John Wilkinson, Director Western Gateway Partnership spoke about the opportunities that a joined up regional approach can bring:
First of all, can I say a huge thank you for inviting me here tonight to say a few words about the Western Gateway Partnership and the work we do. It’s a huge pleasure to be part of such a gathering as you celebrate the amazing successes of the businesses you run. And congratulations for being finalists in the C2S awards for 2024. It’s a great achievement and I look forward to hearing more about the work you are doing.
I travel around the Pan Region a lot with this job. And everywhere I go, I see ambition. Ambition that our area will crack some of the major challenges we face in the World today. Ambition to create a fairer and a greener economy that works better for all our children. Ambition to collaborate and form partnerships and alliances, rather than being isolated and protective of our knowledge. And these awards appear to me to be about all of those things and I am delighted to be in this room today with so many people who believe the same.
So let me say a few words about the Western Gateway Partnership. We were formed 6 or 7 years ago by the political Leaders of Bristol and Cardiff, who got their heads together and recognised that as 2 core cities, 50 miles apart, and with nearly 100,000 journeys between the two Cities every day there must be more they could do together. So, they started to collaborate particularly around issues of connectivity, not least to make the most of the tolls being removed from the Severn crossing.
After a few years they had a hunch that there was more opportunity from the collaboration than they had realised. So, they commissioned some research to look at whether they were indeed what is know as an Economic Geography and if they were, what more they could do together. Well, that research confirmed what they suspected and that they did indeed share a common economic footprint. But it also said that they were not being ambitious enough. That the economic geography was in fact much bigger. To cut a long story short that led to the formation of the Western Gateway and the geography we now cover.
We now stretch from Swindon and Salisbury in the East, across Gloucestershire, Bristol and Bath all the way across to St David’s on the Pembrokeshire coast, including the Cardiff and Swansea City regions. Nearly 5 million people, a £130 billion economy, 170,000 businesses and over 2.5 million jobs. Roughly the economic power of the whole of Estonia!
When you look at travel and work patterns and people’s lived experience, we believe that it is a coherent economic geography. And even our prehistoric ancestors seem to have agreed and they too understood the resources our area had to offer, with our original innovators – somehow – managing to transport the stones for Stonehenge from one end of the Western Gateway in Pembrokeshire, to the other.
And that spirit of innovation has not left our area, in fact it continues to thrive. The geography that makes up the Western Gateway is not random – it is based on very clear evidence that we have a shared economic geography and character. In the evidence we have gathered the same strengths come up again and again. Strengths in cyber, in net zero, our creative sectors, advanced manufacturing and engineering, fin tech and AI and quantum in particular. All of them are rooted in innovation, and all of them offering the intelligent solutions we need for the problems of our age and beyond. And as part of a Pan Region that according to Oxford Economics is forecast to grow more strongly to 2029 than the UK’s average.
And added to that we know that our businesses are already more committed to innovation than the rest of the UK, when you look at the amount of capital investment into their ICT assets.
But we also face some significant challenges. Our productivity levels have remained stubbornly low, the Pan-Region contains 9 per cent of the most income deprived communities in the UK. Businesses on average get £3 to 9 million less investment into their businesses than their equivalents in London and the South East. And we continue to have very high levels of Co2 emissions. So huge opportunity, but also major challenges we need to address.
And that is why we exist. And why 28 Local Authorities, major businesses and Universities have come together to collaborate across our geography. To make the most of the opportunity, but to do that in a way that delivers a fairer and a greener economy. Here in Gloucestershire Mark Hawthorne the Leader of Gloucestershire Council sits on our board as does Rowena Hay the Leader of Cheltenham Borough Council, representing the Districts across the County and up until recently, when the Government decided to abolish them, we were also joined by Ruth Dooley, the Chair of GFirst Local Enterprise Partnership.
So, how does that translate into our work programme. There are four areas of activity that we are focussed on to deliver the greener and fairer future.
- First, increase investment: we will improve the financial flows into and around the region ensuring we close the investment gap I mentioned earlier. That means showcasing the brilliant opportunities we have to investors, who are currently too focussed on London and the South East. But also doing the leg work to present new opportunities, such as finally harnessing the tidal power of the Severn Estuary, or building on the legacy of nuclear at Oldbury and Berkeley with a new low carbon energy park, or seizing the opportunities from hydrogen and being the place that cracks zero emissions flight. All examples of things our Pan Region is actively working on at the moment.
- Second, we will enhance innovation: we will connect clusters, like our brilliant cyber and tech sectors, centred around GCHQ and the Golden Valley, here in Cheltenham. From agritech and advanced manufacturing and engineering in Gloucestershire, to AI & Quantum in Bristol and Bath, to Fintech in Cardiff, health tech in Swansea, automotive tech in Swindon and with compound semiconductors – effectively keeping the world’s lights on – right in the middle of it all in Newport, what we can see in the Western Gateway is an entire technology economy. If we work together, we can compete with other globally renowned tech centres of Belfast, Manchester and London.
- Third, we will improve connections: we will connect the region physically and digitally, enhancing opportunities and people’s access to them for fairer growth and productivity.This means continuing to develop our 2050 rail vision and ensure it’s not just the Northern Powerhouse and the Midlands that get rail investment and so that when the Government is looking at how to reinvest the billions from HS2 they come our way.
- And fourth boost our recognition: by gaining greater recognition for the region, its businesses and the Western Gateway Partnership, we will attract greater investment and opportunity into the area to grow our global footprint. That means going to major national and international events as the Western Gateway, presenting ourselves at scale, in an increasingly competitive world.
We see the threats the world faces as opportunities. Where we face threats to our energy security, we want to create new home generated renewable sources of energy. With the nature and climate emergency declared by Local Authorities across our area, we want to enhance our natural environment and see opportunity in the race to net zero. With public sector funding as tight as we’ve seen in decades we want to come together across the public and private sectors to collaborate and define our own solutions. And with cities and regions across the world becoming more and more powerful, we want to collaborate to compete and be seen as the centre of the future economy, the place that cracked some of the global challenges the world faces.
So, please join us on this journey. Follow us on social media, check out our website for updates. And to finish let me invite you to our Annual Convention on 5th July at the IIC in Newport, where with 700 people we will be launching our long term plan for sustainable growth to the UK and Welsh Governments. Our plan for the future, working together across the public and private sectors to deliver a greener and fairer future for us and our children.
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