Northern revolution is on the cards

THE chief executive of a business lobbying group has called for a “northern revolution”.

Senior voices from Yorkshire and the North West joined together for a rallying call to Northern business leaders, academics and entrepreneurs this week, to discuss the change needed to accelerate economic growth in the northern regions.

chief executive of Leeds City Council, Tom Riordan, Liverpool Vision chief executive, Max Steinberg, and Sir Howard Bernstein, chief executive of Manchester City Council, led a panel of speakers at the Northern Revolution conference.

Frank McKenna, chief executive of Downtown in Business, which organised the event and represents more than 800 businesses from across the North of England, said: “What we need is a genuine decentralisation of the management of government power and funding so that we can take greater responsibility for our own destiny.

“Downtown is calling for a Northern Revolution that demands a transfer of decision making powers around the big strategic issues of education, skills and training, transport, planning and economic development to elected city regional mayors, supported by city region authorities.”

High on the day’s agenda was HS2 and the fundamental issue of capacity over speed in order for it to meet business travel needs in the North of England. It was suggested that while travelling is no longer downtime, this will certainly not be the case if passengers are packed onto a train and forced to stand.

The conference also heard from three entrepreneurs who agreed there is a requirement for Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool to pull together, helped by the HS2 network, to ensure economic growth in the North of England. They said that opportunities for investment, in the right schemes with a sound proposition, are out there, as long as people with the integrity to deliver can be found.

Mr McKenna said: “Greater Manchester, with its combined authority structure, has proved that with a limited amount of autonomy city regions can achieve a great deal. It is a model that needs to be supported, but it doesn’t go far enough.

 “A transfer of real power from Whitehall to the regions will help to break the ‘one size fits all’ approach to some of these key issues, but would also enable Northern cities to work more closely together and strategically plan in a far more co-ordinated and effective manner.

“Local Enterprise Partnerships do not have the resource to deliver real change; city mayors have had a limited take up, and where they do exist, the lack of strategic power is beginning to frustrate, and the private sector has found initiatives such as the Regional Growth Fund painful to access.

“What we need is a revolutionary approach to the decentralisation agenda to make a serious dent into the North/South divide.”