MPs attack Gateway jobs strategy

Holly Sutton, Regeneration & Renewal, 22 June 2007

Gateway vision: but how many jobs will go to locals?

Permanent secretary for the Department for Communities and Local Government Peter Housden, DCLG director-general of programmes, policy and innovation Richard McCarthy, and Thames Gateway chief executive Judith Armitt all faced a barrage of questions and derisory comments on the performance of the Thames Gateway development during a select committee hearing held last week.

MP Ian Davidson, a member of the public accounts committee grilling the department chiefs, asked Armitt what targets she has in place to ensure that the existing Thames Gateway community can access the 180,000 new jobs being created in the development. Armitt responded: "I don't know how we will measure that."

McCarthy stepped in, explaining that the majority of the jobs being created are a higher skill level than most people in the Thames Gateway area are currently equipped with. Sixty per cent of the jobs will require a level three (A-level type) qualification or above, but currently just 37.5 per cent of people living in the region possess this skill level, he said. McCarthy added that the Learning and Skills Council is currently drawing up a skills plan for the Gateway area to address the problem.

However, Davidson was not satisfied with this response and called the current Gateway job creation plan, without targets for the employment of local people, a "quick fix temptation for employers".

The DCLG also faced criticism for not creating a single regional development agency to cover the entire Thames Gateway region, which Housden admitted would be "perfectly possible". And committee chair Edward Leigh further criticised the department for not creating an urban development corporation to oversee the expansion of the Gateway area.

Leigh referred Housden to the "achievements" of the Docklands and Cardiff regeneration areas, which both used development corporations and advised him to "look closely at what they had achieved".

- See Data Check, p14.