The Northern Way

The Northern Way is a 20 year strategy to transform the economy of the North of England. Success will be determined by the bridging of a £30 billion output gap between the North and the average for England.

The Northern Way will focus on tackling issues that are important for the whole of the North – those which cannot be tackled by one region alone, e.g. transport infrastructure, marketing the North to the World. The strategy will provide the North with a single voice on key issues with which to address Central Government.

History

The strategy was first initiated in February 2004, when Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott invited the three northern Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) – Northwest Development Agency, One NorthEast and Yorkshire Forward – to show how the North could bridge the output gap.

Themes

To lead the delivery of this objective, an independently chaired steering group was established with a range of different public and private sector interests. The Steering Group launched Moving Forward: The Northern Way Growth Strategy in September 2004 to focus on four themes:

1) Developing new City Region plans to work across administrative boundaries in the eight major conurbations of the North, namely:

* Liverpool
* Central Lancashire
* Manchester
* Sheffield
* Leeds
* Hull and Humber Ports
* Tees Valley
* Tyne and Wear

2) Key investment priorities that could exploit economic activity across all three regions. These investment priorities are:

* bring more people into employment
* strengthen the North’s knowledge base: drive innovation
* build a more entrepreneurial North
* capture a larger share of global trade: key clusters
* meet employer skills needs
* the North’s connectivity
* create truly sustainable communities
* market the North to the world.

3) Working together differently and collaborating to make the most of £100 million public sector investment in the North and equivalent private sector investment.

4) Influencing local, regional and national decision-makers to ensure their policies and programmes support Northern Way goals.

Growth fund

The Growth Fund, worth £100million, was launched in September 2004, and in June 2005 the Northern Way published its Business plan setting out how it would spend the money. The eight City Region partnerships published their City Region Development Plans to show how they would work together to grow their economies to address the output gap.

External links

* [http://www.thenorthernway.co.uk The Northern Way official site]
* [http://www.yorkshire-forward.com Yorkshire Forward Website]