Cheshire & Warrington steering group targets investment

Cheshire and Warrington is strengthening its partnership with business by establishing a private sector-led steering group to help promote the region as a great place to invest.

The Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), which is responsible for determining local economic priorities and undertaking activities to drive economic growth and the creation of local jobs, has launched the group to help shape the region’s programme of events.

The LEP is seeking to bring more businesses together to discuss how they can work to promote the region’s economy and achieve the objective of growing it to £50bn per year by 2040.

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics at the end of last year revealed that Cheshire and Warrington’s economy grew by 6.1% during 2016 and is about to break the £30bn per annum barrier, with output per head more than 20% higher than the UK average.

At the current rate of progress Cheshire and Warrington could become the second largest economy in the North West this year.

The inaugural meeting of the new steering group was chaired by Victoria Merton, director of corporate affairs at The Peel Group, one of the UK’s leading infrastructure and property investment companies.

The partnership steering group will lead the region through to MIPIM 2019, which will be the third time it will exhibit at the flagship festival of the international and property investment sector in the French resort of Cannes.

Ms Merton said: “For Cheshire and Warrington to continue its upward trajectory it is vital that civic and business leaders work closely together.

“Collaboration helps to unlock growth and while Cheshire and Warrington is already an outstanding economy, we must continue to work on growing opportunities for the region to support the wider UK economy.”

Part of the steering group’s purpose is to look at broadening Cheshire and Warrington’s engagement within the Northern Powerhouse.

“The LEP also hopes to create new events to promote the region’s offering in partnership with other delegations.”

She added: “The steering group will work to build on success to date by bringing together a varied range of key decision makers with skills in both property and investment to ensure that we are developing a diverse events programme that places the spotlight on our region at home, as well as on a global scale.”

At MIPIM in 2018, Cheshire and Warrington used the event to promote the Cheshire Science Corridor, Cheshire’s energy assets, investment opportunities in Warrington, the £250m Chester Northgate regeneration scheme, and to continue to raise the profile of the Constellation Partnership, which is aiming to take advantage of huge investment in high speed rail in Cheshire and Staffordshire.

Christine Gaskell, chair of Cheshire and Warrington LEP, said: “This new direction is about ensuring we make more of our strengths in life sciences, energy, finance, logistics, advanced and automotive manufacturing, and it will help inform our local industrial strategy which we are currently developing.

“Both our public and private sectors have the same goal, namely to create prosperity and well-being for all and to promote our outstanding region as far and as wide as we can as an outstanding place to live, work, invest and study.”

She said: “We’ve proposed this steering group, which is private sector-led, to unite our complementary expertise and to create a number of events across the year and help shape how we present ourselves, including at MIPIM.

“In previous years we have done well and learned a lot, but now it’s time to take the next steps to capitalise on the burgeoning interest in our region.

“It’s also extremely important to establish closer links with Northern Powerhouse partners and to promote the whole of the North to which Cheshire and Warrington adds considerable value.”