Key city regions can work together for growth, says Bernstein
THE chief executive of Manchester City Council believes that the Leeds and Manchester city regions can both grow through working together rather than competing with each other.
Sir Howard Bernstein told an audience of senior figures from the property sector that the creation of pilot city regions in Leeds and Manchester was an opportunity for both to attract investment but the two would still compete when it came to major opportunities such as big inward investment projects.
Speaking at an event called ‘Powerhouse of the North’, hosted by the Leeds City Region at international property conference MIPIM, Sir Howard
and Jean Dent, Leeds City Council’s director of city development, said that the city region approach should not create more layers of bureacracy but improve opportunities for business.
“The market doesn’t recognise administrative boundaries,” said Sir Howard. “We have to ask how do we make ourselves competitive? What businesses are looking for when investing is the size and depth of the labour market.
“I have said for some time that we should be investing not in courses to create more hairdressers but in those for scientists.”
The Leeds and Manchester City Regions are two ‘pilot’ city regions tasked by central government with developing a programme of devolved powers and decision-making structures to direct funding in areas key to future economic development and growth.
Sir Howard and Ms Dent agreed that while a high speed rail link between London and both city regions is essential, their two cities need to improve their transport links and speed up the hour-long train journey between them.
As public sector spending is squeezed, Sir Howard said that tough decisions will have to be made.
“We will have a smaller resource base and all politicians are going to be interested in outsourcing difficult decisions! We should not expect any government to experiment in a recession.
“We need to have a grown up debate about the fiscal position. In this fiscal climate we have to reduce the reliance of dependency-related services. One of the huge successes of our engagement with government is on public sector reform,” he added.
When it comes to investment opportunities as the market slowly moves out of recession, fellow panellist Richard Serra, director of property agents Savills, said: “The public and private sectors are looking to each other and saying ‘You go first’. But neither wants to and when they do they will have to do it on their credit cards. It’s going to be on a pay-as-you-go basis.”
The panel discussion at the conference in Cannes in the South of France, included Andrew Wallhead, corporate director of regeneration, culture and sport at Wakefield Council who highlighted that the city has got its Trinity Walk retail scheme back on track thanks to an enterprising approach which is a model other local authorities can use to kick-start stalled schemes.
“Anglo Irish Bank was funding the Trinity scheme and the problem was with the mezzanine debt. We provided that – it is not a big amount in relative terms but it is about providing confidence more than anything.”
