Developing the Staveley Town Investment Plan
Working as subcontractors to BDP, Steer Economic Development was commissioned to assist Chesterfield Borough Council in its preparation of a full Town Investment Plan application to the UK government’s Towns Fund. The Towns Fund enabled invited towns to bid for up to £25m funding to deliver long-term economic and productivity growth in their localities through:
- Urban regeneration, planning, and land use;
- New private sector investment in skills and enterprise infrastructure development; and
- Improved physical and digital connectivity.
Steer Economic Development’s initial work involved generating a socioeconomic baseline for Staveley town to provide the evidence base from which tangible actionable projects could be developed to address Staveley’s key challenges and opportunities. With a baseline in place, we then worked alongside the client and BDP to generate a longlist of potential projects, which were then scored against a framework linked to Towns Fund objectives. This produced a shortlist of 11 projects which met simultaneously Towns Fund objectives and Staveley town’s evidenced regeneration requirements.
In closing the work, Steer Economic Development produced a series of robust and evidenced output and outcome/impact projections for each shortlisted project, with these then being assembled and narrated to provide a comprehensive, coherent, and communicable Town Investment Plan for Staveley. The bid was submitted to government at the end of 2020.