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This week seems to have been a week for Swindon to feature in surveys, some local, some national. As always with statistics, the publicity has been misleading.

First there were the May results of Swindon Strategic Economic Partnership’s business survey. This showed that 45% of those surveyed expect an increase in turnover during the next 3 months whilst 24% expect it to fall and 31% expect no change. The Adver translated that into a headline of ‘Business leaders optimistic about recovery’ whilst Swindon Business News managed a rather more restrained ‘Local firms seeing some signs of easing’. With the survey also showing that 47% expect no change in ‘General Business’ — whatever that is — and 68% expecting no change in employment, it’s the headlines that are optimistic, not the business leaders.

The week also saw the publication of a report by the Centre for Cities on youth unemployment. The press seemed keen to portray the report as showing that youth unemployment in Swindon is high. For example, the Telegraph:

Students in Swindon are facing an uncertain future as the one-time boom town takes a beating at the school of hard knocks.

and the Adver:

According to research institute Centre For Cities, the number of unemployed youngsters in Swindon has rocketed from 2.39 per cent in February last year to 7.67 per cent last month – the highest increase in the country.

Now, it’s true that the number of people claiming unemployment benefits in Swindon is now above the national average and that youth unemployment and unemployment in general have risen more quickly in Swindon than elsewhere.

Since the beginning of the recession, Swindon’s claimant count has risen to 5.4 percent – passing the GB average for the first time in 30 years.

But as the report’s own figure 6 shows, youth unemployment is still below the UK average: it may have, in the Adver’s words, rocketed, but it is still below average.

Finally there was a story that people liked living in Swindon but dislike the council.

MOST people like living in Swindon but dislike the local council and feel they have little influence over official decisions. Those are the findings of a major new survey that questioned hundreds of people across the town about their local neighbourhoods and the extent to which they felt able to make their voices heard.

The Place Survey conducted by local councils for the Department of Communities and Local Government does indeed show that 80% of the Swindon population are ‘satisfied with their local area as a place to live’ whilst only 27% believe ‘they can influence decisions in their local area’ and 41% are ‘satisfied with how council runs things’. But the national averages for those are 80%, 29% and 45% respectively. For an example of an unpopular council, try Northampton (only 27% satisfied with the council), for a stubborn one try Gosport (only 20% think they can influence it). So, rather than Swindon Borough Council being singled out by its residents for disdain as the headline would have us believe, their attitude to it is actually rather average.

Walking home from work yesterday I saw at least one person making use of the New Swindon Company’s latest offering: mirrored windows with headless transfers. A woman ran up to the former Zavvi shop front, struck a pose for about one second in front of a headless James Bond transfer, had a little giggle and rushed on. Whether the New Swindon Company succeed in getting posers to upload their photographs is another matter. At the moment, the address given in their news item is to a domain without a website. The Strike a Pose Swindon website is at www.strikeaposeswindon.com — itself just a link to some buried pages on the Swindon Big Screen website — rather than the ‘.co.uk’ equivalent. As I seem to be the first person to provide a link to the website, it’s no surprise that at the moment the gallery is empty.

That’s not my verdict: it’s that of Mr Bluh on some of the latest witterings of the New Swindon Company’s Mr James. It’s perhaps indicative of just how monotonous his ramblings have become that his own financial backers are not sounding overly supportive. As Mr James was talking about a part of the town centre for which there is, on his own admission, no investment interest yet, his words were even emptier than usual. The plans are now six years old; Mr James has been talking about them for almost four of those years.

With every repeat of his tales about what might happen to the town centre in the future but in six years hasn’t yet, the reputation of the New Swindon Company as an organisation delivers nothing at great expense grows. Mr James needs to learn that if he hasn’t got anything new and substantive to say, he’d be better off not speaking at all.

With the current economic conditions, I’m expecting a long silence.

I really don’t know why Mr James of the New Swindon Company bothers to waste his breath speculating on when the old college building on Regents Circus will be demolished.

There is still a possibility it could come down this year but it’s unlikely…. We are waiting on the developers. They are not going to demolish the site until everything is signed because, essentially, that’s all they have over the council.

More accurately, it’s all they’ve got against the local residents. As the New Swindon Company themselves explained six months ago, once the building is demolished, residents on the hill behind could legitimately object to new development on the basis that it would spoil their view. If you bear that in mind, the excuses given by Mr Fisher of Ashfield Land look like a blatant lie.

I can’t tell you exactly when it is going to come down because we are still in the final stages of getting an agreement with the supermarket. Our ambition is certainly to start this year but I can’t guarantee that. We can’t demolish anything until that deal is done because we have an agreement with the council on keeping the car park open.

Hmm… I could’ve sworn that, in other towns, a frequent use for redundant sites between demolition and redevelopment is as car parks.

The Beeb has happily trumpeted that the South West Regional Development Agency is bringing forward £3M of ‘investment’ in the regeneration of Swindon town centre, whilst making cuts almost everywhere else. But that’s only part of the story. The details of the plans say rather more about how that money is being spent.

Swindon town centre, 2009/2010: Given the current recession and significant uncertainty in the property market, the Agency has agreed to bring forward £2.85m of investment in town centre regeneration projects into 2009/10. This investment, which has now been approved, will help to improve the town centre including helping to tackle empty units, creating construction jobs now and helping to create the conditions for private sector investment when market confidence returns

‘Tackling empty buildings’ sounds like more demolition to me, with only a little bit of building going on. The briefing and project list also make clear that this is the last money Swindon will be receiving from the agency for the foreseeable future.

In five particular areas where we are currently involved in a large number of projects — Plymouth, West of England, Swindon, Gloucester and our support for the aerospace industry — we have decided that we need to place an upper limit on what will still be significant future support for projects in these areas….
Swindon town centre, 2010/2011: Given the shortage of funds available to the Agency in 2010/11 other partners will fund activity in this year. This collaborative approach will allow the RDA and its partners collectively to keep regeneration and development moving forward

That to me sounds like Swindon’s tax payers picking up the tab for the New Swindon Company’s ineffectiveness. Nice. A ‘collaborative approach’ where Swindon gets told what to build by a quango it didn’t ask for, but after this year doesn’t get any extra money to pay for it. That doesn’t look like much of a collaboration to me.

I’ve never had much trust in property developers and their colleagues, but with every passing bad news story about the regeneration of Swindon town centre, the words of the New Swindon Company become less believable. It’s just a couple of weeks since Mr James of the New Swindon Company was claiming that Modus were fully committed to the Regents Place development… which they’d just shelved. Two days ago, after Modus went into administration, Mr James was still as over-optimistic as ever.

Being placed into administration was one of a number of possibilities and therefore we have been looking into how we can still move forward with development at Regent Place… and we will work to get Regent Place back on track.

Now it’s reported that the development is to be scaled back to little more than a supermarket in Granville Street car park.

Maybe there’s room for food retailers to come into the town centre. If there was a big supermarket interested maybe they could go onto the Granville Street car park site. It would be something to attract people in and then there could be restaurants attached to it.

A supermarket. Stunning. And plenty of joined up thinking there as a supermarket is also proposed to occupy the old college building on Victoria Road.

There’s another aspect to this that undermines what little credibility the New Swindon Company had. It’s not so long ago that they were telling us that regeneration is a very long term thing, that couldn’t be blown of course by troubles in the economy, and that Swindon would be a destination to rival others in the south. It’s all different now. Mr James’ has scaled back the ambitions.

We are not trying to compete with Cribbs Causeway or The Oracle. We need to concentrate on making Swindon special and attracting people to the centre. We are looking at bringing more restaurants into the town centre.

Mr Young has forgotten the long term nature of the plans.

The Modus scheme was the right one for the time but we now have to look at how the market has changed and see how our regeneration fits into that…. It’s a great opportunity to reflect on what will bring people to Swindon, considering there are already two huge shopping developments at Bristol and Reading.

And now they’re thinking of another round of ‘consultation’, which will keep them and some consultants in a job whilst nothing much is happening.

This hyperbole and bluster would almost be comical if we weren’t paying dearly for this farce through our taxes.

At last, we know how much the Radio 1 Big Weekend cost the people of Swindon, about £400,000 — much the same as it has cost other councils. Half of that, £200,000, went on transport and stewarding; another £160,000 on the police and £40,000. What we don’t yet know — and probably won’t for some time, if ever — is what the financial benefit to Swindon was, despite the council’s speculation.

In the absence of much hard evidence, I’m of the view that this was probably money well spent. What worries me is that the council seems to have made little, if any, effort to do the sums in advance. To quote Mr Young.

It was difficult, as we didn’t know how much it would cost but we knew that Cardiff spent £500,000 in 2003.

And that is what they regard as careful financial planning!

Since my posting yesterday, the government’s representative in South Swindon, Ms Snelgrove, has published a more detailed breakdown of some of the expenses she had earlier grouped together. To be honest, there’s little of interest in this additional detail. One might wonder in what way a vase (£3.99), pictures (£130) and an ornament (£25) were essential to her performing her duties as an MP, or whether they are consistent with yesterday’s claim

my claims should be for expenses I would not have if I was doing another job working in Swindon only, rather than living and working in two places (London and Swindon) as MPs have to.

We can see how she managed to spend over £2000 on her bedroom (£1000 on a bed, over £1100 on wardrobes, cupboards and drawers) and over £4000 on her living room (including £1000 on a suite, then £356 on chairs two years later, and over £700 on storage units and £395 on a TV unit) but that doesn’t make it appear any better value for money. However, what it does is show how shallow is the spin she’s given the Adver.

I would like the House of Commons to have a hotel because all you really need is a crash pad.

If she really believed that all she needs is a crash pad, then would she have bought something that is clearly much more than a crash pad and then furnished it in some style at our expense? Ms Snelgrove’s actions — and her expense claims — speak louder than her words.

With the economy in trouble and Swindon seemingly suffering particularly hard, it would be nice to think that our councillors are concentrating on steering the town through the economic storm. Perhaps considering options to get the regeneration of the town centre back on track, or looking for ways encourage some of what little investment is available to be made in Swindon.

Sadly, the reality is that our politicians are instead busying themselves with the pettier side of politics. From the blue nest there are rumours of infighting. From the red nest come shallow gestures aimed more at getting publicity than having an economic impact — ’tis odd that the red nest now feel they could live without big councillor allowances, when just three months ago they voted in favour of them, and still have their snouts in the trough at the local police authority.

With there being no local election this year, it’ll be another year yet before our local politicians get a necessary reminder that they’re elected to represent the people of Swindon, not just themselves.

One thing has been missing from discussion of Radio 1’s Big Weekend coming to Swindon. That is how much it will cost Swindon Borough Council to support it. There’s been plenty of speculation, but nothing from the council to say how much they estimate it and the associated fringe events will cost.

Given that no other council has turned down the chance of hosting this event in the past, does the cost really matter? Well, yes. Even if you believe, as komadori does, that this is something that the council should support, some evidence for that belief would be comforting, especially considering the cost cutting that the Council felt was necessary for this year’s budget.

The Council claims there should be an economic benefit to Swindon, and quote the estimated benefit to Preston of holding the event in 2007 of about £1.4M. With the cost to some councils that have hosted the event in the past being as high as £0.5M, the economy in a mess and applications for tickets seemingly half what they were last year (tho’ still heavily oversubscribed), that benefit could easily disappear and become a debt.