A lot has happened in the decade since the Northern Powerhouse Partnership was formed and this year Cumbria is very much in the organisation’s sights.
The business-led think tank for the North of England has commissioned a wide-ranging study to chart the county’s economy which it is hoped will provide the evidence needed to kick start a debate about the future of Cumbria.
From transport to tourism, engineering to education, there’s work to be done if the county is to get its’ fair share of the spoils of devolution.
Henri Murison, the chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, says he personally wrote to every new councillor in Cumbria to convince them that devolution was the way forward.
So, with the election of a mayor just over a year away and the new combined authority now in place, how does he view Cumbria’s chances when it comes to attracting investment and building a reputation as a ‘can-do’ county where innovation thrives?
Business Crack’s Nigel Thompson met him in Appleby.
It is a challenge to keep up with the man who leads the lobby group for the north.
On a bright, spring day Henri has just stepped off a Carlisle-bound train from West Yorkshire and it’s clear he’s a man on a mission as we descend to find refreshment in Appleby.
By the time we take a table he is already sharing stories about the impact the group has made and the big plans it has for Cumbria – of which, more later.
“We are a business organisation but we also have representatives of universities, local government on a cross-party basis, and we’ve worked very closely with many of the mayoral combined authorities,” he tells me as he looks forward to Cumbria joining this growing group.
“Here in Cumbria we have been strong proponents of mayoral devolution and when the two new councils were created I wrote to every new councillor and sort of implored them with handwritten notes to ask them to consider devolution for this county.”
Fundamental challenges – improving transport, training and retraining Cumbria’s young people, are issues bound to be in the in-tray of Cumbria’s first mayor.
“How do you improve bus services which are derisory in many of the communities around the county, and that limits people’s access to jobs?” Henri questions the limited network and its ability to serve businesses and potential employees.
“We have many, well paid jobs in Cumbria, particularly in the west, but can people reach those by public transport? Often the answer to that is no.”
It’s one thing to create a combined authority, another to get officers and members to focus on issues which will bring the most benefit to Cumbria according to the partnership.
Equipping decision-makers with the kind of evidence that may well help inform future decisions which could benefit businesses – big and small – is one piece of work which is already underway.
Earlier this year the partnership produced an economic report on the Humber area of England.
Among the results was that the area’s clean energy sector had both higher than average productivity, with electricity, gas and steam supply showing productivity levels well above the UK average.
The study recommended three priorities for policymakers and industry to unlock the Humber’s next phase of economic growth.
A similar piece of work is underway in Cumbria now and is likely to be published later this year. The results, it’s hoped, will act as ammunition for a debate on how the county’s economy should develop over the coming years.
“We think that in our local economies the economic debate needs to be based on reality,” Henri said. “So rather than people presenting a version of the economic reality that serves their interests, we think that you need to debate the productivity issues in this county based on the evidence.”
He added: “I think often the policy debate in this county has focused too much on the issues of certain segments of the economy when in reality what is driving the economic value are many of those industrial sectors – which are critical.
“Whether they be larger employers or SMEs, this is no difference to a large city in the sense that it has a complex and quite sophisticated economy and to just imagine that the tourism sector alone can generate Cumbria’s future is a huge missed opportunity.”
Tourism though, he acknowledges, is significant. Worth £4.6bn it supports almost 75,000 jobs according to Cumbria Tourism, the county’s visitor economy partnership, which warns it is still struggling to recover visitor numbers after Covid.
Yet others are calling for restrictions on holiday lets and new measures to manage traffic.
“Whether it’s through procuring the bus services you want or subsidising a private operator, the real issue in Cumbria is where you get the money from,” Henri said.
“We’ve always argued that without visitors making more of a contribution, whether it be through an overnight stay tax which would be an option open to a mayor or more radical solution such as a congestion charge for non-Cumbrian residents, if you don’t manage the pressures of tourism well then the visitor economy that depends on that natural environment will, in the long term, be at risk.”
A public debate is being called for by the partnership who say they are keen to play a part in what could be a challenging discussion.
“We’re really keen to be lively members of what I think is a developing intellectual ferment because we don’t just need this devolution in this county, what we need is active policy debates, and publications like yours play a big role in that,” Henri said.
That call for debate is a frequent theme during our conversation. As someone who spends his time shuttling across the north, maybe more than most he appreciates the sensitivities and differences between sectors along with geographical areas.
The North West and Yorkshire may have stolen a march by attracting media attention and investment already but he believes Cumbria has not been left behind.
“There is genuinely an underpowered level of investment in the county and economic development, and the combined authority provides a historic opportunity to reinvest in some of the interventions that are needed,” Henri says.
“Our argument is that there should be a lively policy debate in the public sphere and our concern is that sometimes there hasn’t been enough debate about economic policy in Cumbria, that it’s largely been left to the public sector to prioritise its own resources.”
And he says all business leaders have a part to play in deciding how the county develops.
“At the moment the ecosystems – the level of government investment – in say, Greater Manchester, is greater than it is here in Cumbria, and what we need is the public sector to have the capability to develop competencies that it doesn’t have today, to enable it to attract funding and investment, and to be able to leverage public and private investment,” he says.
“What we need is private investors to be coming in. We’re a private sector lobby group, we’re not just interested in where the public pound goes, we’re interested in, is the public pound being spent in such a way that it’s leveraging in, whether it be central government investment or private.”
With the Government pumping support into Barrow via the Team Barrow initiative he has some observations and comments about the way big business can have a positive influence on a community.
“Cumbria is not a series of disconnected economic assets, over the time I’ve worked with Sellafield and colleagues at Nuclear Decommissioning Authority have built schools in West Cumbria, have invested in education, the bus station and the opportunity to create huge opportunities for SMEs more broadly in the supply chain,” he says.
“Sellafield have been creating social value in West Cumbria a lot longer than BAE who have woken up to it, and the realities for BAE are that there are lots of consequences of what they need to happen and I know that working together with the public sector that BAE can be a more constructive partner.
“The lessons on how to do that for Team Barrow aren’t very far away.
“You don’t have to go to the other side of the world to see how you can do good community based economic development, you can go to West Cumbria, we need to learn those lessons within Cumbria and realise that not everything is done better somewhere else.”
Ask almost anyone in the North to name a mayor and Andy Burnham, Tracey Brabin and Kim McGuinness are likely candidates to come to mind. With such a headstart is there a risk that Cumbria’s newly appointed figurehead will struggle to be heard?
“There is the Great North grouping, so the mayors already choose to collaborate together voluntarily, that’s not imposed on them by government, they choose on a northern basis to do that,” Henri says. “The York and North Yorkshire combined authority is more comparable to Cumbria, and they’ve been supported by government to think about how you can improve bus services in rural areas.”
And he says party politics can be put to one side.
“I think there is a huge opportunity and I work very closely with politicians who campaign for devolution, with John Stevenson for example who was a former Conservative MP, I work very closely with Josh MacAlister who’s the Labour MP now on the west coast and I think there are lots of voices in the political world who are making a very well informed and thoughtful argument about what the future could and should look like,” Henri says.
“I think there’s huge opportunities here in the county, and I’m upbeat about what I think is going to happen.
“There are projects in Cumbria that are genuinely leading the way in doing things differently so this part of the world has huge social and economic capital of its own.
“My argument is that it’s not for people like me who might be friends of Cumbria to tell Cumbria what to do.
“My point is it’s for Cumbria to decide Cumbria’s destiny, but the reality is Cumbria must be part of the government’s northern story. You can’t have a northern growth strategy that only thinks about a corridor between Liverpool and York.”
Our time in Appleby has come to an end but there’s little doubt that when it comes to making a difference in Cumbria, there is real ambition that the county is not seen as on the fringes of the Northern Powerhouse.
With new nuclear, a full orderbook at BAE Systems and the enduring tourism appeal it could yet prove to be the engine room.
