Reviewing the Preston, South Ribble and Lancashire City Deal for transport infrastructure & housing

The Preston, South Ribble, and Lancashire Deal was signed in September 2013; the first of a ‘second wave’ of City Deals to be formally agreed with the government. The Deal geography consists of the Local Authority areas of Preston City Council (PCC) and South Ribble Borough Council (SRBC). It is overseen by a Partnership that consists of PCC, SRBC, Lancashire County Council (LCC), Homes England, and the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership (LEP). Delivery began in April 2014.

The Deal was predicated on the need to ‘front fund’ significant strategic transport and local community infrastructure schemes to unlock locally new private sector housing and commercial development. Partners proposed originally to deliver 15,420 homes over 15 years, but the government determined that a further 2,000 should be added to this total and the time period for delivery should be reduced to 10 years.

To deliver the Deal, and its linked economic outcomes, it was agreed that Deal partners would pool collective resources and establish an Infrastructure Delivery Programme (IDP) to deliver the infrastructure investment required. This included the following six income streams:

• Capital investment from Government;
• Capital investment from LCC;
• New Homes Bonus (NHB) payments on Deal sites from LCC, PCC, and SRBC;
• Community Infrastructure Levy payments (CIL) on Deal sites from PCC and SRBC;
• Developer contributions on Deal sites from PCC and SRBC; and
• Uplift in business rates (NNDR) on Deal sites from PCC  and SRBC.

LCC was the only local partner with the financial capacity to provide overall underpinning, so partners agreed that it would act as the Accountable Body for the Deal.

Between 2018 and 2019, Steer Economic Development was commissioned to undertake a detailed internal review of the performance of the Deal, identifying where and how ‘in-flight’ change might be made to improve performance and outcomes. As a non-competitive addition to this work, Steer Economic Development was appointed in August 2019 to help advise the Partnership on how the Deal’s Terms of Reference and underpinning Framework Agreement might be improved to drive out ambiguities and uncertainties flagged in our preceding review.

Our work involved close engagement with the County Council’s Legal Team, the Deal Partnership Manager and individual Deal partners to achieve a consensual and clarified basis for the next period of the Deal’s operation and further development.