Belle Vue - a missed opportunity

The decision by Babergh Councillors on the Strategy Committee of Babergh, to decide that the preferred tender for the Belle Vue Regeneration is that by Premier Inn and Beefeater (Collectively Whitbread plc and hereafter referred to as the Whitbread bid), has been deeply unpopular.

Clearly the decision was not made for political reasons, nor it seems was it made for economic reasons. The other 3 bids, I understand would have been worth more money to Babergh and I argue would bring into the local economy, far more value.

One thing is clear though, the District Council did not look wide enough for alternate uses, they did not engage with a wide enough range of bodies, and did not look geographically wide enough for potential interest.

I work in the Creative Industry, a growing area of the economy, (which is quite rare only businesses related to Property and Property Development are growing according to the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Office of National Statistics). . The industry is dominated by a few centres, London, Manchester, Bristol and Brighton. In London though, agencies are facing real problems, office costs per square metre are skyrocketing rendering renegotiations of leases on these unaffordable. Meanwhile their staff are faced with being unable to afford buying a property or indeed renting a property while on average earning twice the average salary in Suffolk. Many are now actively seeking a new base outside London.

But it is not as simple as just moving to somewhere like Sudbury they need other businesses and a creative community in place. Sudbury has a few small digital agencies, a fair number of freelancers, but no real digital community. Part of the Belle Vue Community Bid was what is called a Co-working space and community areas, these are essential to incubate new businesses and bring freelancers together. It would have been radical for Sudbury, but essential to create a digital community and attract Creative businesses and agencies to Sudbury. A quick calculation tells me that 20 creative people earning £40k a year plus office rental is going to raise £1m per year, that could easily be one agency. Bring in three more (and the move of one will attract others) and you have an industry bringing in £4m a year. The existing agencies will have to up their game to survive and pay their staff accordingly or lose staff and die. Local freelancers with the right skills will immediately benefit getting work from these agencies.

All this income will be spent in the local economy, whilst some will be spent in Supermarkets much will be spent in independent businesses which will see a boost to revenues. Of course the community bid offered much more than this, an expanded park, a new surgery for Hardwick House Surgery. All, apart from the Surgery, funded by a modest apartment developments in a part of the site currently unused. Everyone wins.

Here is one of the plans of the community bid.

 Here is an artists impression of what those plans would look like.

The plan encompasses Hardwick House Doctors Surgery (paid for by the NHS) which needs to expand would welcome such a move. The reuse of Belle Vue as a Community Space and Offices to let/co-working spaces and a business incubator for start-up businesses, the latter two are currently lacking in Sudbury and District. The expansion of the Park down to Belle Vue Junction with wheelchair friendly access to the park but also stairs and grass banks - a vast improvement over current access. The improvements to the park are paid for by two new Apartment complexes, one adjacent to Belle Vue House would be above Community event rooms and the Citizens Advice Bureau whilst the other much larger complex would be on a site currently occupied by the old pumping houses for the disused (and filled in Swimming Pool). The plan also ecompasses a bus stop on the corner of Belle Vue and Great Eastern Street which would be essential if the Bus Station moves to Girling Street.

But none of this will happen now, Belle Vue will resemble a business park with an unsympathetically designed Beefeater restaurant fronting it, large swathes of car parking (through which park users including children must navigate) with an off the shelf Hotel replacing Belle Vue House.

I was sent a photograph of one of the options for the plans for the Whitbread on Belle Vue Park. It's pretty dreadful if you know what the Beefeater/PremierInn combination usually looks like, it will in my view make the entrance to Belle Vue Park resemble any standard business park you find in Towns across the country. It is certainly not pretty, it is very very conservative and above all is dominated by the car.

Even if this is not the final plan some things are obvious, the Beefeater and the Hotel need lots of parking spaces and I can see no way that access to the Park will not be lessened by either or both of: closing the southern entrance (which goes straight to the playground) and having to cross a car park for a Pub to get to the park. The hotel and "Family Restaurant" will staffed by almost exclusively by minimum waged staff earning some £13k to £15k per annum. The boost to economy from employment will be minimal, the staff will be unable to afford to shop in anything other than the cheapest supermarkets, the profits will disappear into Hedge funds or offshore and the gain to Sudbury's independent businesses will be minimal, and in the case of pubs and eating establishments probably negative.

The councillors suggest a benefit to local tourism of a new Hotel, that the very presence of a Premier Inn will attract new Tourists. Sudbury really does not make the most of its tourist attractions, the traffic congestion is a burdening factor that would put off many, the town really is not pedestrian friendly and Tourists tend to be pedestrians once parked up, or arriving by coach or train. But there are no plans to resolve these issues.

A bypass (which even the most optimistic proponent would have to agree is 10 years away) will in all likelihood reduce traffic by just 8%, a noticeable amount, but with traffic levels growing will easily go back to previous levels, Chilton Woods Traffic Assessment suggest an increase in traffic from that development of 11% and this may well be before the bypass is built.

So I think it is unlikely that the presence of a Premier Inn will actually attract many tourists and those that may choose Sudbury will find it easier to travel to Long Melford and Lavenham and other nearby attractions rather than choke on the fumes of the traffic in the centre of Sudbury. Nor will Sudbury's restaurants, pubs and other eateries benefit, customers who use Premier Inn tend to be very price conscious so will be probably use the Beefeater restaurant for meals. So will a new hotel, and pushing the nearby Hill Lodge Hotel out of business, be good for Sudbury and attract Tourists anyway. Many people think not.

But if a hotel is needed, the Belle Vue site is not the only site available, the site of the old Tax Office could just as easily be used for this purpose. The problem with that is, of course, that the site is not owned by Babergh District Council and would cost Whitbread which owns Premier Inn and Beefeater much more than the £750,000 they have proposed paying for the Belle Vue site.

Surely the benefit will be in Section 106 and Community Infrastructure Levy payments. As far as I can gather neither the Premier Inn nor the Beefeater will actually attract such payments, so the local area will not benefit from any such funds.

Why the Whitbread option was chosen is a mystery. The councillors responsible are currently hiding behind commercial confidentiality and will not reveal their business logic and rationale. I am sure they will never reveal it unless forced to.
 But a view of the scoping document http://technotim.co.uk/sites/default/files/uploadables/BelleVue-PreConcept-ScopingDoc.pdf may reveal their thinking.

In section 3, every option makes reference to a Hotel or Hotel and Family Restaurant. Clearly only one of the options ultimately considered included plans for a Hotel/Family Restaurant so on the basis of this document all the other 3 bids could be discounted. This is called Pro-bias, effectively writing the scoping document to ensure only one bidder meets the criteria. But this is meant to be an objective process and Pro-bias makes it non-objective, almost subjective in nature. We need to be assured that either a revised and unbiased scoping document was used or this document was not considered. Anything less makes the whole process unfair.

If they did use this document the decision was effectively pre-determined. So assuming they made their mind up already before the process began and this document was used brings up two other issues raised from the same document.

Looking at section 2.1 of the document titled "Overarching Vision and Objectives"

1. Open up the Park and enhance links and accessibility with the town centre
2. Improve the pedestrian link through the park to and from the town centre towards Great Cornard
3. Enhance the park offer
4. Improve the main Gateway into the town centre
5. Enhance the potential / capacity for community provision within Sudbury
6. Enhance the Economic offer in Sudbury to maximise tourist and visitor economy and other economic benefits (job creation).
7. Enable delivery of a project which is financially self sustaining and will not require long term BDC subsidy.
8. Provide a long term solution in respect of Belle Vue House without Subsidy from BDC (Retain & Reuse / Redevelopment)
9. Provide additional facilities / offer not currently available in the town centre to help boost its destination status
10. Ensure the existing community users of BVH have long term security and enhanced /updated premises in Sudbury.
11. To ensure and new development establishes complementary uses to support the use and role of the park (existing and enhanced).

Clearly the option to build a Whitbread restaurant fails to meet all the points here especially 1), 2), 3) arguably 4) and 5). It meets the rest but does nothing to enhance the Park at all.

Section 2.2 has further aims

1. Better site access
2. Raise the asset of the park / open for longer hours for all.
3. Introduce catering opportunities to serve the park
4. Establish a multi-functional building
5. Enable use of the park for events to enhance the Night time economy
6. Relocation of the BMX facility and toilets
7. Car parking spaces provided to serve future on site use
8. Provide small conference centre facilities

I don't see how more than the last aim is met by the Whitbread bid. Access to the Park is diminished not enhanced, there is no multi-functional building and placing a car park in front of the park can not in any way be beneficial to the park. The park is used by children of all ages, accompanied and unaccompanied as it has for decades, it needs a safe pedestrian route from Belle Vue Junction to the Park, it is difficult to envisage how this will be achieved with the Whitbread bid On the other hand the Community bid actually ticks almost every box.

I have been asked many times, or it has been suggested to me, that the decision is in some way insidious, that something underhand was happening, as this and another decision by some of the same Councillors don't seem to make any logical sense. I may be wrong but I don't think so. You can see why the suspicions arise though, given the choice between the Whitbread bid and the Community bid (ignoring the other two bids which I am sure had their own merits but of which I know nothing), the former looks an odd choice. I think the decision process I outline above was sufficient for the Strategy Committee to make an easy decision and discount the other 3 bids quite easily.

So we are left with the overriding view that those who reached this decision did so on the basis of ignorance of what the value of the bids really was and a basic misunderstanding of a) the affection for Belle Vue House held by the people of Sudbury b) How Belle Vue could be the launchpad for expansion of the creative industry in Sudbury and c) How the park could become an attraction of benefit to all, accessible safely to all and become a Tourist destination in itself.

If the scoping document was indeed used, in it's entirety, as a basis for the decision making it renders the whole process moot as with only one bid meeting the requirements of section 3.  The result was, therefore, effectively predetermined. The process should have been open, the scoping document should have omitted Section 3 and wider research carried out. We should be told the truth, those who worked on the other bids deserve it and increasing numbers of Sudbury residents demand it

There was the opportunity to do something truly innovative in Sudbury, that opportunity was missed.