‘We have one single plan: this is what the NW needs’

Mr McCleave says the final plan will retain 95 workable projects across 11 separate catalyst themes and sectors included in the last draft which went out to consultation last autumn. Furthermore it will include a detailed financial analysis of how the projects might be delivered.

The plan consolidates 58 priorities across 11 catalyst themes and sectors under a single collaborative vision of a “competitive, connected, creative and caring city.”

This hasn’t been whittled down any further. Mr McCleave says the widespread public consultation didn’t identify any need to do so.

“The public didn’t come back with that,” he said. “Some of them have changed slightly because some of the Sectoral Working Groups (SWGs) - though you wouldn’t notice it in the plan - some of them did more work. So the more work that they have done is included in the final plan.”

He said the final version has been refined somewhat and was broadly endorsed following a consultation with thousands of people across the city.

“It’s tweaked around the edges but generally, broadly, it’s exactly the same as is in the document. Even the language, for example, in that whole section about the Catalyst programmes is literally just lifted and appears in the final plan because nobody came back and said that they disagreed with what was proposed.”

If the plan comes to fruition it will literally transform the city. Amongst the striking innovations suggested are the removal of through -traffic from the Walled City, the creation of a third road bridge and a new footbridge between Prehen and the Brandywell.

Its over arching goal is to regenerate Londonderry and address inequality in the city.

It’s been developed with the cooperation of more than one in ten people in the city, Something the Ilex Director deems vital.

“It’s critically important. They all inputted at different levels. You had about 450 people signed up to the SWGs and we asked them to do three

things: tell us what was good within their sector whether it was education or skills or whatever it was; tells us what was working well or what wasn’t working so well; and tell us what was needed to fill in the gaps.

“And then we had about 500 people who responded to the actual Citiscope survey. We went out and got 83 local people and trained them in research techniques, how to fill in questionnaires and so on.

“They went out and talked to their friends and neighbours. Each one of those questionnaires took three hours to fill in and there 580 people filled them in. That’s a huge commitment. Even going in and just sitting down to fill them in.”

Now that the plan has been completed Ilex want it endorsed by its sponsor Departments, the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM) and Social Development (DSD). After that it’s up to the local Regeneration Partnership and Strategy Board to work with central Government and implement it.

Said Mr McCleave: “Once the Executive - we would hope - endorses it, then we would expect the government Departments right across the Civil Service to start embedding the actions from the Regeneration Plan into their programme of activity.

“What we are saying is ‘we have one single plan.’ This is what the North West is saying it needs in order to make its contribution to Northern Ireland society and the economy.”

The outcomes are ambitious but based on exhaustive economic models drawing on over 3,000 pages of ward level data which will soon be made available to the public on a new Citistat section on the Ilex website which itself has undergone a revamp.

An initial target of 12,500 new jobs by 2020 has been revised northwards following additional work by a number of the SWGs.

“Because we have more information we were able to re-run the economic analysis and our aspiration was 12,500 jobs by 2020 but we know just from the further work that we’ve done it’s now 12,900. That’s what the Econometric model is telling us.

“That’s a resource we now have for the city and we can run that at any time for any project or anything. It’s a vast amount of information.

“Even the data that we’ve managed to get together from either central government or from Citiscope or wherever: we have 3,500 pages of individual ward analysis across this city. I don’t think anyone’s ever done that.”

Ilex also now has a full-time Government statistician based at its city centre office.

“We have a Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) statistician now on staff here for a while which we are going to continue to use and one of the things which you are going to see in this final plan when we are talking about this Regeneration Partnership is that there is that dedicated research piece so that the monitoring and evaluation continue over the period and length of the plan,” said Mr McCleave.

With a completed plan and presuming new OFMDFM and DSD Ministers and a new Northern Ireland Executive (NIE) endorse it how will it be implemented?

“Strategy board are over arching and are the main decision makers who will set the direction of the plan going forward,” explains Mr McCleave. “The Programme Board will be going through the day-to-day actions.

“They will have to report back to the Strategy board: here’s how things are happening on each of the different themes or programmes. Because there are a range of delivery partners.

“Some of it will be delivered by organisations here in the city. Some of it will be brokered by organisations here in the city. Some of it will be delivered by central government organisations.

“The road bridge is a good example because neither Ilex, nor Council, nor the private sector in Derry, has responsibility for roads. Yet it’s such a critical piece in terms of the road network.

“Our job would be to engage with DRD and say here’s an element of a programme that’s been identified in the Regeneration Plan. Now let us work with you and take it forward from there.”

Now a detailed financial analysis is also in place suggesting how that might happen. It is include in a ten page technical summary in the final plan.

Public sector support is key but venture capital, public/private partnerships and asset-back vehicles are also options.

Mr McCleave explained: “There is a key role here for the public sector. Particularly in the early years through one, three and four. We have Budget 2010. That is now pretty much signed off. So it’s not that there is no money it’s just less money.”

“The question is ‘what is the best we can do with that money?’ The other thing we are also exploring with government and Council is this idea of a

Regeneration Fund for Derry and how we can look at utilising Council resources and assets and matching that with other Central Government resources and assets to create a Regeneration Fund.

“Year 4 plus might then involve the private sector. There is that mechanism to ensure that there is more private sector involvement. How do we involve the private sector in partnership with the public sector to deliver key components of the plan?”

Is venture capital included in this? “Could be,” answers the Ilex Director. “The other thing might be this whole idea of enterprise zones. We saw it recently in the Treasury document ‘Rebalancing the Northern Ireland Economy’ Or the whole idea of creating a kind of asset-back regeneration vehicle where the public sector would bring land as an asset and the private sector would bring finance to the party and they move forward on that basis. So all of that is in there and they are all options. “

Ilex say the new plan is now complete and will be launched within weeks. The document envisages 1,500 new digital jobs, 1,000 creative and cultural jobs. 1,500 knowledge services jobs and 1,000 new green jobs as well as many more jobs in tourism, public administration, health, retail, infrastructure and education to make up a 12,900 target.