Tyne and Wear City Region

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Tyne and Wear City Region Paul Rubinstein Assistan
t Chief Executive and Director of Corporate
Policy, Newcastle City Council
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• Distinctive assets and opportunities
• Compact, attractive, well-connected, with good
  natural and built place assets
• Concentration of HE with makings of critical mass
  in commercially relevant disciplines
• Brain gain students and migrants
• Several great companies of the CR
• Airport
• Biggest room for improvement on most indicators
  polarisation

3

• Collaboration
• Emerging triple helix HE, business, public
  agencies in science, design and more widely
• LAs engaged in discussing how best to achieve CR
  working/outcomes economic performance now
  properly on the map but a way to go
• Private sector not yet adequately involved
• Genuine debate about what collaboration means
  and can achieve

4

• Evidence and analysis how
• economic geography of CR helps
• CR analysis helps understand how markets work at
  all levels
• Focuses thinking on role in economic development
  of density/ agglomeration/ critical
  adjacencies housing-transport-employment
  interactions/ trade-offs asset base
  universities, gateways, people
• Raises awareness of poly-nuclearity and need to
  focus on growth in major urban centres
• Forthcoming OECD review will hone and deepen
  analysis

5
Evidence (I) urban flight
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Evidence (II) commuting
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• Implementation
• Still quite green seen by most as a long-term
  process
• Newcastle Science City massive strategic
  economic development plan with pan-North East
  nodes
• Regional Funding Allocations good tester of
  CR approach, partially successful

8

• Barriers
• Too much focus on how much investment and not
  enough on how we use it differently fewer,
  bigger things leverage from elsewhere, linked to
  financial flexibilities
• Some specific pinch points HEFCE funding,
  strategic roads, skills strategy
• Have to look wider than money e.g. long-term
  impact of RSS
• Mustnt be governance blind - how do we gear up
  our institutions to be competent on economic
  policy?

9

• Added value of The Northern Way/
• City Regions
• The Northern Way a useful brand and focal point
• Shared investment priorities worthwhile but
  mustnt get too focused on spending
• CRs answer pressing question not dealt with by
  national/regional/local on how economies work
• Current CR debate risks over-complicating simple
  concept
• Distinctiveness arguments overdone
• Visionary or incremental which is it?

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• What success might look like
• Tyne and Wear CR recognised as one of the top ten
  international centres for translational
  scientific research and business agglomeration
• Productivity, earnings and employment all running
  at UK average levels in 2020, with less cross-CR
  polarisation
• More people living in urban centres, travelling
  less
• Clarity for citizens and businesses about who
  does what, when
• Capacity and responsibility for leaders to decide
  and finance priorities without needing to corral
  fragmented funding or seek permission

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• What were doing next
• Accelerating delivery of long-term science and
  HE-based development strategy
• Developing sustainable managed migration and
  retention strategy
• More muscular foreign policy
• Evaluating long-term planning and transport
  policy principles and delivery frameworks
• Scoping comprehensive regeneration delivery pot
  and vehicle
• Digesting outcomes of OECD review, business case
  feedback
• leading to smarter, realistic, genuinely
  prioritised, genuinely long-term investment
  programme through revised CRDP

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Tyne and Wear City Region Development
Programme Neil MurphyNewcastle City Council
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Tyne and Wear City Region SWOT
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• Tyne and Wear CRDP starting point
• not year zero but previous work informal and
  bespoke
• understanding how the economy works
• focus on urban competitiveness and critical mass
  overcoming lack of scale
• acceptance of polynuclearity a CR with a
  several employment hubs and overlapping TTWAs
  with variable reach
• getting away from spreading the jam and arguing
  for the patch
• CR working about functionality not
  governance-led, but not governance-blind either
• complementarities and tensions with regional
  strategies

15

• Tyne and Wear CRDP 5 priorities
• Business
• what kind of knowledge economy?
• growing the private sector base
• People
• raising the employment rate
• nurturing, attracting and retaining talent
• Place
• increasing the pace of regeneration, focusing on
  urban assets and quality of life offer

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• Tyne and Wear CR what next?
• CRDP already influential priorities integrated
  in RES keystone for ongoing work
• from technocratic to political agenda
• integration with city summit follow-up.
  Generating momentum, but plenty of caution.
  Core cities or City Regions?
• agreeing function debating form and powers
• incrementalism
• developing business case evolving CRDP
• a New Deal for Cities?
• how to inform CSR 2007 process?

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• Tyne and Wear CR priorities for
• The Northern Way
• Already
• Northern Way Growth Strategy supporting important
  Tyne and Wear CR priorities enhancements to
  Pathways to Work areas contributions towards
  the Design Centre for the North and Newcastle
  Science City developing evidence for investment
  in A1
• Looking ahead
• added value in developing case for broader policy
  change supporting closing the gap need strong
  and prioritised Northern Way ask by CSR 2007,
  including on powers
• under-explored potential synergies e.g. in
  tourism, HE policy
• also facilitating cross-North best practice
  performance measurement, dealing with fuzzy
  boundaries etc