Whose store is it anyway?
by Barbara Baker
To a casual visitor, the Seacroft housing estate may seem much like any other: a vast concrete jungle of tower blocks, nondescript council houses, boarded-up shops and uninviting green spaces. But for years Seacroft has had a notorious reputation as one of Europe's biggest housing estates and although it is still a stark, grim contrast to Leeds city centre, just a few miles but seemingly light years away, with its pricey canal-side loft apartments, glitzy nightlife and growing cultural and educational reputation, more recently, Seacroft has been the focus of a raft of government regeneration initiatives and neighbourhood renewal strategies designed to tackle social exclusion, unemployment, crime, education, health, housing and all the other problems you would expect in one of the ten per cent most deprived areas in Britain (ref: A Neighbourhood Renewal Strategy for Leeds 2001 'Regenerating Leeds').
£20m partnership
One project that has caught media attention is the £20 million Seacroft Partnership, a collaboration between Tesco and a variety of public and private bodies and community groups including Leeds City Council, the East Leeds Family Learning Centre and USDAW, the shopworkers' union. Leeds Seacroft's 'Tesco Extra' store opened in November 2000, the first of 12 under Tesco's Regeneration Programme.
Tesco Seacroft
Tesco is clearly mindful of issues such as food poverty and access and believes that opening a new store in a deprived area can act as a direct catalyst for social and economic change. According to Martin Venning, Tesco's UK Regeneration Manager: 'The aim of the programme is to challenge unemployment, poverty and social exclusion by specifically addressing the barriers that prevent people from taking up employment such as lack of experience and poor skills.' At Seacroft alone, 351 full and part time jobs were created - 320 of those went to local people and 243 of the store's initial staff were previously unemployed.
Venning adds:
'A new superstore generates in excess of £2 million a year in wages and local authority charges on a sustainable basis, it creates demand for other locally produced goods and services and helps generate a new sense of community; but it starts with local people accessing genuine opportunity to break through the barriers that prevented them developing their potential and actually get a job.'
Chris Peat, former Chairman of the Seacroft Partnership, believes that a key factor in the initiative's success was Tesco's dramatic and innovative change in recruitment policy - effectively a 'job guarantee' scheme. 'Tesco were prepared to assess people on their potential rather than their qualifications or experience and that was invaluable for those who had been unemployed for several years or who were unable to demonstrate the kind of experience most employers traditionally look for.
Innovation in training
Chris Peat points out that it wasn't just the guarantee of a job but the innovative approach to training which made the difference. 'Training was tailored to suit individuals, covering basic skills in reading, writing and numeracy as well as confidence-building, self-esteem and team building in addition to customer care and other specific retail training elements.' Over 90 per cent of recruits who started the training completed it and started work compared to an average rate of 40 per cent for other UK work-based learning schemes. There has been an equally high rate of retention of staff - 90 per cent of staff were still working at Seacroft within six months of the store opening. Chris Peat is now successfully using the Tesco model, which won the Business in the Community Award for Innovation in 2001, with other employers in the Leeds area.
However, the scheme is not without its detractors. George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian in July 2001 that the idea that superstores 'create jobs' was merely 'one of those myths so well established that it can't be dispelled however many times it's discredited'. He points out that the superstores' own figures show that 'every major new store destroys, on average, a net 276 jobs'. Yet visit the area and the impression is that while Tesco is undoubtedly the dominant retailer, at the same time it acts as a magnet and focal point and the dozen or so shops in the immediate vicinity arguably thrive as a result with better parking facilities, bus stops, and generally improved access.
George Monbiot conceded that training local people is 'more progressive' than drawing pre-skilled labour from elsewhere. However, it could be argued that the job guarantee scheme, though innovative, merely makes a virtue out of the stark reality that, given Seacroft's difficult reputation, attempting to recruit sufficient staff from outside the area would be as difficult as persuading outsiders to shop there: although easily accessible from the Ring Road, the area's poor reputation and the perceived high incidence of car vandalism, theft, etc means that attracting shoppers from outside Seacroft has been a challenge. By recruiting locally, a multiple like Tesco at least has a fighting chance of establishing itself as a key part of a community which hitherto had limited access to shops.
One surprise when visiting the store was that although much has been written about the project and buzzwords such as 'community' and 'regeneration' abound, once inside, you could be in any Tesco Extra store in the country. At the very least we had expected a community noticeboard. And if one purpose of regeneration schemes is to address the issue of 'food deserts', in itself a hotly contested issue, there was no evidence of any special 'healthy eating' or other initiatives which might serve the health needs of this particular community as distinct to those in more affluent areas of the country.
Could it therefore be argued that Tesco's symbiotic relationship with the local community lasts only until the store is up and running? Or perhaps establishing a major multiple in a deprived area is deemed progress enough?
Martin Venning is the first to admit that more needs to be done but adds: 'Although we have been a catalyst for change, we also believe that in future other community partners may wish to seize opportunities and and make things happen too.'
A recently published Tesco Regeneration Partnerships Evaluation Report suggests the Seacroft Partnerhip has actually reversed a history of local deprivation in East Leeds. Fiona Guy of Cartmell Communications, a PR agency employed by Tesco and involved in the project from the start, agrees that ultimately Tesco is a business, but believes it is absolutely committed to making a difference to the local community. 'Seacroft suffered from low levels of car ownership and poor access to public transport - through the Seacroft Partnership, co-operation meant that a new bus terminus was created outside the store which has given access to routes across Leeds, for example'
Fiona Guy suggests that adding a community desk in store is one of many ideas already floated, and just one of a range of significant strategies under consideration for 'Phase Two' of the programme, details of which are still under wraps.
Reducing health inequalities
How far Phase 2 will go towards proving critics wrong and make meaningful progress in terms of helping reduce health inequalities of those living in an area such as Seacroft remains to be seen. Martin Venning points out that the Seacroft Partnership has shown that if proper links are made between private sector investment and public sector agencies at community level, then much can be achieved. 'But we are not trying to 'PR' our way through this. One important lesson is that while we want to achieve a replicable model, a 'one size fits all' approach simply doesn't work - each community presents a unique set of challenges and the knack is to strike a balance between a systems driven approach and the kind of flexibility that ensures we don't make generalisations. Ultimately if a scheme like this is to work then a relevant response to individual communities is vital.'
But no-one can argue with the fact that Tesco's Regeneration Programme is innovative, leading edge and an extraordinary example of the co-operation which can be achieved between the public, private and voluntary sector.
And the fact Tesco has been willing to invest in an area other businesses were unwilling to tread and their regeneration programme continues from strength to strength should at least give grounds for optimism.