Regeneration

The Church of England in Essex and East London is rising to the challenges of expansion across the diocese:

• Housing
• Shopping malls
• Airport enlargement
• Road and rail
• Infrastructure and services

We are researching developments in all our areas and building our mission strategies.

Regeneration is global. New technology means things travel the globe fast. Big finance happens at the touch of a button. Populations travel as fast as a plane can fly.

Talk about global money today means real estate. We have already seen Canary Wharf spring from nowhere, a new city above and below ground. Global pressure has contributed to the decline of British manufacturing industry, leaving old (‘brownfield’) factory sites empty and ideal for property speculation.

Vast building projects are under way and more are coming. These will house the moving populations. They will provide offices from which to manage the new service industries. That means jobs and spending power.  Above all the buildings produce real estate profit for international capital.

One of the big policy issues is whether people are housed in dense communities, because that makes local schools, hospitals and other services more affordable, or in sprawling suburbs, which are more spacious but dependent on the car and, therefore, potentially less sustainable bearing in mind the pressures on oil supplies.

The government has sought to respond in a number of ways. In the year 2000 the Urban White Paper promised an ‘urban renaissance’. In 2003 the key document, ‘Sustainable Communities:  building for the future,’ was published. It designated four priority big building areas; two of these, Stansted & the M11 corridor and the Thames Gateway, are in our diocese.

We are the target for vast numbers of homes to house the changing population. The big questions are where this expansion will go and whether the homes will be supported by jobs and services.

Occasional research papers by Steve Williams, Thames Gateway Officer – Bradwell Area

Regeneration hotspots

London Stansted Airport

This former World War 2 American bomber base began life as a global gateway after Stansted was chosen as London’s Third Airport in the mid-1980s. The present terminal building was opened in 1991. Stansted now serves about 22 million passengers a year or about 60,000 passengers a day. It handles about  500 flights a day to 146 destinations. The workforce numbers about 11,000, made up of 87 nationalities. Stansted provides 26,750 car park spaces and the site contains a third more land than Gatwick.

The government has identified Stansted as its preferred location for the next runway in the south east. While the ‘macro’ issues are national economic policy and the environment, the significant ‘micro’ issues relate to loss and bereavement, identity, population change and planning blight. The cumulative effect is a stressed community facing a substantial issue.

Harwich

The government has given the green light to the development of a £300 million deep sea container terminal at Bathside Bay in Harwich. Hutchison Ports, the developers who already own Harwich International Port and the Port of Felixstowe, have promised that there will an extra 1,600 direct and indirect jobs in an area which traditionally has high unemployment and a significant level of deprivation.  Extensive development is already happening at South Felixstowe and  development at Bathside would make the estuary one of the biggest container ports in Europe.

The report of a public inquiry will establish what transport improvements are needed. Hutchison has undertaken to carry out whatever  is recommended, which will include an upgrade to the A120 and to rail links.  The development has been the subject of heated debate in the area for many months. Environmental campaigners are concerned about the level of noise and pollution, including light pollution, on local residents.
Families have been divided over the issue.
 
Harwich Deanery Synod (or assembly of the local parishes) has agreed that Christians should engage in the debate in an informed way, be proactive in ensuring that social infrastructure is included in development, be ready for consultation and support parish and district councillors.

Colchester

The parish of Myland St Michael is in the middle of a massive building programme. This includes the building of over 5,000 new homes for 17,000 people, a 300% population expansion, two new primary schools, a million-pound community centre, modern workplaces for 3,500 people, a retail park, a hundred-acre country park, a new regional hospital with a university medical school and a multi-million pound new regional sports stadium. There are five other further major regional projects within the borough of Colchester.
 
However, the development does not all arrive at once or as promised. Since 2002  housing has been arriving at the rate of a street a month or  48 new streets of houses. Since 2004 the two post offices and most of the local shops have closed.  Since 2000 the first primary school build was not realised and the developer built more new houses on the proposed site. Since 2000 the first 8,000 people have moved in to an area with varying degrees of satisfaction.

Myland Churches Together and visiting church leaders were clear that much needed to be done. In the past 30 months they have:

• Planned a half-million pound redevelopment of the parish buildings with the local MP as the project champion.
• Begun negotiating a local ecumenical partnership  to found at least two new congregations.
• Forged strong alliances with the community development team and the parish council.
• Joined the local strategic partnership.
• Engaged with the local development framework.
• With the help of the bishop and deanery won three grants for two part-time staff.
• Recruited two volunteer ministers.
• Won a Home Office ‘Faith Community Capacity Building Grant’.   

 
The next deanery vision plan is set to give both strong support in planning for and managing the necessary changes and the energy and enthusiasm required to ask Kingdom questions about how this vast new community is shaped.

Thames Gateway

St Clement’s Church, which is famous from Four Weddings and a Funeral, is now surrounded by a Proctor & Gamble factory and is no longer a church but a wildlife sanctuary. The church set up an industrial chaplaincy in the factory and it has moved to into a new building serving the new centre of population with a fully furnished church, a complete set of community facilities under the management of the church, a  nursery school, and a health centre.

The church made its land available to achieve these considerable gains for the community. Significant funding came from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The funding for the nursery school was provided by the school. There was support from Thurrock Council, and the local primary care trust provided additional facilities to bridge gaps in front-line medical services. A number of needs have now been met.

In the Southend area there are two focal points for the Thames Gateway regeneration. Southend is the leisure centre of the area. It is also an educational hub, especially for further and higher education. South East Essex College has 13,000 students, and  a new campus for 3,000 Essex University will open in next year. An Anglican chaplain has been appointed to work across the two campuses with support from the Baptist Church.

Stratford

Stratford is a major transport hub, and Stratford international station is due to be completed next year on the Channel tunnel rail link. This will improve rail connections and reduce travel times to Paris and Brussels.

Over the coming years, the former Stratford rail lands will be transformed into Stratford City, a major new urban centre that is likely to contain over 13 million square feet of new buildings. There will be offices, houses, hotels and schools, together with gardens and parkland.

The London 2012 Olympic Games will make a major impact on an large area with a 500-acre Olympic park which will include the athletes' village, the main stadium and swimming pools.

The Crossrail project opens up the possibility of rapid rail travel across London. If plans for the first line connecting Whitechapel with Paddington receive early Parliamentary approval, the first train could be running in 2013.

The issues

These examples highlight the issues that are impacting the Essex and East London region:

• Urban sprawl versus dense communities.
• The long-term nature of these building projects over 20 to 30 years.
• The adequacy of plans for affordable housing.
• The effects on ecology, water shortages and flooding, and the end of oil for commuting.
• The arrival of different people and how areas will cope.
• The extent to which the new areas will be ‘communities’ rather than soulless places.
• Gospel messages and the ways in which they are proclaimed.
• The need to overcome complex jargon.
• Education, displacement and health.

Planning for the future

The Chelmsford Diocesan Synod (or regional assembly of the Church of England) held on 11 March 2006 resolved that

• Each deanery (or group of parishes) should
  • Track building changes over the last ten years and seek to forecast the next ten years.
  • Ask how this may change the population statistics and life of its parishioners.
  • Work collaboratively with planners, developers and other change agents and all who have to live with the changes.
• Each parish should
  • Think how it will seek to bring the Good News to life in this new environment.
  • Mobilise its people and buildings to help the community reflect Kingdom values.
• Each parish and deanery should
  • Build this thinking about the mission field and Kingdom response into their work on their deanery vision.

Contact

The Rt Revd Dr Laurie Green, The Bishop of Bradwell, who has special responsibility for community regenartation and development b.bradwell@chelmsford.anglican.org

The Revd Steve Williams, the Thames Gateway Officer for the Bradwell Area stevecgs@ukonline.co.uk

Carol Richards, Regeneration Adviser barkingregeneration@chelmsford.anglican.org

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