We must set bold targets to grow economy, Great Northern Conference told
The private and public sectors must collaborate and set bold targets to provide a long-term boost for the North’s economy, a plenary session at the Great Northern Conference was told.
The session – ‘Infrastructure under pressure – Pathways to a resilient North’ highlighted the vast potential of places like Doncaster to attract investment. Damian Allen, CEO of the city of Doncaster Council, said: “We often refer to ourselves as ‘North, North London’. We’re a hub for connectivity.
“We need a blend of locally-grown skills but we also need to draw from other skill bases like Leeds and London. From an investment point of view in terms of that nodal office space it’s considerably cheaper to invest in Doncaster than it is to try and acquire real estate, if available, in London. The big challenge is that there isn’t that availability of investment for that sort of development. While Doncaster was voted recently as one of the top places to come and live, that’s largely because of the low level of house prices and wider commercial land.
“So there’s an opportunity in terms of initiating that sort of growth. But what we need is some of the other barriers removed; aging infrastructure and a lack of appetite for that sort of investment… That’s one of the benefits of working within the combined authority where you’ve got a growth plan where you can look at spatial planning and growth across the whole of South Yorkshire.”
Andrew Dickman, the chairman of Tritax Big Box Developments, said: “We need to be a bit braver. We need to be a bit prouder of what we do. Another big factor which is potentially going to make a huge change is combined authorities taking more power and having more control over delivery because what we need to do if we’re going to make these big changes is go faster; going faster means having stronger devolved decision making and it lets us make key decisions more quickly and delivering them into larger scale developments.”
Olga Watterich, deputy regional director at the CBI, said: “Business needs to collaborate on larger projects. The Government has put in place a 10-year infrastructure plan. They are bringing in more planners and they’ve published the national planning policy framework. There is a lot of work going on to try and lay the groundwork but the businesses that I speak to just want to see some more action now and looking at how they can start to work on some of these projects.”
Kasam Hussain, the regional partnership director for Openreach, described how he worked closely with a wide range of partners, ranging from large organisations to local communities, to ensure the North of England achieves maximum benefit from Openreach’s multi-million pound investment in digital infrastructure.