Fylde area are still not scheduled by the DOT. Further north, a direct link from Heysham to the M6 is also a distant dream and until a new road materialises, traffic for the port and nearby Morecambe has to pass through the notoriously congested Lancaster.
