There is no one-size-fits-all model for regional growth

In the early stages of the new administration – led by Andy Burnham – we are hearing much more about strengthening local economies, place-based growth, devolving power, and connecting local skills more closely to local employers, while also making public spending deliver wider economic value.

What is striking – and indeed promising – is how closely the growing emphasis on these levers for growth reflect the conversations that are already happening between businesses and the stakeholders in their local communities – and have been for some time.

Through the Brabners True North network, we regularly speak with business leaders across the North of England and the issues they raise are rarely abstract questions about economic policy. They are practical considerations that are on their mind, day in day out: How do I find the people I need to grow my business? Are the skills available and being taught locally the skills my business needs? Is the public money spent in my community genuinely creating opportunity for the businesses and people who live there?

These are not new questions. However, there is now a real opportunity for those questions to become part of the mainstream economic conversation.

Skills cannot be separated from place

One of the clearest and most consistent messages we hear is that there is a disconnect between the skills business need to grow and the talent that is available locally to support it.

Nowhere is this more apparent – and necessary – than the need to connect employment opportunities with young talent. The recent Milburn Review has brought national attention to the scale of this challenge, with around one million young people now outside education, employment or training. 

The recently announced planned education reforms – if successful – will place a much-needed greater emphasis on the development of technical and vocational skills, to sit alongside traditional more academic routes, with a much stronger focus on giving young people access to develop the skills needed by the economy (and businesses) around them. 

The ambition is to create clearer pathways from education into employment, while giving businesses a greater role in shaping the talent pipeline they ultimately depend on. The principle of connecting what young people are learning with the opportunities available in the communities in which they live, is exactly the kind of place-based thinking we hear businesses calling for.

I recently heard Patrick Hurley, MP for Southport, make an important point in a True North policy webinar about the lessons we can draw from what has been termed “Manchester-ism”.

He highlighted that the success of Manchester was not that it had discovered a policy formula that could simply be copied elsewhere. It was that its policies were specific, targeted, and focused on what Manchester needed. And, thereby, that Liverpool should not just simply replicate Manchester, just as Birmingham, Leeds or any other place should not be expected to do the same. Each place needs to understand what its own economy requires.

The opportunity is not to replicate one successful place. It is to replicate the process of listening to a place and responding to what it needs.

That means starting with listening to the businesses rooted in a community and asking what they need to grow. It means giving local leaders greater ability to respond to those needs. And it means connecting education and training much more closely to the businesses, clustered sector specialisms and opportunities that actually exist in their local economy.

Business needs to be part of the conversation

In recent times, businesses have had to navigate a period of considerable uncertainty. That makes long-term investment difficult. It makes hiring decisions harder. And it can leave businesses feeling that policy decisions are something that happens to them, rather than something they have contributed to shaping.

The early signals from this new administration offer – and suggest – there is a genuine opportunity to change that. Even if ultimate delivery remains a question mark, at least now there is a conversation being held openly and at the highest-level. 

No government can ever provide certainty about every aspect of the economic climate. But it can provide something almost as important: a clear sense of direction.

If businesses feel that the government is serious about reducing unnecessary barriers to growth, strengthening local economies and investing in the skills required to fuel it, they can begin to plan and invest with greater confidence.

There is no single blueprint for growth

To borrow Patrick Hurley’s phrase, good place-based growth should look less like a blueprint and more like a patchwork quilt: different pieces, shaped by the characteristics of the places they represent, but connected into something stronger collectively.

If government meets businesses where they are, understands the barriers they face and gives local economies the tools to respond, then the language of place-based growth can become something much more tangible than rhetoric.

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