Barnsley Alhambra Economic Case

Thrive Economics were commissioned by Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council (BMBC) to prepare the economic case for major planned investment in the acquisition and re-purposing of the Alhambra Shopping Centre in Barnsley Town Centre.

The Council were preparing the OBC submission to South Yorkshire MCA (SYMCA) and in line with the MCAs requirements, the OBC needed to include a robust economic case that considered the economic benefits of three possible with funding options, set against the likely no investment counterfactual scenario. The counterfactual scenario itself would see a continued significant worsening of Shopping Centre performance, ultimately leading to its potential future closure.

Working closely with Council officers and SYMCA, we confirmed the potential scenarios for inclusion, including the Preferred redevelopment option for repurposing a significant proportion of the centre for health and wellbeing purposes. Two further viable alternative options were also developed and included within the appraisal.

Modelling of gross and net Land Value Uplift (LVU) and employment-related FTE job and GVA outcomes alongside an assessment of Distributional Impacts was then completed in each option. In practice, the case was largely premised on the safeguarding over 1,000 existing FTE jobs locally.

Further modelling of longer-term net economic costs (capital and revenue/operational) then enabled a full assessment of Value for Money (VfM) returns to be completed for each funding option, with VfM expressed in Benefit Cost Ratio (BCR) terms.

A full account of non-monetised wider impacts was also included, alongside important sensitivity tests to reflect inevitable uncertainties in the central case economic impact modelling.

Having submitted the OBC, Thrive Economics then assisted with the post-submission appraisal clarifications process. The project has since received approval from SYMCA and has progressed to Full Business Case (FBC) stage.