IT IS inevitable that the deep cuts in public spending will have an effect on regeneration activity in the Liverpool city region.

The regeneration industry has to recognise that the days of unsustainable amounts of public capital to deliver projects is over and that new approaches to how we think about regeneration are required.

Regeneration takes a long time. However, local politicians make short-term promises they know will be difficult to keep, developers focus on short-term opportunities in order to generate returns and often the relationships between developers, investors and public sector become adversarial. The target-driven culture that we live in has frustrated entrepreneurism in the public sector stifling innovation.

It is time that developers, politicians and local communities developed more open and transparent relationships, collaborating to deliver solutions that will deliver long-term sustainable regeneration.

The use of innovative solutions to deliver physical area-wide regeneration needs further consideration. Local Asset Based Vehicles (LABV) – joint ventures between public sector asset-rich organisations and the private sector – is not new, and suited the public sector in a strong economy.

However, when the recession hit, the impact upon the value of development land was far deeper than for existing buildings with land values in some cases falling by 70%. Given the primary aim of LABVs is to bring forward physical regeneration, many local authority sector landowners have questioned whether they should “sell the family silver” at the bottom of the market. The majority of councils have quite rightly said no and interest in LABVs has waned. However, a new solution is emerging whereby, instead of the public sector selling property assets at the bottom of the market, they grant “property options” as an incentive for the private sector to take a 10-20 year investment commitment in a given location, thereby creating the platform for genuine partnership and the potential for the more holistic aspects of regeneration to be considered, funded and managed.

There is no easy fix to the public sector spending cuts, but there are potential solutions to be considered, and more collaborative and open working between public and private sectors and communities should assist delivery of long-term sustainable regeneration.