Balfour backs metro mayors to boost regeneration

Balfour Beatty is supporting a new report from the Institute for Government that contains recommendations for how mayors can regenerate urban areas.

Titled Devolution and urban regeneration: How can metro mayors transform England’s towns and cities, the report highlights the importance of government providing greater funding certainty and capacity to support combined authorities in delivering long-term strategies for regeneration.

The report sets out six recommendations for mayors:

• Design interventions that make best use of the full mayoral toolkit, including investment funds, joint ventures, development corporations, and development zones.
• Set a clear long-term regeneration vision and convene a coalition of support for this among local stakeholders and investors.
• Use of their mayoral mandate to promote key regeneration schemes to government and the private sector.
• Engage businesses and contractors early to identify risks and to secure wider opportunities for regeneration, such as high-skilled job creation.
• Align devolved powers over transport, skills, housing and the environment to secure the full benefits of regeneration efforts.
• Use mayoral development corporations to regenerate areas with complex land ownership patterns and those that need upfront public investment to ‘crowd in’ the private sector.