Richard Cohen, East Devon’s Deputy CEO on opportunities & innovation

Richard Cohen is the deputy chief executive of East Devon District Council. He is responsible for development, regeneration and partnership, including asset management and delivering major projects.

His career started with the setting up of Inner City Task Forces in London and Plymouth. He then held strategic economic development and regeneration roles in Bristol and with the London Development Agency and was retained as a consultant to London Boroughs to co-ordinate the establishment of a development corridor to the North of London.

Room 151: Is East Devon doing a lot to access new income streams for the council?

Richard Cohen: It is. I turned up here last May, at approximately the same time as a new administration came. They arrived with an ambition to look at what efficiencies and new sources of revenue they could identify. Some of the ideas they wanted to bed down were quite big and some were just in terms of tidying up day-to-day business.

One of my roles is to have an outward focus working with partners and seeking to influence the external world as to the advantages of working with us. We know that the traditional grant funding streams are diminishing so we’re trying to identify imaginative ways of developing our own resources.

R151: Can you give some examples?

RC: The council is reviewing its asset base to identify whether we’re extracting best value. We’ve got a variety of assets ranging from car parks and industrial estates to beach huts, a couple of cinemas. Some make money and some cost money and we’re digging into the opportunities to release assets and invest in assets to increase revenue streams.

R151: What is your demographic like?

RC: There are problems that aren’t necessarily recognised in terms of rural isolation and rural poverty that need to be tackled. Income levels in some of our communities are quite low because they are dependent on things like farming, seasonal tourism and care industries. So on the one hand we have lower than average incomes but at the same time quite high property prices. Our concern is that young people don’t stay but people migrate here to retire. While that has a number of benefits it’s not a demographic that you’d want to carry on in those directions, so we like to find ways to create affordable homes and attract higher paid, higher skilled jobs.

R151: How easy or difficult is it to work with partners on property?

RC: They come in many guises. We have a significant partnership at the West of the district bordering with Exeter, it’s ourselves, Exeter City Council, the County Council, Homes and Communities Agency and a range of private developers. We bring land and the powers of the planning authority to the table to bring about a range of housing and employment associated infrastructure. That is going pretty well and we’re seeing some private investment, Sainsbury’s has turned up with a regional distribution centre and we have a science park we are starting to see some early movement on so there are quite big prospects there.

Further East and to the coast it’s about how do we use our assets to support our coastal and market towns and our rural communities so we’re looking at the smaller scale of asset management: how do we manage car parks to the advantage of retail resilience in town centres; how do we work with the leisure facilities we have. We’ve put those under the management of Leisure East Devon, a not-for-profit company. We set it up and have handed those assets over to them. Leisure centres can be quite expensive but they’re essential assets to communities.

R151: How are you making savings on property?

RC: The big plan is relocating the council from our historically interesting but not entirely fit for purpose headquarters to a new purpose built building. That will make immediate savings in terms of energy use and carbon footprint. That’s the big move for the next two to three years.

R151: Do you have other issues are on the horizon?

RC: Community asset transfer is one. If we know what the value of our assets are and the usefulness of those assets we’re in a better position to negotiate with communities if they are interested in taking on assets. If we don’t know whether they’re a burden or a benefit then we shouldn’t be trying to farm them out. We’re also working on a formula for Community Infrastructure Levy. We’re building houses, the local plan which is going through the process at the moment proposes something like 15,000 new homes so we’ll be looking to draw down Community Infrastructure Levy on those developments.

It allows us a new income stream because in the past with the section 106 agreement any small scale housing development would have flown under that radar. Our district has quite a lot of small scale and infill projects so we’ll be able to increase income from those, which is a bonus.

Then we’ll look to see how we’ll reinvest proportions of that in those local communities which hasn’t been the case in the past. You have tended to see 106 agreements around larger scale development and where there have been up to 50 new homes developed in our more rural communities we haven’t been able to see benefit from that building reaching those communities, which is a shame.

It’s drawing down new income streams into communities which haven’t previously received it. We’ll also use funding streams like New Homes Bonus to invest. It’s all about where there is development opportunity how can you maximise the drawdown and invest back into communities.