Blue Sky report 17-04-09

56 Pages·2009·1.1 MB·English

Report

For UK Coal
Widdrington Regeneration Partnership

April 2009
TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Background
1.1 Location of Blue Sky Forest
1.2 Project History
1.3 The Blue Sky Forest Concept
1.4 Local Economic Conditions

2 Tourism policy and tourism trends
2.1 Tourism Policy
2.2 Basic Tourism Offer
2.3 Visitor Trends and Spend

3 Original Blue Sky Forest proposals - critique
3.1 Overview
3.2 Indoor Snow Ski Centre
3.3 Adventure Centre
3.4 Holiday village
3.5 Hotel Resort with Golf Courses
3.6 Observation Tower

4 Revised proposals
4.1 Outdoor Dry Ski Slope
4.2 Adventure Centre
4.3 Holiday Village
4.4 Championship Golf Centre
4.5 Children’s Attraction
4.6 Water Sports
4.7 Driving Experience
4.8 County Events Centre
4.9 Equestrian Centre
4.10 Retail and Service Centre

5 Other development
5.1 Centre for Renewable Energy
5.2 Biomass Research and Demonstration Facility
5.3 Com-Vert Green Composting
5.4 Vertical Aeroponic Growing Systems
5.5 Peel Energy
5.6 Rail Linked Employment Site
5.7 Miscellaneous Development

6 The Masterplan
7 Implementation
7.1 Planning / New Unitary / LDF Core Strategy / RSS Revisions
7.2 The Delivery Model – UK Coal
7.3 Hierarchy of Projects and Project Phasing
7.4 Next Steps
7.5 Role of the WRP
7.6 Restoration as an Opportunity
7.7 Accessibility

Appendices

1 Original BSF proposals – critique of KPMG 2004 proposals
1 Background

Wardell Armstrong LLP with Bone Wells Urbecon Ltd are commissioned by UK Coal to review and update
an original 2004 ambitious vision by KPMG for the creation of a new tourism and leisure destination
known as ‘Blue Sky Forest’ in Northumberland.

The Widdrington Regeneration Partnership has the strong ambition of generating significant economic
and community benefits for the local area and the wider region.

1.1 Location of Blue Sky Forest

Blue Sky Forest is located in an extensive area of open-cast coal mines located in the Northumberland
County divisions of Chevington and Ulgham. These areas comprise several villages including
Widdrington Village, Stobswood, Widdrington Station, Ulgham and Chevington encompassing the wards
of Red Row, Hadston and Broom Hill in Northumberland (map of site location – see Figure 1-1). The
sites identified for development are the Stobswood and Maiden’s Hall / Steadsburn surface mines. These
sites cover over 600 hectares each and include two rail connected disposal points knows as Butterwell
DP and Widdrington DP. This represents one of the largest brownfield parcels of land available for
development in the North East England.

The Maidens Hall and Steadsburn complex started over 28 years ago with the excavation of the West
Chevington site. A common overburden stocking area was subsequently utilised by the Colliersdene,
Maidens Hall, Maidens Hall Extension and Steadsburn sites. Bad weather and planning agreements
delayed the diversion of the highway and coaling at Steadsburn eventually started in March 2008.

The sites are owned by UK Coal and the proposed restoration programme is to return the land to a
mixture of agriculture, woodland and water based uses incorporating a degree of public access via a
network of footpaths.

Stobswood at the latest estimate will be available for development by Autumn 2010, some two years prior
to the availability of Maiden’s Hall. This presents an opportunity to phase the development of Blue Sky
Forest.

General road accessibility to the sites is good for current volumes of traffic although the main access
road, the A1, does suffer from some peak time congestion. Road journeys from central Newcastle
typically take between 30 and 40 minutes and Newcastle Airport is within 20 minutes drive. Rail times
from Newcastle to Widdrington Station are 30 minutes. Road travel times could be reduced if ‘dual-
carriaging’ of the remaining single-carriageway of the A1 is undertaken as planned.

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Figure 1-1 Site location

1.2 Project History

The KPMG 2004 Report presented a bold vision for the creation of the Blue Sky Forest. This included an
ambition to:

•••• create a mix of tourism and leisure attractions and facilities to attract visitors on a regional scale;
•••• generate significant additional local and regional economic and social benefits;
•••• enable the diversification of the area’s rural economy;
•••• promote environmental sustainability;
•••• encourage operationally and financially self-sustaining attractions, facilities and services.
•••• offer the employment potential of over 800 direct full time equivalent jobs, and support a further 245
jobs indirectly.

The vision included an indoor ski centre of national scale, an adventure centre, a hotel resort, holiday
village, observation tower and ancillary retail and leisure facilities.

Since 2004 little perceived progress was made to develop and deliver the vision. In 2007 a re-formed
Widdrington Regeneration Partnership encompassed the support of Castle Morpeth Borough Council and
Northumberland County Council to take the project forward, particularly trying within the review process to
harness realistic private sector interests.

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1.3 The Blue Sky Forest Concept

The vision for Blue Sky Forest (BSF) remains that of creating a new year-round major tourism and leisure
destination that includes a range of regionally significant indoor and outdoor attractions, facilities and
activities as part of phased development programme.

The mix of components will be sufficient to appeal to both local and regional residents and existing
overnight tourists to the region as well as generating additional visitors, to the region. Furthermore, it will
enable the diversification of the area’s rural economy, promote environmental sustainability and ensure
the development of commercially led tourism and leisure attractions and facilities in the region.

The Blue Sky Forest concept was established following a rigorous appraisal of alternative tourism and
leisure land-use options. Each option has now been further evaluated against a range of criteria,
including market, commercial criteria and strategic fit with the objectives and priorities of relevant local,
sub-regional and regional public sector organisations. This has arrived at a preferred concept - a
masterplan.

Although tourism and leisure development forms the core of the proposed land uses in BSF, the scale of
the sites is sufficient to accommodate other uses, complementary to the leisure activities. Proposals for
these uses, including renewable energy developments, are described in this report.

1.4 Local Economic Conditions

To show the local economic context for Blue Sky Forest a comparative appraisal has been made for
some different economic parameters. For this purpose the following have been defined:

• immediate locality: Chevington and Ulgham Wards
• surrounding District: Castle Morpeth
• neighbouring Districts: Alnwick; Blyth Valley; Wansbeck
• sub-region: Northumberland County
• region: North East

Chevington and Ulgham Wards encompass the Widdrington villages and comprise the immediate Blue
Sky Forest area – see Figure 1-2. The local Districts are shown in Figure 1-3.

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Figure 1-2 Chevington and Ulgham Wards and Blue Sky Forest site

The following section is an analysis of the employment status and trends in the wards of Chevington and
Ulgham. The analysis is extended to the comparator areas of Castle Morpeth, Alnwick, Blyth Valley and
Wansbeck. The last three of these districts are included in this section not just as comparators but
because of the employment benefits they could derive with the implementation of the Blue Sky Forest
project. Data from NOMIS and from the 2001 Census are used for the analysis.

Figure 1-3 Blue Sky Forest local districts

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Socio-economic assessment

In 2001, Castle Morpeth had a population of 49,001, Chevington 3,223 and Ulgham 2,909. Table 1-1
shows this distribution of population and economic activity for the Blue Sky Forest parishes and the
comparison areas. As can be seen, the distribution of the population by economic activity is very similar
for Castle Morpeth and Ulgham, with around two thirds being economically active. The same figure is
much lower for Chevington: 44.8%.

Table 1-1 Total population and economic activity structure – study area and comparators

Castle Blyth North
Chevington Ulgham Alnwick Wansbeck England
Morpeth Valley East

Total population 3,223 2,909 49,001 31,029 59,719 61,158 2,515,442 49,138,831
Economically
44.8 62.7 61.7 65.1 65.9 62.2 61.3 66.9
active
Employees 35.3 49.6 47.6 49.2 54.7 51.4 49.2 52.6
Self-employed 8.2 12.8 18.4 21.4 9.5 8.8 10.5 16.6
Unemployed 4.8 5.1 2.8 3.7 4.4 4.8 4.5 3.3
Economically
55.2 37.3 38.3 34.9 34.1 37.8 38.7 33.1
inactive
Source: ONS 2001 Census; the last available verified source
The economic activity rate for the district of Castle Morpeth is similar to the regional average but well
below the England mean (66.9%). Rates of unemployment in the North East are higher than in England:
4.5% against 3.3%. Although Castle Morpeth is performing well (2.8% unemployed among the
economically active population), the wards of Chevington and Ulgham show slightly more negative
figures: respectively 4.8% and 5.1%.

The percentage of self-employed people is higher in Castle Morpeth than in the rest of England and in the
North East as a whole. Chevington and Ulgham have much lower rates of self-employment lower than the
district mean, suggesting a less favourable employment structure.

Employment trends and sectoral distribution
ABI employment data provides a general indication of employment structure and trends in the areas
under analysis, subject to limitations in the sample based data, including discontinuity in the time series.
Trends are mixed as shown in 1-ure 3. The district of Castle Morpeth has performed well when compared
to Northumberland. Between 1998 and 2006 employment increased by 10.5% compared to only 1.6% for
Northumberland county. It matched the regional average, the North East Region growing at: 10.4% over
the same period. Castle Morpeth has thus performed better than the surrounding districts. Alnwick’s
growth was considerably less (3.4%), while employment actually declined in Blyth Valley (-2.7%) and
Wansbeck (-4.2%). This shows how Blue Sky Forest could act as an employment opportunity for the
surrounding districts.

The employment trends for Chevington and Ulgham are very different. While jobs increased in the first
ward by 22.3%, with a net rise in the number of employed people of about 250 the same figure for
Ulgham is negative. The employment level in Ulgham decreased by 36% between 1998 and 2006,a net
loss of some 180 employed people. Figure 1-4 summarizes the main trends.

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Figure 1-4 Employment change in areas of interest for Blue Sky Forest project.

Source: Annual Business Inquiry (ABI) – NOMIS..

Table 1-2 shows how employment is distributed across sectors for the Chevington and Ulgham wards,
the district of Castle Morpeth and England as a whole. The energy and water sector is not surprisingly
employing a significantly higher percentage of population in Ulgham and Chevington than in the rest of
England. In 2006, 13.7% was employed in this sector against a national mean equal to 0.5%. Although
significant, this figure has shown a decline: there were 270 people working in the Energy and Industrial
sector in 1998 against 234 in 2006.

Table 1-2 Sectoral employment and change 1998-2006 (1)

Chevington & Ulgham Castle Morpeth England
Sector
no. no. no.
% % %
employees employees employees
Agriculture n.a. 0.1 300 1.3 177,000 0.8
Energy and water
250 13.7 350 1.4 113,000 0.5
Manufacturing
50 3.8 950 4.0 2,481,000 10.9
Construction
50 3.0 1,850 7.8 1,056,000 4.6
Distrib,. hotels & restaurants
100 6.4 3,800 15.9 5,385,000 23.7
Transport & communications
<50 1.1 450 1.9 1,378,000 6.1
Banking, finance & insurance,
etc <50 0.6 1,450 6.0 4,989,000 21.9
Public administration, education
& health 1,150 68.8 13,650 57.1 5,989,000 26.3
Other services
50 2.6 1,100 4.5 1,197,000 5.3
Total
1,700 100.0 23,850 100.0 22,767,000 100.0
Source: ABI – NOMIS. All employment figures rounded to nearest 50.
Also significant the difference between the percentage of employment in the public administration,
education and health sector between the area under analysis and England as a whole. In 2006, 1,176
people were employed in this sector in Ulgham and Chevington, representing the 68.8% of the employed
population against a district mean of 57.1% and a national mean of 26.3%. The surprisingly high
percentage of population working in this sector is imputable to Chevington rather than Ulgham.

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Table 1-3 Demographic statistics for Blue Sky Forest project, 2001

All Persons - All Persons - Aged
Total All Persons All Persons All Persons - Aged 45 - 64 65 and Over
Population - Aged 0 -15 - Aged 16 - Aged 30 -44 (Males), 45 - 59 (Males), 60 and
(Count) (%) 29 (%) (%) (Females) (%) Over (Females) (%)
Ward
Chevington 3,225 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.
Ulgham 2,909 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.
Local
Authority
Alnwick 31,029 16.9 12.9 19.9 26.4 23.9
Blyth
Valley 81,265 19 16.7 21.2 25 18.2
Castle
Morpeth 49,001 17.1 14.1 19.2 26.4 23.1
Wansbeck 61,138 18.2 15.9 21.6 23.8 20.4
Region
North East 2,515,442 18.6 18 21.1 22.8 19.5
Country
England 49,138,831 19.2 18.1 22.4 21.7 18.6

The reliance on the public sector in the area is pronounced. Castle Morpeth (57.1%), Wansbeck (47.5%)
and Durham (46.7%) head the list of public-sector dependent districts in the UK. State dependency is
further exacerbated by the thousands of people on benefits in these towns.

In terms of earnings, Castle Morpeth is well below the national average: the average weekly gross pay is
£370 against £460.3 for England as a whole. The figure is also slightly lower than the North East mean
(£388)1.

Demographic profile

The urban residential population of the North East is roughly divided between Tyneside-Wearside (Tyne
and Wear) and Teeside - 1,650,000 and 875,000 respectively. 65% of Tyneside’s population live in urban
areas - 15% in South Northumberland and Tyne Valley and 20% in the North Durham area. Almost half
of Teeside’s population live in and around Teeside itself. For the region and local areas around BSF
Table 1-3 shows that it also has a relatively older population than nationally, which suggests that it is less
dynamic.

Source: 2001 census.

1 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), 2007
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