‘We’re a city of innovation and opportunity’

THINKING BIG: Chris Jackson with the site of the proposed East Bank development in the background

Chewing the Fat, out to lunch with Phil Ascough

This week’s guest: Chris Jackson, Hull City Council’s new director of regeneration

A stroll round the city centre and a long, low alcohol discussion in one of my favourite pubs took us through themes of achievement and aspiration, progress and potential, and harnessing heritage.

In one sense our chosen pub is a classic example of how not to do it. The Scale & Feather is rightly acclaimed for the quality of its beers and ciders and the calibre of its licensee and staff. It should also win prizes for its décor – an array of sleeves from some classic albums.

Sergeant Pepper, Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin II and IV. Call in for a drink and a look, and don’t forget the ones on the wall at the top of the stairs on the way to the loos. The collection gives rise to a good pub game as well. The sleeves aren’t labelled, and you’re soon racking your brain over those you can’t quite remember.

So what’s not to like? Only the revelation when I asked a few visits ago that the actual records aren’t there. The story goes that whoever created the wonderful display, long before the craze for record fairs, chucked the vinyl in the bin. It’s enough to drive you to drink.

The pub itself was new to Chris Jackson, but then he’s only recently returned to the city. He was born here, in Hedon Road maternity hospital, and he lived in Preston and then Beverley before heading off to Oxford University and only returning for family visits, until now.

As Hull City Council’s new director of regeneration, Chris has got a big city to shape, and big boots to fill.

The job vacancy arose because of the untimely death of Mark Jones, revered in the public and private sectors and referenced respectfully in a Linked In post by Chris on day one in the Guildhall.

Chris mentioned his own excitement, pride and passion, and added: “Also honoured to be following in the footsteps of the late Mark Jones MBE, who left a great legacy to Hull through his hard work and dedication to the city.”

The personal decision to return was an easy one. Chris’s wife is from Hull, and the move made sense for them and their two children.

“Our London house was getting too small for two growing boys,” he said.

“We wanted to come back to see our families more and give the kids some of the experiences we had. Going to Hull KR, going to the beach, things that come with living here.”

There’s an obvious parallel between the regeneration of the city and the renaissance of Chris’s beloved Robins. They’ve both had their blips but overall the transformation has been dramatic and eye-catching. The trajectory is upwards and now the challenge is to make it sustainable.

VISION: Chris Jackson

Chris went to Oxford in 2002 – the year of big openings at The Deep and what’s now the MKM Stadium. Since then the world’s first “submarium” has welcomed new neighbours including state-of-the-art workspace at Humber Quays, C4DI and Arco, a riverside walkway and Siemens – a global engineering business standing as a symbol of the city’s rise in the renewables sector.

Across the city centre we have St Stephen’s which, along with the new transport interchange next door, opened in 2007. On the other side of the shopping centre, the award-winning Hull Truck Theatre opened its new home in 2009 with facilities which played a big part in supporting the city’s cultural achievements.

Completion of the redevelopment of that section of Ferensway also put the city centre within walking distance of the stadium, which has brought us Premier League football and some of the biggest names in global entertainment.

There’s also been significant regeneration in the Old Town and elsewhere, with developers lovingly restoring historic properties to breathe new life into pubs steeped in character, attics now viable as high-tech businesses and the Victorian Paragon and Hepworth Arcades, havens for shops full of character.

Connexin Live opened in 2018 to join Hull City Hall, Hull New Theatre and Hull Truck in attracting people from far and wide to enjoy top-class entertainment, but it’s the grassroots cultural community which has stepped up to inspire our own big events.

Humber Street Sesh has its roots in the pubs of Princes Avenue. The Freedom Festival grew from the bicentenary of William Wilberforce in 2007. Larkin with Toads in 2010 was indigenous, ingenious, and an inspiration for the bid which brought us City of Culture in 2017.

A PLACE OF IDEAS: Chris outside the forthcoming youth enterprise hub

With achievement comes ambition and expectation. We’re walking tall and asking what’s next? When we needed a bridge to reconnect the Old Town with the marina we demanded great design and we got it with Murdoch’s Connection. Now we’re looking forward to completion of the Castle Street project and the launch of Maritime Hull, which will showcase the city’s unique heritage assets like never before.

The £65m project will embrace six sites, two historic ships and three historic streets, and who knows what might follow with the potential presented by other maritime relics on a list of development opportunities which Chris sets out in three categories.

Castle Street and Hull Maritime are two projects where the focus is now on delivery. Another is the focus on youth enterprise at 161 High Street.

Chris said: “It will be a youth enterprise hub, providing a space where young business people can come together, learn from their peers and those with greater business experience, sharing ideas and opportunities.”

The next category comprises sites already in progress but where more work is needed to get them over the line – Albion Square in Hull city centre and the East Bank of the River Hull with plans for up to 850 new homes and mixed development.

Finally there are the sites such as the West Docklands, where much of the Smith + Nephew site will become available for development, and the western gateway area, from Lord Line and its crumbling companions to St Andrew’s Quay and beyond.

JEWEL IN THE CROWN: Chris in front of the refurbished Maritime Museum, with work under way on the former Burton building on the right

“Although these are ten to twenty-year projects these are the things that we need to be thinking about and doing the ground work for now,” said Chris.

“The big, ambitious stuff that we should be talking to central government about, big schemes that will require investment from them but will have a big impact on the city.”

That’s where Chris has particular strengths. After graduating in politics, philosophy and economics, he worked briefly in Singapore and then embarked on a Whitehall career which embraced such fun areas as capital gains tax, inheritance tax and the vice taxes.

“Tax is one of those areas where you get quite a lot of grief from people,” he understated, before moving on to outline his work on health and adult social care spending, housing policy, council tax and business rates.

It all adds up to valuable experience of dealing with the questions of how to raise and spend money in straitened times.

“However much you can give people, they’ll nearly always want more,” he observed.

“When you look back over my career, all the areas I have worked on touch local government in some way, and I do think the role of local government is undervalued.

“There are quite small things that a council can do or not do, or do well or do badly, that change how it feels to live and work in a place. The opportunity to do that in Hull, a place I knew and cared for and was passionate about, was a great draw.

“Lots of cities in the UK have been through a regeneration story in the last twenty years. Hull has made great progress and a lot has happened but it also has a lot of potential and space to grow.”

It helps that Chris has intricate knowledge of the “Green Book” – the Government's guidance on options appraisal and evaluation.

He said: “I bring a combination of assessing and writing business cases for the Treasury and I know how to construct a Green Book business case that will show the Treasury what they will need to know in terms of added value and economic growth.”

Chris is also able to combine his understanding of government procedures and priorities with his local knowledge.

He said: “We are lucky in that we have developers and construction partners in the city which are family owned, local businesses who get the need for investing in place and not just buildings. They have a longer term investment in the city.

“There are some things which the Government can’t deliver without Hull. Part of it is renewable energy. If they are not going to do that through the Humber, North Sea and companies such as Siemens, how are they going to do it?

RIPE FOR INVESTMENT: Western Docklands

“They also want to decarbonise and we should be at the centre of that. And if they are serious about meeting their housing targets we can help with that. We have pieces of brownfield land that are vacant or under-utilised but we need government investment to unlock those sites.”

There’s a recognition that city centres are evolving. Chris said: “The nature of retail has changed and what people look for from a city has changed. When I was a kid here you would walk down Whitefriargate and round Princes Quay but online retail has hit that – you have to offer an experience that people can’t get online.

“The food and beverage and cultural offer is really important and you see Humber Street as an example of that, where the council has worked really well in partnership with Wykeland. They have worked with the buildings that were already there and it’s a vibrant community, and there’s a lot of potential to do something similar in Whitefriargate and the Old Town.

“More and more companies are interested in bringing old buildings back to life, and bringing more city centre living with that. Humber Street would not have had the same impact if it had been knocked down and replaced. Part of Hull’s regeneration is telling our story through bringing buildings back to life and back into use.”

But Chris emphasised that central to the success of any pitches for new investment is the ability to demonstrate both a track record for effective delivery and an unshakeable confidence in the ability to do it again.

“There are still people who would write the case for Hull as a deprived city, all a bit rubbish, desperately in need of this and that,” he said.

“But what we should be portraying is a great city with lots of interesting, innovative businesses, opportunities for national companies to work with businesses in Hull to improve and innovate. And we should be making the case for why businesses should start, come or invest here because it’s a great place to do business and we can help them grow rather than talking down the city or asking them to help us.”