My Industrial-Grade Cynicism
Industrial Strategy, FDI, Air Quality, Ageing, and Women in Engineering
Wor Room Networking!
Come join me for a coffee at Tiny Tiny in Newcastle on Monday 7th July, from 10-12.30.
It’s free…and tickets are already half gone, so get on it!
The Industrial Strategy has been published this week - 160 pages of it - alongside five of the eight sector plans - all 70-90 pages.
That’s a lot of words, and there was a lot of fanfare.
But, I found it all sort of underwhelming.
The big headlines in the promo ahead of the release were about cutting energy costs for 7,000 businesses…and I just thought ‘is that really the best you’ve got?’.
The 25% cut to energy bills is for 7,000 businesses, starting two years from now. Now, I know they are aiming at energy intensive businesses with that, and those of a decent size will be fairly few…but it’s still 7,000 out of a business base of 5.5 million.
Elsewhere there’s plans for 5,500 SMEs to benefit from digital transition through the Made Smarter programme…but there are 5.45 million SMEs in the UK. So, that’s reaching 0.001% of the UK’s SMEs.
There’s £4bn for the industrial strategy’s eight key sectors, delivered through the British Business Bank. But, the UK has an annual GDP of around £2.8 trillion, so that figure is worth 0.0014% of GDP.
Overall, the plans aim to support 1.1 million jobs over the next decade. So, 110,000 a year. Currently there are 9.1 million people economically inactive in the UK, as in today, not in ten years.
So, I can’t quite shake the idea of it as a series of fairly small drops in quite a large ocean.
Okay, now putting my cynicism to one side as best I can.
It’s good we have an Industrial Strategy, and it’s good we have individual sector plans, with ministerial buy-in.
For the North East, there’s recognition of the region’s strength in some of the sectors we’d say are our focus - advanced manufacturing, clean energy, life sciences, and creative industries. We might say digital too, but I’m a bit more suspect of that.
Publicly, support has been widespread from business groups, and I can see how in isolated areas funding that is nominally Industrial Strategy money will make a difference - it’ll help development of sites, skills programmes, and to draw in private investment. Especially where regional mayors can use it to their advantage.
But, is it ambitious enough? Is it tangible enough? Is it going to happen fast enough?
We’ll see, I guess.
North East FDI up 11%
There were 42 FDI projects in the North East last year, with the region making up 4.9% of the UK’s total projects, up from 3.9% in 2023. That’s according to a survey by EY.
The Journal’s write up notes the falling jobs figure against that…but that Newcastle has gone up the cities leaderboard.
I can’t find it now, so you’ll have to take my word for it, but I’ve written previously about how flows of investment move around the UK, and the North East not being especially sticky when it comes to investment. What we have is a good landing pad, maybe, but the eventual destination might be elsewhere in the UK.
Nevertheless, more investment is good news, and something to build on.
Ten-Year Infrastructure Strategy
Also published this week was the 10-Year Infrastructure Plan…which will, you know, help the Industrial Strategy. Hopefully they all spoke to each other about it.
I won’t go through summarising it, as my old colleagues at NECC have done a briefing paper on it.
Air Quality in Newcastle
A little trip down memory lane for me now, as Newcastle City Council publishes an update on air quality in the city.
The Clean Air Zone in the city was the result of poor air quality in a handful of locations, often defined by spots where the traffic sat for long periods with engines running.
I was doing transport policy for the Chamber of Commerce at the time when the Council were consulting on the plans, and it was very obvious that a Clean Air Zone was not their preferred option. It’s a blunt instrument, and it impacts people in deprived areas more by impacting older vehicles.
It also didn’t come with any funding for alternatives…you say to people you can’t drive your car without paying a fee, but you don’t make changes to road layouts or to bus fares or anything like that with it.
Ultimately, their hand was forced, as the Zone was the only option really left open to them by the government of the time.
How people work has changed since then, and fewer people will be commuting into the city every day. Road layouts have changed. Buses have become cleaner. Cars have become cleaner. And air quality has improved.
All of that probably would have happened anyway, is my view…but it’s good that improvements to air quality are happening.
The Clean Air Zone remains in place because of two areas which are exceeding legal limits - Percy Street by Haymarket, and Stephenson Road at the top of Chillingham Road.
In both cases, there’s an element of urban geography in play here…as they are places where traffic can be slow, and also where there’s cover. Haymarket is surrounded by high buildings, and Stephenson Road sits where traffic queues and the Coast Road begins to drop down going by Jesmond.
Not a lot you can do about that.
Ageing in the North
The Northern Health Science Alliance, have published a new report on ageing in the North.
The group is a collection of academics from five northern universities, and there are some in-depth articles in the report from experts in the their fields, covering stuff like frailty, dementia, housing, nutrition and long-term health conditions.
I/We talk a lot about child poverty, on the basis that things have got a lot better for pensioners in the last few decades, but this report outlines some continuing challenges.
They find there’s been a 10% increase in poverty rates amongst over 65s in the North East and Yorkshire.
Between 2020/21 and 2022/23, pensioner couples in the North East had incomes 14% below national average and 25% below the South East.
Men in the North East have the highest average predicted unhealthy life years - 20.2 years.
Older people in the North East are 1.61 times more likely to be frail than someone in the South East, 1.16 times more likely to have a fall, and 1.14 times more likely to break a hip.
It goes on and on…I’d recommend reading the full report for more of those sorts of facts and figures, and also some policy recommendations for how to improve things.
International Women in Engineering Day
A bit of a shout out for a client now, as Monday was International Women in Engineering Day.
STEMAZING work with women in STEM professions like engineering to help them become role models running workshops in primary schools.
The aim is to build confidence amongst these STEM pros, get more diverse role models into schools, and help improve the gender gap in the profession by inspiring the next generation.
They do incredible work, with hundreds of role models, reaching tens of thousands of primary school pupils, and I’ve been lucky enough to work with them recently including helping them place a couple of articles from their founder Alex Knight to celebrate the day.
First, some practical advice for teachers on how to get STEM into the classroom, in HWRK Magazine.
Second, an op-ed in the Northern Agenda, talking about what policymakers need to do to help get diverse STEM voices into classrooms, and improve the gender gap in sectors like engineering.
“You shouldn’t teach chemistry or physics without Marie Curie, computing without Ada Lovelace or space without Katherine Johnson.”
Alex Knight, STEMAZING
Working With Me
I’m now booking in work for September, so if there’s anything on your horizon, then reach out on arlen@arlenpettitt.co.uk.
I do things like:
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