IPPR North’s Northern Economic Futures Commission has published its final report which sets out “a new economic agenda for the north of England, one which seeks to place the region at the heart of the UK’s ‘rebalancing’ towards business investment and export performance”.
Alongside recommendations focused on jobs and skills, innovation, SMEs, natural assets, transport, housing, spatial policy, finance and investment, and institutions, indicators and monitoring, the report presents a 12-point plan for growth:
- increasing private sector employment in the North by 500,000 in the next decade
- doubling the number of young people in advanced apprenticeships by 2015
- devolving a significant proportion of skills and welfare-to-work funding to local authorities, city-regions and LEPs
- forming a Northern Innovation Council, endowed with £1 billion from the sale of the 4G spectrum
- forming a Northern Investment and Trade Board to secure higher levels of inward investment and boost export capacity
- decentralising transport powers to local authorities and passenger transport executives, and creating a new body – Transport for the North
- establishing Manchester Airport as a second international airport hub for the UK and reducing air passenger duty at northern airports to the lowest levels (band A) for all flights for an initial period of three years
- decentralising housing finance – housing benefit and capital funding for building homes – into subregional housing funds
- creating a northern investment capacity within the British Investment Bank
- forming a single funding pot for economic growth in LEP areas and, over time, moving to a more simple and radical localisation of business rates
- developing more transparent governance arrangements based on the combined authority model and further consideration for ‘metro mayors’
- establishing a Northern Leadership Convention, N11 Leaders’ Summit and Northern Future Leaders Academy, to provide an annual focus for leadership and planning.
What next?
More about the report (and link to download a summary or the report in full) on IPPR’s website
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