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Urban Regeneration Project

Finance and Evalutation of Regeneration Projects.

Any urban regeneration project or programme is designed with the intention of achieving specific requirements. These requirements are normally incorporated in the development and business plans and are also presented as part of the case which is presented for funding.

When targets are specified before or during a policy implementation programme, it is important to put in measures, formalities and procedures in place to check and report progress of such policy implementation exercise. These measures, formalities or procedures may involve collecting different information such as management information, land-use surveys, other direct surveys (of firms or occupants) and the requirement that those in receipt of funding should report their progress or achievements.

Irrespective of the purpose for urban regeneration and despite many changes that have occurred in respect to the detailed form or structures of policy, the participants in urban regeneration programme will need to demonstrate that they are aware of what they intend to do, what they want to achieve, how they intend to achieve their objectives and how they will monitor and evaluate their actions.

Given the wide range of actors and organisations involved in urban regeneration, it is important to be able to point the origins and consequences of any difficulties that may arise or that might have been come across during the process of implementation of an urban regeneration project. (B. Moore, R. spires 2000). The SRB guidance manual states that evaluation is needed both at local and national levels. Local evaluation is the responsibility of individual regeneration partnerships (DETR 1999).

Monitoring and evaluation are closely linked to policy development both when projects are being designed and implemented and at strategic level. Therefore I would assume monitoring and evaluation form part of the policy process and are related to policy choice and the establishment of aims and objectives.

Monitoring and evaluation commence early during the process of urban regeneration. As a problem needs to be identified and defined before any regeneration activity commences, this requires existing or baseline conditions in an area to be measured or compared with the local, regional or national coverage. The root of problems would have to be analysed, the length of the existence of the problems would also have to be analysed.

The cycle starts with the identification of the problem to be addressed, continues through the various processes of planning and strategy and later progresses to the point of implementation and eventually to completion of the project. In all these period monitoring and evaluation would help to identify targets and to incorporate them within an agreed schedule of actions and implementation, measure and monitor specific aspects of implementation and to evaluate the overall success, progress or performance of a project or programme i.e efficiency and effectiveness.

The framework within which urban regeneration strategy development occurs, the identification of the problem to be addressed and their causes places great emphasis on the proper functioning of competitive markets as the means by which resources such as unemployed labour, vacant and derelict land can be efficiently used. The traditional model or case for government and other intervention is based on evidence that markets are failing to work properly and policies are used to check or address such problems of market failures.

Urban problems are quite complex because they are outcomes of a set of interrelated problems which combine to reduce the competitiveness of firms in a town or city, the competitiveness of individuals or the competitiveness of the area in attracting inward investment of physical, financial and human capital. One important aspect of problem definition here is that of specifying target groups and target geographical areas.

For any policy to be cost effective and viable, it is important that the output of such policy reaches the target group for which it is designed or that policies achieve their aims. This means that the Policy achieves what it was designed to achieve. If a policy is targeted towards creating jobs for inner city unemployed residents, it may not achieve its objective if people commute into the same region from outside to take up the jobs, and any jobs made available elsewhere are inaccessible to the same inner city residents.

Another example is if some form of subsidy is paid to firms who end up with profits however and have little or no benefits to the local people or local economy. These are some examples of policy missing its targets if there are no models to guide those responsible for developing those policies.

In developing an urban regeneration strategy there needs to be a review of current programmes and projects, including the identification of all agencies and partnerships involved. It is also important to establish what is not being done, what is not working and where there might be need to refocus or realign the strategy.

This review would also look into auditing the levels and sources of funding and its allocation across the policy or projects. Objectives chosen for strategy would need to be achievable, realistic and should be directly linked to the identified problems of an area and their underlying causes and also to the agreed priorities of the strategy.

The choice of what is measured and the judgement as to what has been achieved during an evaluation process cannot normally be eliminated from a wider political or cultural context. The political aims influence choices which in turn set the context for monitoring and evaluation activities. The political context here ensures there is a degree of accountability, comparability between programmes or projects in terms of their achievements and a realisation of the possibility of transferring policies and good practice between areas.

Timing during the early stages of policy implementation is quite important; at the early stages the focus is mostly on monitoring actions. As the process of the regeneration programme or initiative continues, focus will shift to output, outcomes and added value. At this stage, issues of effectiveness become more important. (B. Moore and R. Spires 2000)

In terms of timing, there are about 3 types of evaluation. They are final, interim, rolling.

Final evaluation is aimed out towards the end of a regeneration project. It looks outwards and addresses the Government, local authorities, agencies and the people whom a scheme is intended to benefit. Its main purpose is to show accountability, showing how far the achievements of the programme or scheme justify the public expenditure and other resources it has used up during the course of the project. It also focuses on good practice for others to learn from.

Interim evaluation helps partnership boards, executive teams and project delivery agencies improve performance. It reconsiders strategies, objectives, reviews progress, suggests changes which could still be made during the implementation of the scheme and identify information which would be needed for the final evaluation.

Rolling evaluation involves the use of key indicators, indices and periodic reviews to assess performance or progress. It is directly linked to the continuation of funding and the rollover of delivery plans so its procedures are prescribed by government’s guidance. It involves government organisations and regional development agencies in a supervisory role.

Quite a number of partnerships carry out other types of rolling evaluation over and above government requirements. Rolling evaluation is similar to monitoring in that it is continuous, but it goes beyond monitoring in its depth of analysis considering final objectives and outcomes and not just activities and outputs.

Evaluation is a key tool in checking the efficiency and effectiveness of policy initiatives. It provides a basis for judging whether there is still a rational for policy interventions and weather implementation is resulting in the expected outcome with the required timeframe. Evaluation checks progress of a regeneration project against set targets in a transparent manner. Evaluation compares existing or actual project impact against the agreed strategic plans.

Evaluation looks at the earlier set objectives, the achievement so far and how tasks have been accomplished. The nature of evaluation is influenced by resource availability i.e skills, personnel, capacity to collect, organise and analyse information including data. Availability of resource will always determine the breadth and depth or the evaluation process.

Evaluation should not be confused with monitoring which also seeks to check the performance or progress of a scheme and to identify opportunities for improvement. Evaluation goes beyond this in that it assesses impact against a schemes objective and tests that the objective remains valid.

Monitoring can be defined as the systematic collection and analysis of information during the progression of a project. Monitoring is aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of a project or organisation. It is based on targets set and activities planned during the planning phase of any regeneration initiative. Monitoring helps to keep projects on track and easily makes it known where projects are not going in accordance with laid down plans or objectives.

Monitoring allows various agencies involved in an intervention to know if available resources are being well utilized and it provides a very useful foundation for evaluation. Monitoring involves establishing indicators of efficiency, effectiveness and impact, collecting and recording of information, analysing of information, using the information to inform day to day management during a regeneration project. Monitoring of programmes or policies is influenced by the information needs of managers of any project. Evaluation uses a lot of monitoring information. Monitoring is always concerned with actions and take-up rather than impact.

Monitoring is important for understanding and interpreting findings from evaluation. Monitoring is useful for establishing suitable comparison groups and is also important where the evaluation requires a sample survey to be undertaken because it provides a useful sampling frame for the sampling selection. Evaluation always needs information on the various ways or extent to which programmes are delivered especially where partnerships are involved like the SRB and the European structural Funds Programmes where partnership is a central part of the policy process.

Those who fund programmes are very much interested in monitoring information because it provides them with information on the activities undertaken, the extent of implementation, the take up of programmes and whether certain criteria such as eligibility criteria are being adhered to.

Evaluation usually needs to recognise that the institutional framework within which policy is delivered will influence both how policies work and with what effect. Evaluation is usually concerned with the added value of initiatives and the net additional outcomes which contribute towards aims and objectives and help to correct market failures. It should be brought in from the onset of a project. This helps to ensure that necessary information is available to establish baselines against which achievements can be evaluated.

The following are initial steps which aid good evaluation; Good quality information, Clear definition of objectives and targets, Clear definition of intended beneficiaries both for the whole scheme and its separate elements, Good quality project appraisals, showing clearly what each project is intended to achieve, when, how and at what cost., Effective monitoring systems which identify outputs accurately and in a form which facilitates identification of outcomes.

• Monitoring and evaluation have the following factors in common

• Efficiency; they both tell the ratio between input and output.

• Effectiveness; measures the extent to which a regeneration project achieve its specific objectives.

• Impact; allows one to ascertain if any improvement has been made in relation to the problems being addressed.

Evaluation could not be objective even within the context of a regeneration programme since the essence of evaluation is to assist in the review, revision of policies, plans or strategies or to ascertain the viability of schemes, there would have to be key indices which would form the basis of the evaluation exercise.

As mentioned earlier, Monitoring and evaluation of policies is influenced by the information needs of the managers of a project, there needs to be indicators by which performance or output could be measured against. A regeneration exercise would already have key performance indicators before and during the policy implementation stage. This would provide measures for assessing the achievement of a policy objective and the consequences of action taken.

The targets and outcome of an initiative need to be matched with the needs of the area in question. Also most regeneration exercises need to be aligned to specific areas to reflect the initiative, opportunities and circumstances in that area.

Urban regeneration evaluation frameworks are increasingly following an indicator based approach by involving contextual measures to identify the baseline assessment of the area, the conditions within which the strategy is operating and the effects of policy action (Wong 2000: Audit commission). Key indicators would have to be supplemented by quantitative and qualitative information from the views of users and beneficiaries.

An evaluation task could also be seen as objective as it does not rely alone on the views and judgement of those directly involved in the policy formulation and implementation.

References

Armstrong H (et al) (2002) “The evaluation of community development initiatives” Urban studies 39, pp. 457-481

B Moore and R. Spires, 2000, Monitoring and Evaluation in Urban Regeneration, in P Roberts and H Sykes (eds.), Urban Regeneration: a Handbook, London: Sage, pp 203-227.

Charity Evaluation Services assessed via http://www.ces-vol.org.uk on 15/12/2007

Communities and local Government assessed on 15/12/2007 via

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/citiesandregions

Department of Trade and Industry (1991) Evaluation of the Task Force Initiative, PACEC, Cambridge.

Dobbs L, Moore C, (2002) “Engaging communities in Area-based Regeneration: The Role of Participatory Evaluation” Policy Studies 23(3) pp. 157-171.

Hall S, Hickman P. (2002)”Neighbourhood Renewal Urban Policy: A Comparison on New Approach in England and France” Regional Studies 36(6) pp. 691-696.

Hansen H.F (2005) “Choosing Evaluation Models: A discussion on Evaluation Design” Evaluation (11) pp. 447-462.

Hemphill L., McGreal S., Berry J (2004) “An indicator based approach to measuring Sustainable urban regeneration performance: Part 2, empirical evaluation and case- study analysis” Urban Studies 41(4) pp. 757-772.

Saunders M (2006) Do We Hear the Voices? The Presence of Evaluation Theory and Practice in Social Development”. Evaluation 12, pp 251-264

Yin H. 1999, “Evaluating Urban Regeneration Programmes in Britain”, Evaluation (5), pp. 422-438

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