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Morgan Jones Associates is a new, dedicated economic development, regeneration and sustainability consultancy.

We work with both private and public sector clients to help plan and deliver efficient and effective economic development and regeneration in a sustainable way.

With less resource and funding available for economic development and regeneration, it is more important now than ever before to focus on the specific needs of your local area. It is only by developing a detailed picture of your local area, that you can really understand the issues that are being faced, and develop tailored local solutions to these. The requirement to prepare Local Economic Assessments (LEAs) is a good starting point for local authorities to build a comprehensive socio-economic view of their local area, and their focus on functional economic geography is refreshing. To get real value out of LEAs, they need to include some thorough consideration of what all of the socio–economic data within them means for the future of the local area, and how to respond to this to maximise sustainable socio-economic growth potential.

We can help in the following ways:

• Developing a comprehensive and robust socio-economic baseline to help identify areas of weakness and opportunities for intervention
• Identifying market failures which can be tackled with pubic sector intervention and funding
• Use of data to understand functional economic geography, and shape solutions accordingly

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When developing projects and testing their feasibility, it is important to understand the economic benefits that they will generate in a local area. If you are seeking public funding for your project, you will need to need to undertake an appraisal to HM Treasury Green Book standards, which includes thorough economic impact assessment and the appraisal of a range of options. Too often the appraisal process is used simply to justify the funding application, and is not used intelligently to help to test feasibility and shape the development of the project or programme. We can engage with you at the beginning of your project or programme development process and use approaches such as economic impact assessment and options appraisal to help to shape your project most effectively.

We can help in the following ways:

• Building on a socio-economic assessment to develop potential options for intervention
• Options appraisal to HM Treasury Green Book standard
• Assessing the economic impact of proposed interventions
• Testing the feasibility of proposed interventions

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There is great change taking place within the planning system, but there remains an emphasis on the economic benefits that new developments can bring to a local area, particularly large developments. Being able to prove the economic impact (both positive and negative) is increasingly important to a planning application. When planning applications are subject to inquiry, there is often a need for economic impact analysis, and this can help to improve the case for planning permission. We can undertake a thorough economic impact assessment to support your planning application.

We can help in the following ways:

• Demonstrating the socio-economic impact of proposed developments
• Calculating the optimum amount and type of employment and floorspace needed to create a sustainable settlement or urban extension
• Sub-regional and regional assessment of employment land requirements needed to accommodate future economic growth potential

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Creating and supporting the creation of economic development strategies has been a mainstay of our work over the last 15 years. There is no such thing as a generic economic development strategy, or if there is then it doesn‘t work. Each economic development strategy (or project or programme) should be firmly based in an understanding of local needs, and also of local potential. It is important to understand what the unique and competitive aspects of the local economy are, and to think about how these can be enhanced to maximise the competitiveness of the local area within the global economy. By exploiting an area‘s competitive strengths, it can trade widely and bring in wealth from elsewhere, but not every area has a globally competitive strength in the creative industries, biotechnology or green and low carbon technologies!

We can help in the following ways:

• Creating an evidence-based economic development strategy for a town, city, district, sub-region or functional economic market area
• Calculating the growth potential of a local area, and identifying projects to help achieve this potential
• Developing a sector development strategy

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Sustainability is an almost ubiquitous concept these days. However, most people focus on environmental sustainability and do not give sufficient thought to economic and social sustainability, which are important parts of the triple bottom line. We can help to understand and improve the economic and social sustainability of your project, programme or local area.

The low carbon sector is one of the few sectors of the economy that is attracting significant government support. With good long-term growth prospects, this is a sector that most places are trying to promote. We can help you with the promotion of the low carbon sector in your area.

We can help in the following ways:

• Assessing the economic impact of the growth in the low carbon and renewable energy sectors
• Developing projects and programmes to support the growth of the low carbon and renewable energy sectors
• Undertaking feasibility studies into capital and revenue projects to promote growth in these sectors

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Evaluation can be an incredibly valuable exercise, to work out what has happened (or will happen) as a result of public spending; what the impacts and outcomes are; what has worked well and not so well (and why); and how to do things more economically, efficiently and effectively in the future. All too often, evaluation is an after-thought or seen as something that needs to be done to meet a contractual commitment, and is not viewed as a useful tool to make better use of public spending. Evaluation is too often considered only at the end of a project, whereas it can be a valuable tool to improve results at the beginning, throughout, and at the end of a project.

We can help in the following ways:

• Evaluation of projects, including property–driven projects such as business incubators
• Evaluation of business support interventions
• Evaluations of major programmes such as regional European-funded programmes
• Formative and mid-term evaluation to help shape the ongoing delivery of projects and programmes
• Evaluation of public responses to events such as major flooding and Foot & Mouth Disease

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