How Local People Attracted £30m Funding – and Secured a Brighter Future for the Town
Visitors to Penzance are remarking on a new spirit of confidence and optimism around the town. A growing number of independent shops, a packed calendar of festivals, and dining and drinking options that combine local ingredients with a metropolitan flavour are turning heads in the nation’s press and blogs. Even the Penzance palms at the entranceway to the portside destination seem to be standing taller.
Some might say the town is revisiting its Georgian roots as a highly fashionable and prosperous seaside resort. It all suggests a positive and exciting future for local people and an increasingly eye-catching Cornish destination for visitors.
This Penzance renaissance is a story with a very local flavour. The green shoots of the town’s recovery were nurtured by community groups, who helped to prepare the way for prosperity by attracting significant funding. This has culminated in a Town Deal Fund allocation of £21.5m, which will deliver landmark regeneration and development projects to Penzance and pave the way for further community and economic growth.
Enter Penzance BID
With its Mount’s Bay setting, nautical history and prime position as a gateway to the Isles of Scilly and West Penwith, Penzance has always been ‘on the map’ and a much-loved destination. But, like so many seaside towns, it had seen better days. Seasonal low wages and a 40% drop in footfall on the high street between 2001 and 2015 were hitting the town centre hard. Several missed funding opportunities in recent years were seen by many as a blow. And something that should never happen again.
In 2015, local business leaders founded Penzance Business Improvement District (BID), following a ballot of local businesses and a majority vote in favour. The BID, which was funded and led by local businesses, had a brief to improve the commercial centre of the town with projects beyond those under the remit of local government. From green space improvement schemes and attractive street signage, to financial support for local events and global marketing campaigns to bring in visitors, the BID’s work helped change the look of the urban centre and the perception of the town.
A blueprint for future success
The BID also played an important role in another local organisation founded in 2015. The Penzance Regeneration Partnership was set up by representatives of the community, including leaders from Truro and Penwith College, Cornwall Council, Penzance Neighbourhood Plan and Penzance BID. Its brief was to allocate money given to the town by Sainsbury’s – known as Section 106 money – to offset the impact of the supermarket on businesses in the town centre. The partnership invested much of the money in developing a ‘place-shaping strategy’ with independent consultants. This helped identify projects within the town that would help create attractive, prosperous communities – the kind of places where people would want to visit, work and do business.
This place-shaping strategy would become a crucial catalyst to Penzance’s success in the years ahead. It included, to use the parlance of government, ‘shovel-ready projects’ – those endorsed following consultation with the local community and deemed feasible by professionals to make a positive impact. In other words, it proposed projects that were likely to meet any available funding criteria in the future.
Says Jessica Morris, current Town Deal Commissioning Specialist at Cornwall Council and former Penzance BID Manager, ‘To use an analogy, local groups joined together to create a market stall for Penzance, packed with attractive products. The ambition was to sell our products to the organisations who were handing out funding.’
£10.4m from Future High Streets Fund
In December 2020, the government announced that Penzance had been awarded £10.4m from its Future High Streets Fund, a project to renew and reshape town centres and high streets in a way that drives growth, improves visitors’ overall experience and ensures future sustainability. Penzance BID and Penzance Town Council drove the town’s involvement in a competitive process that saw Penzance shortlisted from four Cornish towns for funding.
Upcoming projects include the regeneration of Market Place and Coinagehall Street. Also, a ‘Backlands’ housing scheme project will bring residents and footfall back into the high street and play a major role in driving activity into the town centre.
£24m Town Deal funding
Just a few months later, in June 2021, came news of a historic funding win for the town. The government’s Town Deal Fund awarded up to £21.5m to Penzance and Newlyn to ‘foster economic regeneration, stimulate investment and deliver vital infrastructure’. The town’s successful application for this funding included submitting a Town Investment Plan, which was largely inspired by the original ‘shovel-ready’ projects outlined in the Regeneration Partnership’s place-shaping strategy. The work carried out several years earlier had borne fruit.
Significantly, the vast majority of the 101 towns that won a Town Deal grant were BID towns. It was clear that the funds were being released to areas that were already actively engaging in the ethos of revitalisation and regeneration. This was certainly the case with Penzance. The BID, the Regeneration Partnership and others had spent several years improving the town and preparing it for further change. Also, members from these various town groups were actively involved in getting the word out about the positive changes in Penzance, and engaging decision-makers locally and nationally. This included a hurried trip to Westminster by the BID manager to speak to the minister for levelling up, housing and communities, just weeks before Penzance’s Town Deal grant was announced.
Seven landmark projects
Penzance’s Town Deal Fund is managed by the Penzance Town Deal Board. This board is made up of public and private sector representatives from the Penzance and Newlyn area.
Town Deal work will focus on seven core projects (you can find out more about each by clicking the links below):
- Penzance Harbour refurbishment and modernisation
- The Bouldering Centre in Market Jew Street
- The Gardeners’ House, to refurbish the historic buildings in Morrab Gardens for community projects
- Sustainable Travel Network, to create a network of walking, cycling and green spaces
- The Market House development, to bring unused spaces in this iconic building into community and business use
- Enterprise Grants for businesses locally, to help them start up and scale up
- Newlyn Harbour Marine Skills and Resource Centre, to promote marine excellence and learning
Hello, business investors
The activity by community groups to turn around the town’s fortunes has had a dramatic impact on the way people are seeing the town – and investing in it. Penzance BID Manager Sarah Shaw says, ‘The BID’s work improving the appearance of the town has given people a sense of pride in Penzance. Also, along with several other partners in the community, the BID has been a very loud voice in promoting central government funding, something which is fundamental to Penzance’s prosperity. It has opened us up to further investment. And, once public funding comes, private funding comes too. Businesses are choosing Penzance over other towns – they are seeing it as a destination they want to be a part of.’
What next for Penzance?
The town’s model for attracting investment has become a gold standard. Cornwall County Council has taken inspiration from how Penzance used its Sainsbury’s Section 106 money to create ‘shovel-ready projects’ by setting aside £4 million for Cornish towns to develop similar plans. Seeing the county become a magnet for funding, an opportunity for businesses and a preferred destination for visitors can only be good for the whole of Cornwall.
Meanwhile, as well as the £30.5m of projects underway, more new funding opportunities will almost certainly come Penzance’s way in the future. Winning any future investment is unlikely to be down to luck or chance. The town’s active pursuit of funding and its portfolio of ready-to-go projects will be a key factor in future successes. And with any new funding will come further interest from businesses and visitors in this increasingly prominent Cornish town.