An exclusive with John van de Laarschot, Chief Exec at Stoke-on-Trent City Council

John: Well, a good question that has a two part answer. When you look in terms of a demand analysis there is definitely the opportunity there to provide a superior retail facility that will attract disposable income from a broader area. In terms of the empty premises, well, some of them are not the most amenable to successful retail anyway. Some of them are not in the best condition; and to be honest when you look at some of the offering that we've got across the city centre, it's not that attractive to bring people in. So complimenting the Potteries Shopping Centre with a very strong East-West and having two ends of the city, then joining them up with much more independent shops and retail around a brilliant Public Realm in the centre, with nice office accommodation and a good culture offering built around it, starts to give us a city centre that people can be proud of, that people will go to to shop, to wine, to dine, to go to the theatre, to go to the cinema; that starts to create a centre of identity for the city of Stoke-on-Trent.

Voluntary Sector

Jonathan: Now the Government sites the Big Society as a vital element for communities to deliver. The city has an active and strong voluntary sector. Did you have much experience of such a sector before your appointment? And how has your view of the voluntary sector changed since you've arrived in the city?

John: I'm quite familiar with working with the voluntary sector. The voluntary sector plays a huge role; quite often misinterpreted in the Big Society as a mechanism for doing something on the cheap, when actually that's not really their forte at all.

What they bring is a tremendous ability to engage with the more difficult to reach parts of the community and to be able to enhance what we can do as a public sector body in a more effective way, to ensure a better level of delivery.

As we go forward, we may well find ourselves in a situation where some of the things that we would classically do as a public sector body, actually through a dialogue and conversation with the voluntary sector, they might be better placed to do it. If that's the case then it's a win all around. We ought to be pretty enthusiastic about that.

When you look in terms of some of the budget cuts that we've put forward and some of the proposals that we've put on hold, many of those are around our drive and determination to see if we can get social enterprise working and get the voluntary sector engaged in actually delivering those services and those facilities better than we can.

Education

Jonathan: Let's turn to education now. Last year GCSE results put Stoke-on-Trent joint eighth out of 151 authorities in terms of improvement. The Council has improved at a higher level than any other town authorities that are most similar to it. That's all very encouraging, but as our actual GCSE attainment levels are below the national average, how do you rate education delivery in our city?

John: It's getting better day by day, but we have a huge gap versus where we need to be. Now we've got a tremendous opportunity in front of us with the BSF programme and the building of new schools and the refurbishment of many of our existing schools. The challenge that we will face as an authority, the challenge that the new academies will face and the challenge that our communities face is ensuring that not only do we provide the high quality build, but that we also address the cultural issues in our existing educational establishments. What we actually want are the best facilities with the best teaching provision and the best chances of success. What we don't necessarily want to do is to bring across some of the culture from the less successful areas into new builds and just replicate it. That's quite a challenging agenda to drive forward. It's not one that the local authority can do on its own, it's one that needs to happen collaboratively with all parties that are involved in this process.

Jonathan: Looking generally behind those issues, there's often low levels of aspiration in the city or particularly high levels of long term and generational unemployment. Those cultural things can perhaps become a mindset. Is there any other new vision you would like to bring through to address this, which might actually help the whole education standards?

John: Yes. We're working hard now with all of our politicians to try to put together a long term vision that actually enables a transformation of this city.

When you look at all of the issues that we've got, be they obesity, poor health, teenage pregnancy, drug or alcohol abuse, most of it you can actually track back to the fundamental issue, which is around worklessness. When we look across North Staffordshire we've got something in the order of 40,000 people unemployed. So the strategy that we'd like to build on going forward is how do we make Stoke-on-Trent a working city? We're trying to support that by building on four aims. One about making Stoke-on-Trent the best place to start a new business; to attract inward investment, new start-ups. The second is how do we make and nurture the existing businesses that we've got and how do we develop organic growth. How do we help entrepreneurs expand and build their businesses up and be successful here in the city. The third strand is about what you would call addressing first impressions. How do we make this a great city to live work and play in by addressing all of the green areas; making sure that it's clean, tidy and safe. Finally and perhaps quite challengingly, how do we work with people so that they become less dependent on statutory organisations like ourselves and take more responsibility and control for their own destiny in becoming independent.

If we can address those four strategic aims then I believe we have a strategy that can transform this city into a place that we can all be proud of; where we have a good economy; we have people actively engaged in employment and we start to move away from the second and third generation of unemployed to our young kids staying here in the city with high aspirations for making this a brilliant place.