West Somerset Railway's successful regeneration contrasts with local political failures

Success

Today I visited the West Somerset Railway at Minehead station and saw the work that is taking place on the new train turntable. It was mightily impressive.

I talked to one of the staff and they described to me how the West Somerset Railway is already contributing to the local economy and how much more it expects to contribute in the future.

The achievements of the West Somerset Railway are truly impressive and all the more so for having been built from many small steps and community effort.

Without the dedication and vision of key management personnel and the many volunteers this wonderful progress could not have been possible.

The West Somerset Railway is a success story and I believe destined for even greater things. Potentially, it could grow to be a resource to rival the Eden Project and that can only be good for West Somerset and Exmoor.

Failure

Sadly, the West Somerset Railway is not typical in this area and attempts by local politicians to regenerate the rest of West Somerset have not been as successful.

Yesterday I saw the human face of political failure to regenerate Exmoor and West Somerset.

X is middle class, intelligent, hard-working, entrepreneurial and desperate for a job that is not seasonal or working in the local care industry.

With sole responsibility for children, X would be struggling anywhere to make a living to feed a family. In West Somerset, the chances of finding the type of employment that X needs are very low indeed.

I saw the distress in X's face as X explained their attempts to make ends meet and the ongoing financial difficulties.

X is the true face of local authority failure to regenerate in this area. I have seen many other examples similar to X and each time they fill me full of anger.

I do not know whether it is complacency or incompetence that has caused West Somerset to remain a depressed area economically for so long.

Clearly its demographics are not favourable to a robust economy. There are very many elderly people in the area who seem to have little interest in economic change. But with the possibility of retired people living for many decades, the need for gainful employment amongst them in the future will become even more pressing.

It is time for the people of West Somerset to say that we are fed up with dodgy statistics that are churned out to justify capital projects that might make use of grants but will not, in truth, create many jobs.

It is time for the people in power in West Somerset to be ashamed that, after so much discussion, the best they can offer is jobs at the checkouts of large retail operations.

Solutions

The way forward is clear. Exmoor and West Somerset needs people centred regeneration. I have discussed this at great length elsewhere in this blog and do not propose to restate the arguments.

Jazz festivals, folk festivals, a continuous stream of people based events and web initiatives to bring large amounts of virtual traffic to online businesses in Exmoor and West Somerset could reap massively more benefits than a small number of very expensive industrial units.

Projects such as the proposed Cultural Centre in Williton and the web based Creative Exmoor and West Somerset initiative (in which i am involved) should be given the strongest support.

People centred regenerative policies need substantial periods of time to bring to fruition but have the advantage that they are relatively quick and inexpensive to get started and are immediately regenerative to those involved.

If the politicians in Exmoor and West Somerset really truly cared and were genuinely passionate about regeneration, I don't believe they would consider their continual failure to regenerate acceptable.

Bye for now

Rob Hopcott

Note: The photograph above is of a steam train waiting to be put into service at Minehead Station, West Somerset.