Rafe Fletcher: Singapore’s lessons for the UK’s forgotten towns

Rafe Fletcher is the founder of CWG.

As Singapore celebrated its 60th anniversary on 9th August, one of its rising business figures was 7,000 miles away in West Norfolk. Joseph Phua, chairman of entertainment platform 17LIVE and investment fund Turn Capital, was at The Walks stadium to watch his new side’s season opener.

Unfortunately for Phua, King’s Lynn Town FC lacked the precision of military parades back in the city state. Despite dominating the match, it ended in a 1-1 draw. But that did little to dampen the optimism of 1,400 locals in the stands. With a new strategy, manager and squad, the club is one of the promotion favourites.

Phua’s investment is part of a popular trend. Led by Americans, foreign owners are pouring money into our football clubs. Wrexham is the most famous example where actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have overseen an unprecedented three successive promotions. The accompanying TV show tells a story of renewal in the declining industrial town, as well as rejuvenation on the pitch.

It works because Wrexham isn’t fashionable. Phua clearly grasps the power of that narrative in choosing King’s Lynn (Lynn to locals). I know the town well. It’s just a few miles away from my family’s home. It’s not like where I live now. While Singapore is one of the world’s richest nations and a global trading hub of six million people, Lynn is an isolated town of 47,000 – over 100 miles northeast of London and 45 miles away from East Anglian metropolises Cambridge and Norwich.

Where Singapore has made itself globally relevant, Lynn has drifted into obscurity. Once England’s greatest trading hub and link to Northern Europe’s Hanseatic League, today its economy rests on a dwindling commercial port, food processing and low-paid seasonal agricultural work. Its former prosperity lingers only in the handsome merchant houses that colour the town’s historic quarter. Elsewhere, it’s rudely but not inaccurately described by YouTuber Turdtowns as such: “Everything is mismatched and piss-coloured. It truly belongs in the bog.”

Lynn cries out for the same ambition that once inspired the draining of its surrounding fens in the 17th century. Then one of Europe’s greatest infrastructure projects. Instead, the 20th century brought only managed decline.

Designated an overspill town from London in the 1960s despite being so far away, it at least has a direct train to King’s Cross. That service carries the royals to nearby Sandringham but is rather less reliable for ordinary commuters. Passengers are often dumped on rail replacement buses at Ely to undertake the final 30-mile leg along the single carriageway A10. The Beeching Cuts under Harold Macmillan severed its links to the rest of Norfolk. The county’s only city, Norwich, is now a two-hour journey if the Ely connection works.

Attempted regeneration in Lynn is of the “do something” variety. Turdtown’s review suggests the the town centre’s 2004 facelift wasn’t money well spent. There was little uptake for the new King’s Lynn Innovation Centre and its builders defaulted on a council-backed loan. Any coherent plans are undermined by ever-changing government schemes with different grant criteria.

Private investment cuts through this dithering because it expects something back. Reynolds and McElhenney are eulogised as philanthropists in Wrexham. Tourism and hospitality spending has increased by £120m in just three years. But they share in the spoils. The club they bought the club for $2.5m is now valued at $475m.

The Wrexham model shows the possibilities of treating towns as assets rather than state-dependents. Phua’s plans for Lynn reflect that mentality. Rather than feasibility studies, he talks about padel courts to attract the county’s affluent class and refurbishing a tired hotel to keep Sandringham day-trippers overnight. He asks the same blunt question Lee Kuan Yew once did: how can we make people trade, spend and invest?

Of course, regional regeneration is about more than money. As the MP Katie Lam argues in the Policy Exchange’s Future of the Right paper, you can’t build communities in commuter belts. Singapore deals with that now as it grapples for an identity beyond that of a money-making port. But surely better to have money and worry about social cohesion than to have none and still worry about it.

And Lynn has assets it can leverage. Tom Dyckhoff writes in The Guardian: “Were King’s Lynn anywhere else in the country but squelched into the remoter end of the Fens, it would be overrun with tourists.” He writes about the beauty of its historic quarter – “cobbles, alleys and warehouses” – and hopes that “fortune will smile on it again someday”.

That remoteness is structural rather than geographic. Lynn lies close to the North Norfolk coast where villages like Burnham Market are weekend playgrounds for London’s wealthy. It’s nicknamed “Chelsea-on-Sea” for its demographic resemblance to the wealthy West London district. Its train line, when not sabotaged at Ely, reaches Cambridge in under an hour. How can it tap into the prosperity that surrounds it?

Singapore’s size is often raised as an objection to replicating its model. Of course, it’s easier to govern a few million people and a land mass you could fit into Norfolk seven times. But such an objection should instead be a lesson in localism. Regions know what they need better than Whitehall.

Yes, West Norfolk council’s track record hardly screams competence. But that speaks to a broader problem of incentives. Local government competes only for dependency. It’s about securing grants, ticking boxes and proving you’re “doing something” with the money. Investors like Phua think differently. They expect a return. They want to compete for capital. Government should help that process, whether it be building roads, fixing railways, or simply ensuring it capitalises upon the cultural cachet of a rising local football club.

Foreign investors see our forgotten towns not as relics but undervalued assets. If that entrepreneurial mindset were applied more widely, the UK might finally make headway with its levelling-up agenda.