Although there have been many initiatives designed to regenerate relatively run-down and deprived parts of major urban areas, there have been surprisingly few attempts to value their benefits. This article presents the findings of research that has sought to value the benefits of urban regeneration policies. The focus has been on devising an approach that can build on the evidence provided from urban evaluations undertaken in many countries at the present time. It uses established techniques and statistical data sources that are fairly readily available. The evaluation of urban policy is subject to substantial conceptual and measurement problems and this should be recognised in interpreting valuation results and thus benefit–cost ratios. The article shows how the approach can be applied by drawing on recent UK evaluation evidence and data for England. It concludes by discussing where future research might be directed.

This article discusses the challenges that local enterprise partnerships are likely to experience in evaluation given the severe constraints on the funds available to evaluators and local enterprise partnerships. It highlights the rationale and benefits of conducting evaluation and examines how local enterprise partnerships might benefit from previous evaluation efforts. It also considers some of the technical and practical challenges of conducting evaluation in the current constrained financial climate, including the challenge of ensuring a common format in programme evaluation; attributing the impact on outcomes arising from government intervention; the difficulty of assessing the durability of benefits and putting a monetary value on the benefits arising from government intervention. The article concludes with some key messages on evaluation for local enterprise partnerships and those evaluating local economic development activities in times of austerity.

The Finance For Business (FFB) programme operated by Highlands and Islands Enterprise through its network of local enterprise companies is a good example of a package of support designed to stimulate business enterprise, company investment and economic development in predominantly rural areas. During recent years governments in Western Europe and North America have devoted more resources to this type of policy and the need for evaluation of such programmes has increased. The European Commission has been particularly active in encouraging research and the dissemination of good practice. This article examines some of the important conceptual and measurement problems which are relevant to this area of evaluation and uses the FFB programme as a case study with which to illustrate how a cost benefit evaluation drawing on survey-based approaches can be undertaken. In so doing it demonstrates how it is possible to compare the costs and benefits of such programmes and provide Value For Money (VFM) performance indicators which allow meaningful comparison to be made across programmes. The article concludes by pointing to some of the strengths and weaknesses of existing evaluation approaches and makes recommendations as to where further research might usefully be undertaken.