Member Article

Action plan to boost North East growth

An ambitious plan to boost economic growth in the North East has been unveiled by regional development agency One NorthEast. Hundreds of millions of pounds have been pledged to the initiative, which aims to get 73,000 more people into work and create 22,000 extra businesses by 2016. For this to happen economic output needs to rise by an extra £6bn.

Under its Regional Economic Strategy (RES) Action Plan, the agency is to invest £240m each year for the next five years. The plan will examine ways of boosting transport and digital connections, and train adults with necessary skills. There will also be investment in areas such as Newcastle Science City and Digital City in Middlesbrough, and in market towns and rural services centres.

Sarah Green, CBI regional director for the North East, said: “Any good football team needs all its players aiming at the same goal. The RES Action Plan creates the vision for the region’s economic players to unite behind. It integrates spending across public bodies and ensures public money is used to leverage private investment ensuring more bang for the region’s bucks. The business sector has worked closely with One NorthEast to develop the plan and, therefore, there is a real sense of regional ownership.”

Alan Clarke, One NorthEast Chief Executive, said: “The RES Action Plan identifies the practical projects and programmes that can be driven forward to help the region achieve its goal of substantially raising its economic output from 80% of the national GVA average to 90% by 2016. It is work in progress. We have identified about £2.7bn being spent directly by our partners in these priority areas already. The big win is for all partners in the region to align even more of their resources to concentrate spending power in the areas that will speed up this growth.”

For more information about the RES Action Plan, visit www.onenortheast.co.uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .