At Chamber’s Future Economy Seminar held in partnership with National Gas, representatives gathered at the Darlington Mercure Kings Hotel to discuss levelling up and moving forward with Net Zero.
The panel explored challenges to progress including the role of devolution, decision making, public opinion and harnessing existing skills.
The panel featured:
Jake Tudge – Chair – National Gas
Lord Houchen – Mayor of Teesside
Cllr Amanda Hopgood – Leader of Country Durham Council
Rt Hon Lord Callanan – Minister for Energy Efficiency and Green Finance
Alex Cunnigham MP – Shadow Minister and MP for Stockton North
Ruth Herbert – Chief Executive, Carbon Capture and Storage Association
#levellingup #sustainability #environment #netzero #climatecrisis #climatechange #northeast
What an amazing panel to have in this room so I sense we’re going to have a very good discussion here um so thank you all for taking the time to join so the question is leveling up pretty big as a question but we heard yesterday from a Chancellor leveling up is net
Zero Net Zero is leveling up so what a brilliant day to have this panel how we’re going to run this is we’re going to ask each of the panelists for their views so we’ll go left to right and then we will um hear a few minutes from each
That will begin to set the scene we’ll then go into a few questions from me and then we will go into room itself um and I’m sure you’ve got all your questions ready and if you haven’t get thinking so I’m going to hand to Lord hon very
Kindly said I’m call him Ben so thank you Ben um but Ben it’s Delight it’s brilliant to have you here and thank you very much um and an enormous uh you know enormous set of announcements yesterday but will have a huge impact on this region so thank you
Making a time so we’ll kick off with you if that’s okay a few minutes on leveling up in net zero and what it means to you no absolutely thank you for for inviting me and you call me Ben because that’s my name so it always goes down quite well
Um I mean yesterday was was really a building upon what we started you know five or six years ago now and when you have a region like tside that um historically and sadly is quite typical of a PO industrial area that has been in Decline for many decades now um when
Devolution arrived in 2017 where there was some powers and some money given back to us to be able to control locally Al be it it’s never enough is it got more powers and more control but when we were given that opportunity it’s allowed us to address some of those issues that
We’ve all known about in this region for ourselves rather than it being dealt with by you know well-intentioned and well-meaning ministers and civil servants in London um and when we started out when I was elected in 20 2017 rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water and saying we’re
Going to do something completely different you know we’re going to compete with London on financial services are we’re going to compete with Silicon Valley for the next Instagram what what we did is we built on what we already had you know we looked at the incredible chemical and processing
Industry that we’ve had for a long long time we looked at the inheritance of infrastructure around the river um around the former steel works and we looked at how we could build upon that to Pivot rather than start all over again from a an area that was proudly
Making Iron and Steel going back to the early 1800s ICI the first modern chemical plant built in 1947 how do we use those assets to be future proofing ourselves for a different economy that Net Zero economy that’s driving actually not just government policy anymore but the markets are now overtaking in large
Part I think government policy um and a couple of things came to mind one of them was in aviation some people in this moot room might might know that I’m quite keen on airports um and a lot of people ask me well how is that compatible with us one yeah got to talk
About tside airport at every opportunity um but you’ve got to have um you know people ask me well how do you have this Net Zero drive when you know you’re promoting Aviation which is kind of you know Carbon intensive and it’s not good for the environment whereas actually
Those two things come together so if you look for example at the Net Zero tside project with BP and equinor um if you go over to the former red Castile work site now you’ll see Works going on in preparation for that starting construction next year um the carbon
That will be captured from that and the hydrogen that will be produced by BP h2t side the blue hydrogen project that was approved as well as part of the NZ project will come together and there are companies like for example Willis Aviation who have got a joint pension
With mitsui bank who will be taking that carbon and taking that hydrogen and combining it to make sustainable aviation fuel which means that we can make Aviation more sustainable and again that’s using our natural assets it’s using the assets we have in people and the skills and expertise that we have
And I remember going to um sadly I was dragged AC along to an aviation conference much more boring than this this is this is a whole different scale um and I I recognize that you were sating front of the chief commercial officer at EasyJet or you know the chief
Exe at British Airways and they were talking about decarbonization but to be frank those Industries aren’t going to do it it’s places like tside and humberside and highet in the Northwest that are going to deliver the key decarbonization you know why would the chief exec for example of an airline be
Concerned about how fuel is made that’s not what their job is their job is to fly people around get them around and it’s the processing industry that should be driving that so we we took those component parts and what’s really interesting where we’ve made progress where for example if you look at the
Humber hasn’t been able to make progress I think a couple of things are involved uh well I think three main things three um number one uh the Humber project is much more spread out than the tside project tside is a much more condensed area that is better connected by the
Infrastructure that we have uh making it easier for some of those projects to get away so there’s a look of inheritance of infrastructure and natural geography which makes it slightly easier uh the second thing I think is Devolution I mean I I speak to investors on a daily
Basis across all Industries and the one thing they get very frustrated about in the humba is that there is no one person to go and speak to you know it’s that thing you know if you want to call Europe who do you pick up the phone to
It’s a bit like that in the Humber do you go to you know a local council do you go to the local MP that is a problem for investors where Devolution doesn’t exist but particularly for a place like Humber when you compare it with tside
Because they can come and speak to me my organization my team and that’s a single doll that they can get through and I think that has slow down some of their progress but on the other side of that it’s accelerated what we can do um and
Then I I would say the the um the final aspect of what uh we’re able to achieve is that largely actually because of devolution we identified some significant market failures where Devolution was able to um insert itself to release private sector investment so if you look for example at the offshore
Wind sector um the government have been talking about offshore wind for decades now going back actually to the last Labor government and they’ve never been able to find a way of putting the infrastructure in to be able to attract the private investment because if you’re going to build blades or monopiles or
Turbines the infrastructure and the key and all of that good stuff has to exist before an Investor’s going to commit but nobody’s going to build a new key and the infrastructure that’s needed unless they know that they’ve got a tenant or somebody who’s going to put product over
That key so there was a there is a genuine market failure actually in large parts of the country when it comes to Offshore wind and we were able to secure some funding and some support from the government which allowed us to build the new key at South Bank on the Tew workk
Site which directly led to the delivery of sea wind the world’s largest monopile Factory cre 2,000 jobs so there’s a there is a moment in time that’s happening in tside that means various things are coming together some by look some by Design some by assistance from government and local decisions that are
Being made but it’s true to say that what we we’re starting to deliver over the last five or six years is UK leading and not only is it UK leading we are we are the recipient and we are welcoming on a almost weekly basis governments from Saudi Arabia Qatar Japan France
Germany who are all coming to tside to look at these World leading projects um f trying to find out how are we doing it in what way are we doing it and how can they learn from us to be able to take those Technologies abroad so it’s a very
Different place than we’ve been in um over the last 5 to 10 years compared to where we were before that there’s a lot more work that needs to be done uh but the opportunities for us as a government through Devolution working with local councils to put the right building box
In place and resolve some of those market failures are what are going to drive the future economy and it’s those type that type of thinking that you need if you’re going to get CCS hydrogen offshore wind gigafactories nuclear D I even say it you need those uh in the mix
To be able to make sure that we can deliver on this economy that like I say actually I think government policy is getting a little bit slower than it has been over the last 10 years it’s been very very good but actually now the Market’s taking over and I think we need
To be more Innovative and we need to be more reactive because the Market’s taking over and we need to make sure that regulation and support stay Can can stay the pace with where the private sector currently at fantastic thank you so much ben so turning to you Alex what
Do you think of the remarks you’ve heard and some of the themes that we’ve been discussing since we arrival around the pace of change um and the opportunity for the region sure well thank you very much for that and thank you for inviting me along and thank you to uh to National
Gas I spent 17 years of my career in the gas industry and uh it was a it was a good time and I I enjoyed it and great people working within the industry and if I look a little disheveled or a little red or uh uh whatever uh just
Bear in mind I’ve been dealing with a certain local difficulty but let me assure you that Stockton is the best place in Britain to live it most certainly is and I think that’s something that Ben actually agrees with from comments that he’s been making on that certain little local difficulty as
Well so I’m grateful for that the looking forward Ben actually and I we actually agree on all manner of things people I think that uh all we do is fight each other and criticize each other but the things that Ben has described are the things that we uh
Believe in as well we believe in carbon capture storage and I set up the all party parliamentary group on carbon capture US stories some nine years ago I think it was before it became fashionable to talk about carbon capture use and storage and it’s just wonderful to see the journey that it’s taken
Although of course we’ve had uh quite a few Hefty bumps in the road and actually getting to where we are today but of course T side is the place for that to happen no doubt about it and when industrialist come to see me that’s what
They want to do they want to be able to invest here on tside but they want the right business environment in order to do that they want quick decision making the greatest frustration that Industries face today is the slow pace of decision making and I know there can be reasons
For that but we really need to crack on and get those decisions taken I mean we talk about the carbon capture and uh use and storage um uh project but it hasn’t actually been totally finalized yet we actually need that decision we need to understand the contracts we need to
Understand how it’s actually going to work and that’s what the companies out there want as well but people talk very much about leveling up and there’s all manner of things that affect leveling up and hopefully if we do uh see the economy built here it will have a knock
On effect for the people in our community because we’ve got to also ensure that our people benefit from anything that actually happens as far as development is concerned but we also have to try our best to try and make it a a level I hate I hate the expression
I’m going to use it anyway the Level Playing Field for for British industry I was with um I was with Tom Crotty I was at the um uh the chemical Industries association annual dinner last week and Tom was talking about the level of investment in chemicals in this country
It is 1% of what is actually invested in China it’s 4% of what is actually invested in the USA and in Europe so we’ve got a long way to go and yet we have one of the most vibrant chemical Industries in the world and yet we’re not getting that level Investments so
I’m hoping the things that we’re doing hopefully together on T side will actually result in more of that investment coming in but there’s also the issue of costs related to a lot of our Industries I made it I made a few notes and according to the UK steel report industrial electricity prices are
86% higher in the UK than in France in Germany that’s not good enough is it it’s a tremendously tremendous difference and puts our companies at a disadvantage we talk about gas we’re still paying double the price of what it is in the US and we have an example in
My constituency but two examples actually uh Mishi the castle works and the CF f ier um ammonia plant both Clos down because of the high cost of energy it’s cheaper for CF fertilizers to import ammonia all the way from the United States than it is to manufacture
It in Bellingham and that’s because of energy prices so we’ve really got to uh we’ve got really got to address that Ben talked about our local authorities and um long before we had a mayor our local authorities were working very closely together there was a combined Authority
Uh and they were working but it needed to be supercharged and I think the election uh you know the appointment of a mayor for the area has uh has helped to do that I believe that uh you know the local authorities have been working uh very well together but of course now
Uh we need to see some of the returns from all that working Ben talked that you know we’ve been talking about this for five or six years ago about all the jobs that’s going to be created but we know that you know those jobs have not yet been landed they’re not actually uh
We haven’t actually got dates for them to be on site but we really do need to land those jobs sooner rather than later so my offer to all of you is you know or my statement to all of you is we want to work together we believe that we’ll be
In government within a year so it’s all the more important that uh we CR we work across political divides and ensure that we do the best for the teas Valley thank you brilliant thank you very much Alex and you raised a really important Point around ccs and you are sat next to
The most I think informed participant in the CCS market so Ruth that’s really a nice segue to you to kind of share some of your thoughts around the region and the importance of ccs and leveling up yeah absolutely I mean all of us here
Want to get to net Z zero as quickly as possible but we all know that that can’t be achieved by Just DE de-industrializing that is not the future that that we want for for this country it’s not what we want for our regions um ccus is one of the solutions um to
Process emissions from heavy industry also to being able to continue to use some liquid fuels uh as part of this transition uh and also to enable the production of hydrogen industrial scale that is required for fuel switching from heavy industry um CCS can also be used to decarbonize uh gasi Power stations uh
To provide flexible backup for Renewables in fact it’s essential and the climate change committee said that that we would need kind of around 10 of those uh stations around the UK in order to get to a 70% renewable electricity system but I think what we’re all
Talking about is the other bit of energy and many people don’t think about that our energy use is is only about 30% electricity the other bit is is the liquid fuels the gas and yes we produce hydrogen at the moment we just let those emissions into the atmosphere we can add
Uh carbon capture and storage to that and have clean hydrogen uh which can be used to create those very high temperatures needed for most of our industrial processes so this is really an essential technology it’s kind of part of creating the materials and products that we all wear our clothes
Are made of of of of of of of byproducts of of petroleum um are are medin uh lots of products that we use all made in our refineries around the UK most poed them at the coast uh where they’ve got access to Ports they’ve got access to infrastructure and for that reason
Actually because we have such a wealth of geology in the North Sea and the East Irish sea all around the UK where we can store that carbon dioxide which is now a waste product that we want to get rid of because of that and it being so close to
These big industrial centers like we have in the Northeast and around the country we can actually take that CO2 and it’s not too far to actually take that and put that under the seabed um and Norway’s been doing this for 20 years we could have been already doing
This for 10 years but as Alex said there’s been fits and starts I think there was a a competition when I first worked in government to do this in 20078 uh that was canceled in 2010 there was another competition launched in 2011 that was canceled in 2015 so it’s third
Time luy now and what’s been happening over the last sort of 10 years the industry hasn’t just been looking at its wounds and sort of sitting around idle um what’s happened is that through each stage of trying to get carbon capture and storage going in the UK a lot has
Been learned and Industry Pioneers many of them in this region have been looking at how can we do this as efficiently as possible as economically as possible and what they’ve done is they’ve come together through also support of the IDC program which was a great program to bring uh regions together
All the end user businesses together to look at how they could jointly share CO2 networks bring the cost down how they can get to Net Zero industrial regions using CCS hydrogen also wind and and all other things as well so those plans the cluster plans I think have been really
Really good what’s uh uh really essential is the cluster program that the government is driving forward which is driving forward net Zer tside all the all the projects here that Ben mentioned um I think pace is is really important here though um we are amongst the world’s leaders but the biggest
Announcement at our conference actually a couple of weeks ago which was we had people from around the world we had people from Japan Australia US Canada across Europe but the big announcement really was actually that the POR cluster in the Netherlands took its final investment decision we were all really
Delighted about that um they’ seen a lot of delays through their regulation and permitting of their capture plants uh delays that we hope won’t happen here and we hope we can learn from what they’ve gone through but you know we could have had a a cluster final
Investment decision in the UK on a similar time scale but we’ve seen successive delays so I think where we are now is really focused on getting those first fids final investment decisions on the the the eight projects which are in the two clusters so here in
The Northeast the the net zero tside and other projects and in in the Northwest in highet because this really everybody’s watching this not just everyone around the world but everybody in those this industry the CCS industry who are trying to get clusters going all around the UK there are 12 hubs of
Emitters or clusters involving CO2 stores offshore around the UK they’re all watching to see see if if the business models if the contracts if the regulations if the energy Act passed uh recently which we really welcome but if those work and if the government can actually uh get a price that works and
And get these things built so everyone’s watching that but importantly I think it’s the industrial end users many of them are joining the ccsa every week we have a new Joiner uh whether that’s kind of refineries energy from waste um cement plants uh lime production ction people in darbishire
No one can see a pathway for their business without these networks whether those are CO2 networks hydrogen networks most of these clusters are going to need both uh and they need a plan for those and they need to see how over the next 10 years between now and 2035 those
Networks are going to expand and grow and finally reach where they’re where their industry is and this is really I think what Jake’s talking about how do we repurpose uh what we’ve got make the most use of that as well we use recycle what we have the skills and capability we already
Have um but also how do we kind of plan how to expand those networks over time and I think it it just comes back to what we said before it’s you can’t have a strategy for Net Zero without having an industrial strategy and you can’t have an industrial strategy without
Having industrial decarbonization plan and that’s really I think the Gap that that I see and we’re really hoping that the ccus vision which is coming out later this year we understand from the government will start to address this and really show a plan for the whole UK because without that indust investors in
Our industrial regions are going to be concerned about making plans for the future so the flip side of that is there is so much opportunity not just to secure the jobs that are here now we think that between now and 2030 if we went really quickly with the the CO2 and hydrogen networks
We could actually secure around 70,000 jobs by 2030 um even if that was between now and 2035 I still think that would be a really really good achievement but in addition there are businesses that are desperate to locate themselves new green businesses making new recycled or really Innovative products um from from feed
Stocks um for the building sector to decarbonize other sectors of the economy fuels as as Ben said these these businesses they can go anywhere they’re floating around looking for where which country is going to offer them the quickest access to a CO2 Network or a hydrogen Network or both um we actually
Surveyed them and we think that you know we can get another sort of 77,000 jobs new jobs in regions both building this infrastructure on existing sites but also from new sites coming in um the the problem is our survey also said that a third of those projects
Really are at risk and they really could go anywhere and so um the opportunity is there but I think the window is closing to really provide that plan and make sure we secure that investment in the UK in regions like this and around the country Ruth what a call to action it
Feels like the next 12 months are critical for so much and they really are I know when our CEO John Butterworth is with his European counterparts they will say you’ve got this amazing jeel in mown of Europe which is the North Sea on your doorstep why are you not connecting to
It so lots to do and hopefully we’ll explore a bit of that thank you Amanda you cover a huge amount you have um many activities within your remit and we brought you here today because you’re going to be able to bring a really quite unique view on what this means for your
Region and what this means for skills and leveling up and it’d be good to hear some opening thoughts from you please thank you um and thanks for the invitation so as a non tside representative on on this panel I almost feel a bit outnumbered so I’m here to
Represent the rest of the Northeast in effect and one of the key points I want to pick up from this and what I I’ve heard and what I’ve seen in the last two and a half years of of leading darham County Council is that the rest of the
Northeast are six to eight years behind where tside is and that’s because politics got in the way and it was politics in one party not even wider politics so the lesson I think we can learn from this from today is not to let politics get in the way of getting to
This carbon neutral and getting to Net Zero because that’s what we’ve heard is we change policy we put someone else new in it’s a different idea we go back to square one and that is so important because actually the end goal here is much more important that than that and I
Believe Devolution is a way to to achieve that and I’ve seen what’s happened in tside we see what happens in Manchester and I look forward to that for the Northeast because the role of a mayor is not diluted by having to provide all the other services that a
Council leader does so Ben doesn’t have to be concerned about delivering the rest of the Public Services making sure looked after children are looked after after our adults are looked after but that doesn’t mean to say that councils don’t have a huge role to play Within this because even as individual councils
They’ve done a lot of work to get to the point that they are now and we can just add to that with the creation of a maral combined Authority for for the greater northeast which will be the fourth biggest maral combined Authority in the country with two million residents and
It will be unique because a huge proportion of it is rural and there isn’t really any maral combined Authority in existence now that has that level of rurality and cost so it’s going to be a leader within England as to how that works and how to bring that
Together with the cities and we make sure that no um that no community and nor industry is Left Behind and Jake just mentioned the north SE there’s a huge amount of the North say between seum and Beric and that’s a massive course line that we’ll also be able to
To work with so I think we have huge opportunities now as a Northeast as a whole for both tside and the rest of the Northeast to work together to achieve things for our communities for the country as a whole but we’ve got to be we’ve got to St stand above what is
Differences and work together for the greater good because that is so much more important for Our Generations to come for our children for our grandchildren that we’ve got something to leave them something that they can work with and a much better lifestyle and community and business so in County
Durham some of the things that we’ve been doing some of you may or may not know that we bid for the city of culture in 2025 we weren’t successful but we did get to the final four and one of our big projects was black to green and it’s
Working on the Heritage that we have of our coal mines in the Northeast and turning that into green energy so Mark who’s one of my cabinet members mentioned before and and we’ve had visitors there up to dordan to look at how we’re using the coal mines that are
Still in existence still below the ground to produce the hot water and the heat pumps to to manage whole hous and Estates so we need to look at how we work with our heritage don’t forget our history don’t lose it but embrace it and take it forward and that’s how we’ll
Take our communities with us we need to make sure that everyone buys into this it’s no good going to people and telling them this is happening to you we need to take them with us on the journey make sure they’re embraced in it and see the
Benefits because it will be there for us all to look back on and think you know what we were part of that we made sure that the Northeast was a better place for our children to grow up for businesses to come to and for people to prosper because for too long we’ve been
The bottom of the economic pile and as only us can turn it around and without wanting to offend anyone um I don’t want I’m not particularly over enamored with the word leveling up right now um I don’t like the competition where the things are done because we’ve seen far too much money
Spent on something that had no outcomes in terms of being awarded funding because we need to make sure that the fund funding is scarce it needs to be diverted in the right way to make sure that these communities do benefit from that and we need to have much more and I
Have just been to a conference where where I did tell the Secretary of State just that that um we need to change the Worden unless we really mean it because we can’t have a word and like leveling up when our most deprived communities in the country have not been awarded any
Funding because that doesn’t work so we do need to look at how we put this out and how we engage with people thank you Amanda for a very um important set of views and um I think what we’d all agree with is that we all want what’s right um so it
Was great to hear the purpose that you spoke of so thank you but you did also say that you don’t want to let politics get him away and our next speaker um Lord Kalan of course representative of the government so L Canan you’ve heard some very diverse sets of views we’ve
Heard from Ben on um Devolution how we make this a world leading region we’ve gone into Alex and the pace of decision making from the government Ruth is spoken to us about how arguably internationally we could be slightly behind here and then Amanda has taken us
For a very important and real set of examples on how we make sure this actually impacts lives and people so so I’m going to ask you to to summarize all of that if that’s okay with some of your thoughts sure well thank you Jay um firstly to reassure Amanda she’s not
The only non- teider on the panel I’m uh even further north as a Geordie um coming here but obiously my at the moment is uh in national government and the exciting thing about working in in national government on these uh areas uh you know obviously I have to be
Relatively neutral and there are other parts of the country as well that uh that benefit from many of these processes but it’s the the exciting opportunities that exist for for the north generally and you know and I mean the north as in we would understand the north it’s amazing there many of my
Civil servants they said well tomorrow Minister you’re going up to the north you know to Birmingham that’s not the north as far as I’m concerned and uh but you know the country does have a very um London Centric view of of the world particularly in government but the great
Thing about the clean energy Revolution um is that it is the north that is benefiting and taking advantage of it so you know the two uh first ccus Hydrogen clusters that Ruth talked about are in the Northwest and the East Coast cluster here on t-site you know from the region the
Uh originated the first Industrial Revolution that powered the rest of the UK the UK from uh from coal and steel to be at the Forefront of the green Industrial Revolution I think is a really powerful uh powerful thing and you know and I take on board Alex’s
Criticism of course he’s right at the moment a lot of it is just talk you know there’s a lot of government were really good at strategies um and and intimating where we want to do things but you know it’s taking time to to deliver um but I can reassure him and that we
Are getting on with it so to take some examples the Ruth mentioned uh CCS you know we have started the the negotiation process with the first eight capture projects we will be uh awarding contracts quarter three next year at the latest um and you know there’s a considerable amount of public money
Involved here there’s a lot of detailed negotiations obviously they are private companies they want to try and extra the maximum value from the taxpayer they can we want to get the best value for for the point of from the point of view of the taxpayers are detailed hard
Negotiations going on but we’re very confident that we will be able to reach agreement and those projects can then take the final investment decisions and start uh delivering literally in the next in the next couple of weeks we’re going to be letting the first uh what I call hydrogen allocation round contract
So this is a whole series of projects in this region and across the country where we will be committing again considerable sums of money uh over a 15-year contract period to actually start producing uh clean electrolytic hydrogen to hopefully feed into Jake’s project Union when that finally uh comes into operation as well
And again you know the north will be at the Forefront of these uh of these policies um the opportunities that that exist and and Ben talked about the uh the great advantages of offshore win you know the UK is a world leader in off wind we have the first second third and
Fourth largest wind farms in the world um sadly on National capacity China has just overtaken us as the biggest uh provider but we’re certainly very much the leaders in Europe and to some extent we’ve actually having the problems of success because the uh the roll out of
Offshore wind has been so successful the prices have come right down that everybody else in Europe wants to do the same thing and so there’s massive pressure on the supply chains which is why we need to get more of them established uh in the UK and we want to
Try and avoid uh the mistakes and vertic commers that were made with with offshore wind and a lot of the supply chains were based overseas and get as much as possible we can’t specify it legally but as much as possible of the uh of the supply chains for hydrogen for
For ccss within the UK using our offshore expertise using our fantastic chemical and Engineering expertise that we have but um Challenger is right we will be starting to deliver hydrogen projects literally in the next few weeks CCS projects will take final investment decisions uh next year we will launch
The uh track one expansion process as it’s known expanding the uh existing uh CCS uh clusters to see what other projects can can also come on board within those and then we would expand it further to to the track two process which is humberside and acorn in
Scotland because uh know the North Sea has uh has provided us with our energy supplies for the last few decades it can continue to do that through offshore Wind Through CCS as well fantastic uh engineering projects and potential there is considerable sums of of government money being invested in these areas of
Course ask mus I’d always like more money to invest in these areas but public spending is tight we have to negotiate with the treasury to get all funds that we can but you’ve heard of examples from amander and others of the way that renewable heating is being
Rolled out across the region we’re using minewater heating schemes that you mentioned in hordon is also another great example in Gates head you know heat networks will be uh will be another key weapon in our Armory of delivering decarbonization of heing systems so there’s a huge amount going on it really
Will contribute to the leveling up agenda which I see very much as uh as bringing back to the former glory the uh industrial hotlands of of the UK which certainly I’m proud to come from and it’s one of the roles that I see as a minister is to is to advance the cause
Of the in particular the northeast of I’m allowed to be a little bit biased uh in my role in government fantastic thank you Lord Kalan so we’ll are start with one question from my side and that hopefully get things going on the panel um fantastic Reflections from everyone
And then we’ll open up to the room so make sure you’ve been thinking of your questions so that you’re ready to have sort of 20 hands shoot up at once um so Ben I’m going to ask if you can answer my first question which I’ll open with
So we heard from Peter this morning he was a great advocate for the region and why Darlington is the place to be and a good solid thumbs up and you mentioned a really interesting point about there being one person to speak to ideally so if I am a large investor or
Institutional Investor I’m looking where to place my capital I’m looking at the range of projects that briefs members can deliver what do you think has made tside a great place to make that happen and what more could we be doing to really attract International Capital to this
Region there’s a group of things that I think have come together to make something relatively unique of what we’re going through so one of the questions I always ask my team uh to ask themselves whenever we’re developing projects is is why and a key thing is if
You look at ccs and and particularly I mean one of the most important things about these renewable projects is you’re basically funding it with globally Mobile Capital they can go anywhere in the world and they can take their pick actually of a number of projects already they’re at different speeds in relation
To delivery so when you look at a place like teide it’s like well why would anybody come here that’s the question you got to ask yourself why would they come here so you’ve got to build a picture of not just actually competing with the Humber or the Northwest but
These are guys and women running companies in Europe the Far East the Middle East North America who can take their pick of anywhere they want to go so you’ve got to build up a picture for an investor you got to think like an investor say well why would they pick us
Particularly given some of the challenges around energy costs and some of the regulatory challenges that we have in the UK and one of the things that we’ve been able to do is build that picture so if you take the fall recer steel work if you look at te’s works for
Instance one of the things that we say is it’s the largest Brownfield site in Western Europe which is objectively true if anybody wants to go and check that but it’s not unique in in of itself you know there are bigger sites in the Middle East in Africa and North America
In the Far East right so it’s not unique so these investors from all over the world could go could go could go elsewhere it’s nice to have but it’s not unique but then when you pair it with again as I talked about earlier the look of geography which is we’ve got the
Deepest River on the east coast of the United Kingdom um and you can go quite far up the Rives even where it gets a bit shallower down to kind of 13 13 and a half meters which actually in relative terms is very very deep so when you look
At a river with that kind of depth and you pair it with that kind of land mass that’s sing single land mass right next door starts to become interesting but again there are deeper Rivers across Europe and across the world so again not unique and in of itself the two other
The things that then I I think do really make it unique and start to make it a proposition that invariably When anybody particularly big investors manufacturing investors are looking at Europe and they lump the UK and with Europe um we tend to be on the short list of three or five
Sites that they’re looking at in the UK is one is the Free Port free ports are great but again in and of themselves there are better free ports around the world there are better models that go much further than we have and we probably should go a lot further but
Again when you pair that with land mass and river that starts to be unique and then the final thing that I think is probably arguably the most important but certainly if not the most equally important with a couple of the others is the fact that over the last five six
Years we’ve built a fantastic relationship with recer and Cleveland Council because when we set up the development cooporation on on uh in Reka we didn’t take planning powers that we could have done as part of the setup of the development cooperation we left them with the council uh and we did that
Because we were all completely aligned on trying to regenerate a site and bring jobs and investment back to that region the thing that made the big difference is working with the council the Development Corporation got approval for 14 A5 million square feet of manufacturing space so the sear is the
Example why do they come here you got 100 acres of land well how many hundreds of acres do you want tick you know we’re trying to build the world’s largest monopile Factory so we need a depth of 13 1 12 meters minimum well there you go
Tick um you know you’ve got free Port benefits which means that actually I think you can start to argue we are kind of on parity with our European Partners when it comes to exports which obviously that export Market is there but then um the most important thing for them was
Speed to Market so I remember sitting next to ju Lee the chief executive of seer at a dinner in London back in January of 2021 and I’ve got to give thanks to the government because they I I assume on purpose purposely sat me sat
Me next to him at this dinner um and he was complaining that their original idea was to go to the Humber and he was complaining that they’ve been talking to the Humber for a couple of years they’d not made any progress they couldn’t get any commitments they couldn’t move it
Forward um and so I said well why don’t you come to teaside and have a look and by the way and we had a bit of a chat at dinner we brought his team up literally a week later in January and by July of the same year they’d actually put a
Spade in the ground to start building their Factory because we turned around to them and said well we’ve already got planning we’re building the new key so if you go and put your reserve matters in for your the design of your actual facility you can start building in less
Than 12 weeks and we always say we will have the permissions in place long before you’re ready to contract and start building the biggest challenge we had was making them believe us and we did like I said within six months actually four or five months they started building and that’s now stting
To happen with others so you you create a momentum where you package something up and the biggest thing you’ve got that sits alongside all of that is you’ve got to give confidence to an investor that you will actually deliver and let’s be honest right not many private investors
Have huge amounts of faith in the public sector not just national government local government they they just do they see it as quite slow quite pedantic they say it as overly prescriptive and whenever I speak to an investor and I think it’s probably fair to say anybody
In this panel has done it they’re all building at least 18 months into their time frames for getting planning particularly for a building that’s going to be half a million or a million square feet they think the timeline is going to be huge and that causes them a major
Problem for wanting to come to the UK so the reason we’ve been able to be so successful is thinking like investors trying to move all of the obstacles out the way and just basically go with the attitude that if somebody wants to go and spend tens if not hundreds or
Sometimes billions of pounds on tside why would we want to get in the way of that you know it’s them taking the risk so how do we help build the environment to make sure that they can do it and they can do it successfully and that’s how we’ve always approached it um I
Think the way that we can do more is to some extent largely out of our hands I think it’s uh a government issue around as I said very briefly in my opening remarks we’re now seeing that the success particularly of the UK in that Narrative of driving towards net zero
You know the 2050 Target it’s set an expectation within the market that the UK will isws World leading and now Market expectations are are much outstripping the regulation that’s in place and I think we’ve got a potential problem it’s not a problem yet but there is a potential problem that uh the
Government doesn’t put in the Frameworks and the regulations and therefore the certainty to allow final Investments decisions to be taken by all different kinds of businesses that are ready to go where the government haven’t even started thinking about regulation in a certain type of field so you know that’s
The biggest concern and the final example I would give of that because I’m sure it’ll come up at some point it’s nuclear you know there are a number of small nuclear reactor companies that want to build uh a number of nuclear actors on tside that we’re speaking to
Right now one of them um I think will be be announcing in the not too distant future of their intent their biggest issue isn’t Finance you know they don’t need great Rich nuclear they don’t need this government competition that’s being run to mass subsidize one of the first
Ones they’ve got the money because again the markets overtaking where governments are not just in the UK but across the globe on this their issue is regulatory certainty about how do you license new um SMR sites and what is the process they can go through and will government
Let them go through that process that’s the big biggest obstacle to what I think is the panace of clean energy and nuclear and that is a government obstacle because government just haven’t got the heads around because government just assume any new technology must require subsidy but the way that the
Markets are moving at the minute the the money’s there and I’ve been saying this in tside for a long time money is no longer an issue for a place like tside it’s Landing the right projects and doing what you can to make them come here rather than go elsewhere very clear
Ben very clear on the local strategy but enabled nationally any Reflections from the panel before pick up one one of Ben’s B I think was actually critically important that’s the issue of of planning it’s one of the I also have responsibility for planning of energy infrastructures and it’s one of my
Biggest frustrations how long it takes to do anything in the UK and it’s actually not just a problem that we have if you talk to our counterparts in in Germany on the continent Etc it’s we’ve built in so many regulations and Frameworks and protections and uh and cross issues um Within the planning
Regulatory framework but it becomes almost impossible to do anything uh and I can absolutely testify to to Ben thing telling a big international company that you can get permission within two or three months to do something I can well believe that he wouldn’t have believed you because it takes many years even to
Build offshore wind turbines you would have thought relatively uncontroversial every one of them almost now we’ve got a current uh judicial review going on to uh to people that were challenge because it might affect the environment of a few seabirds or something and they’re important I’m not minimizing the
Importance of them but you know in national government you often faced with a choice you know I feel like saying to these protesters and objectors if you don’t want offshore win turbing to provide your electricity tell me what you would like to provide you with your
With your power to to to run your home and your your business because the choice is C Firepower plants or hydr plants or nuclear plants or gas fire plants if we have a modern industrialized country that needs power it’s about a trade-off between you know nothing is environmentally perfect
Nothing will produce a perfect outcome it’s all about uh tradeoffs and you know so one of the projects that we’re looking at from a national government point of view is how we can how can we get through a lot of these regulatory planning obstacles how can we reduce the number of judicial
Reviews that are going on so I think in uh in Sewell which is obviously the nuclear B plant in in suffk I think we’re on our third judicial review now of uh campaigners that have taken to court and each one of them has won the government’s won the case at cost of
Hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds in legal fees but we win the cases but again it adds a year to 18 months on every Challenge and this is in an area that already has a nuclear power plant there which has a reasonable degree of uh of consumer public support
Around it but there is always a minority of people that will object and will use the processes of the planning applications and Lobby local councils and Lobby governments and then Lobby the courts to try and get uh things uh stopped so the challenge of planning and Regulatory approval in a relatively
Crowded uh island is is a great one and the other issue that we’re facing at the moment is even if we get permission of course for these offshore wind turbines and we already have lots but get more of course we need infrastructure onshore to to to increase the the capacity of
Electricity grade that requires more overhead pylons it requires converter stations and the great thing about regions like the Northeast is people I think are probably more prepared to to tolerate that infrastructure because they can see the the benefit of it uh other parts of the country which I won’t
Mention are less willing to tolerates the uh the infrastructure that is required they want the power of course and they want the light the fact that it’s green but they don’t want the fact that actually you need cables on Shore to to deliver it to parts of the country
Where the power is needed and that’s a big big Challenge and yeah can I just come in with a slightly different Viewpoint with regards to planning it goes back to what I said in the introduction about taking people with you on that journey and use real life
Examples so I can use a real life example in County Durham back to the winter of 2021 and storm marwin we can use real life examples of how our Energy prices have gone up because we were so reliant on not having that with within our control and one of the things that I
Think we would would really help local authorities is for the plan and rules to reflect what we need going forward so for example we have no Authority and no plan and law that can tell house builders that they have to put solar panels on there’s absolutely nothing so
There is no house Builder going to put solar panels on that costs them more money to do that that would have the energy capture that would make that house I’ve had solar panels on my house for over 10 years and I I get I have a good reduction of the
Monthly bill that I save and I get about ,000 a year back in in what I goes back into the grid now that will appeal to homeowners especially in the current climate but local authorities have no power whatsoever to ask for that to be part of the the cont condition so we’ve
Got a development about to happen in County Durham in the in a green belt area close to the city center was very controversial it should be an absolutely iconic development given where it is and given the the the amount of money that the Builder can make but there is no
Rules we can put in there at all to say that those houses have to be carbon neutral because we don’t have that within plan law so they will just they’ll not do it and then we need some help from government with planning with things like that that we can do that to
Help for the future so I get the whole big but then You’ got you’ve also then got to be careful because again talk about taking people along with you you’ve then got to you know one of the things that we’re right in the midst of right politically is you know are we are
We continuing on this journey right there is there is a there is a group of people and there are a group of politicians who are thinking well actually it’s not worth the cost and the cost of living is going up everything’s costing more you know all that kind of
Stuff is going on and there’s a group of people that want to blame that zero for that that’s that’s what’s costing your energy it’s all the green levies on your bills if you didn’t have those everything would be cheaper and if you’re not careful you start as a local
Council demanding that house builders do certain things the cost of housing goes up people can’t buy houses there’s already massive shortage of housing so I’m I’m not I’m not saying it it’s just that you know at different angles it becomes a very it becomes a very difficult place because there’s always
Somebody complaining somebody might like the solar panels on the house but then might have a 25-year-old who’s got a job who can’t afford the house because it’s just put the cost of the house amander is right it’s not actually planning law that uh is your problem it’s building regulations uh law um it
Is actually changing but the delock department responsible are Consulting um I shortly on What’s called the future home standard which will come in from uh 2025 and it doesn’t specify Sol B it’s a performance related uh standard but it will effectively mean all new building
From then on will be uh will be um Net Zero compliance be carbon neutral and absolutely accept the point we probably should have done this a few years ago but there were actually good reasons why they didn’t at the time and Ruth a lot of your members maybe people sat in this
Room we’ve heard from some saying you know I’m hearing a lot of complaining perhaps a lot of negativity around planning are you seeing practical pull through where people are finding it easier no had a big delay to one one of the the dcos in in the cluster I think
One of the agencies has just changed position something they submitted before just decided to change their positions delayed it to February these are projects as that we’re trying to get final investment decision on next year the uncertainty is really unhelpful um we just got to remember what we’re doing
This for we’ve got a target of 20 30 million tons that needs to be captured and stored by 2030 it’s just one small wedge in all the abatement and and Emissions reductions that’s got to happen across the economy it’s not not the bill and Endor but it is a
Significant one and the eight project projects that are now a few of them delayed as a result of this that are trying to get forward to Commission in 2027 are only you know they’re less than a third of that so we’ve got a lot more to do and we’re just not going fast
Enough but I just wanted to I wanted to pick up on one of these points about um really about taking people with you because this is something that we’re spending a lot more time on as a trade Association working with our members in different regions working with different
Clusters to try to kind of have a dialogue around what is it that people are afraid of with these projects what what do they need to understand about the technology about why we’re doing it um and I think that’s really really important and also think the government
Are starting to do a bit more of that and I would just really encourage them to do more of that and to try to lead some of that debate because actually as you say it’s a false economy this idea that if we don’t invest today things if
We don’t invest today things will be more expensive in the future be locked in to this expense Ive cycle of having to uh import everything from overseas at a higher cost and pay for others in other countries to build the decarbonization infrastructure that we could have built here in order to keep
Producing stuff here so it’s it’s just a false economy and in the same way that people thought that offshore wind was going to be too expensive but actually during the recent gas price crisis offshore wind contracts of differ were paying back to the consumer and hedging
Some of those higher prices so as you say people don’t understand this they they’re not told it they’re not taught it they’re not given the material and information but I actually find when you speak to people about it and when they understand it they can see well then we
Should be doing more of that that that will save us in the future on our bills and so they absolutely agreed you should be doing more of it as long as it’s not next to their house usually yeah I mean there there is some of that but I think
I mean to be honest it’s it’s probably different for us a lot of what my members are doing is in industrial complexes already or in heavily industrialized regions and I think to be honest there’s a huge amount of of work to do to decarbonize those areas and and
Those regions as you say the recent announcements on pylons and the community benefits prompted any discussions in the Clusters I was talking to someone about this at T the other night but um I wouldn’t say we’ve got yeah there’s anything particular I can add on that
But I do I do think there’s a I do think there’s a concern that things won’t go in the right direction I think there’s a concern that we need to see the whole picture in an area in terms of what does that whole ecosystem is probably the wrong
Word but the industrial sort of environment look like as well as the communities that’s around that that are often where the people that work there live and just making sure all of that looks you know develops in the right way but but really communicating the benefits and opportunities of that to
People and I I I just think that again I suppose when you talk about we talked earlier about you know we want to Electrify as much as we can but we’ve still got an awful lot of a need for for liquid Fuel and for high temperature um
Production and so and and possibly also we you know the electricity system the wires the networks they are not keeping up with what we’re trying to do with offshore wind so actually we should be making the most of our our gas networks as well alongside that um but I think we
Need more of everything so trying to perhaps pretend that we don’t or that we’ve got choices maybe that we don’t have isn’t helpful to people but there’s there’s also a major difference between sorry Alex there’s a major difference when we talk about planning between kind of local planning which like I said I
Think is less of an issue particularly in industrial areas who kind of are used to Industry so they just want it for the jobs if nothing else and dcos dcos are the main main problem and I I’ve been saying for years there is a way particularly in places like the
Northeast and the Humber and nor industrial clusters where I think you could give local power to determine dcos locally because actually I think dcos slow down the decisions whereas for example if you look at NZ um you know the dco has been going on for ages been
Delayed a couple of months because the environment agency have thrown up some more nonsense but it it’ll go through because it’ll be fine because theyve not they’re doing everything is not even just by the book They’re going beyond the regulations actually to try and avoid a judicial review we would have
Approved that three years ago if it was locally decided but the DC’s perversely were there to stop local blockages and allow a national framework to take these Investments through in places like Tad it’s done the opposite it’s actually slowed down the investment by going through that process I I if there are
Any civil servants in the room take that away to see if there is a a short circuit that could be used to allow local determination a good pivot to the room so we have I think we’ve built up enough energy there to kind of get a lot
Of questions from the room so I would like to comment if I may quick one yes well everybody else has spoken at length um I I actually agree with Amanda on on solar and I know that’s just one element that we need to look forward to and I
Know that it’s not just about uh house builders who are building houses to sell it’s about people who are building social housing as well and I know an example in Bellingham in Billingham Town Center there’s two it was a two-part project the first part of the project
Was being built by 13 homes and they were all had uh solar panels built into the roof the second part of the project also built by 13 homes wasn’t because the Housing Authority the the housing funding agency wouldn’t approve the expenditure when that’s a nonsense for
Me we need to be able to knock that over we’ve talked about uh planning and I suppose one of the best examples of uh you know the lack of decision making or slow decision making is hs2 we saw a situation there because of all the objections over all the years the length
Of tunneling to be built for that particular project more than doubled and that of course uh increased the cost tremendously why on Earth can’t we as a country start taking decisions that actually make things happen you know we are so far you know we started the
Project for hs2 sadly it’s not going to continue but we have a situation where similar projects on the continent they’re approved and they happen within a very very short space of time and we need to be able to do that as well but it all boils down at the end of the day
To government uh decision making providing the right regulations getting the right contracts and providing that certainty that’s probably the most common word that’s used to me by industrialists we want certainty they want certainty on investment and government decision making and that’s what we do the most strive for no really
Helpful thank you Alex and great stat on hs2 I like that one um so and did you know it’s the biggest movement of Earth in Europe apparently hs2 for a single project didn’t think we’d be discussing hs2 here um so we’ll hand now to the room we are two3 Stree we’ve got about
20 minutes left um so what we’re going to do is we’ll take questions in freeze and then we’ll be able to jump around so hands up please for questions got one two over here feel like Fiona Bruce thank you um I just coming on to what Alex mentioned earlier can you say
Your name sorry Simon Watson from car carbon um just what Alex mentioned earlier um the region is decarbonizing very well should we say but we’re also industrializing um and the past year we’ve seen the demise of two of the biggest industries in the region um and
Due to energy costs and one of them it’s Bishi had invested millions of pounds in the plant and never started it up and now it’s decommissioned it and are we happy now then to import these critical Goods into our country and being reliant on importing these goods from America
Instead of investing and and producing the goods our ourselves because we’ve becoming heavily Reliant once again on Imports of products in in an industry which was highly paid and highly skilled that we’ve now lost and just on on Amanda as well I agree with amander every new house should be built with
Solar panels it doesn’t make any sense that we’re not doing that perfect good first question thank you we got second one just behind the gentleman at Caron oh no we’re going over here are we miles right sorry hand behind Caron yeah thanks very much uh David Branson middle
Council um a question I’d just like to ask the panel um and that is really about public transport I I just wonder what they would do to improve public transport in the Cleveland area uh which I think at the moment is not in the best
State it could be if You’ got any ideas how this could be done I’d be very grateful thank you thank you and then a third question yeah John car from the association of Transport Coordinating Officer John car from the involved in the heritage and tourism sectors uh
Leveling up of course is not only about leveling up the region it’s leveling up within the region as well and the question I’d like to ask is how does the panel view the Readiness of the general population to accept that to take advantage to all the things that we we’re hearing about
Hydrogen um cleaner power Etc Etc even better public transport um to take advantage of that we really need to have equality of opportunity amongst the population and we need to ensure that they have access to get the appropriate skills super so really summarize it’s going from a throwaway Society
To repair and M Society good question question thank you amandra I’m going to turn to you and we’ll go in reverse if that’s okay please so we’ve got three questions one on essentially offshoring the second one on transport and the third one on the Readiness of the population we’ll kick off with you
Please on population I’m going to kick off with the Readiness of the population and the the culture and Heritage um because within the new combined authority of the Northeast I have the portfolio lead on culture tourism Heritage Sports and that is really important and it’s something we’ve embraced within County
Durham in the last two and a half years is how we do culturel regeneration and how we have that equality of opportunity for everybody because it is a bit of a postcode Lottery and I think with Devolution comes the education and skills the adult skills funding and that’s really
Important because people in Westminster don’t know what skills and what adult education we need here in the Northeast we do and that’s really important but what’s also important is that nobody can do this in isolation so I I don’t think there’s ever been more of a time when we
Have to work collaboratively and in Partnerships so that is partnership of the public sector the private sector the charity sector all of those people because finances are scarce we shouldn’t have half a dozen different different bodies all delivering the same service and we shouldn’t all think we can do
Everything because we can’t local government national government aren’t always the right deliverers for certain things we do need other people to do that so I I think that opportunity um that equality of opportunity for everyone is where the Northeast will Thrive because as I said I mentioned
Before sadly we have areas of the Northeast who top all the wrong pools and we need to reverse that we need to reverse that around deprivation around poverty around health and if we can do that through regeneration whether that’s cultural whether it’s um environmental that’s what what we need to do I can’t
Really answer a lot about public transport in teeside but I can tell you a little bit of the Northeast and again what we’re looking to do there is we need to look at a different way of operating public transport and for us we have a lot of rural areas so a bus
Running empty all day is neither good for the community the business who’s running it or the environment so we’re having a look at um transport that’s driven by requirements so someone if we’ve got an area a village out in The Dales where we need something a bus
Might not be the best option but actually a people carryer might be what we need to get them to connections where they can travel public transport like that so Led Led that way good thank you Amanda um L I’ll turn to you on offshoring um which I know is a huge
Topic that the government’s interested in okay um very good question uh effectively carbon leakage is is what you’re talking about and that’s those who don’t know Industries uh move away from a um area which has carbon mitigation in place to an area that doesn’t and therefore can import the
Products uh cheaper and we’ve seen it across a number of Industries so the EU have announced something called a carbon uh border adjustment mechanism effectively a carbon tax at the borders which they want to implement from 2026 um and the data Gathering period would be for two years before then we
Consulted on it in the in in the summer it’s not a straightforward policy area um very complicated to implement and how do you judge the the carbon content of a of a finished product uh Etc uh something we’re looking very closely at in in government at the moment a
Treasury lead uh on it um I’m I’m sure we’ll want to do something in in the area because it is becoming an increasing problem and particularly as we decarbonize further and further um and we do that through the emissions trading scheme through various other policies so it becomes increasingly
Expensive to uh to emit carbon uh within the UK within the EU and of course in many other parts of the globe it cost nothing at all um so how do we balance that within a context of free trade is a difficult policy area but something we
Are looking quite closely at at the moment you’ll see announcements on that near future thank you let’s take another round of questions I know we’ll then get to Ruth and Ben we’ve got one over here hi Eric Adams from C power rather than Caron carbon although we
Are we’re developing a number of uh green hydrogen projects which we hope will be successful in the the first allocation round I think just an observation I think it’s important that a lot of the focus today is been on heavy industry 50% of the emissions in the UK from industry come from outside
The heavy industrial areas and to Amanda’s point about you know there are Industries within other parts of the Northeast which absolutely need the tools and the mechanisms to to decarbonize um and just like I guess a comment in terms of how the panel sees that happening great thank you so good
One for wath when we get round second question up the front here M hi Patrick craen from City and gills and I think just one very quick observation I think something that came out of both party conferences this year was about policy certainty and I think to your point Lord
Hing how that’s backed up them with trust and confidence for investors I mean that’s a basic I think in terms of trying to get that investment guess my observation over the day is and it was touched on with the observations about collaboration and Industrial strategy is
There a role for us kind of a regional umbrella that brings all of these various Investments together and says what would what would a kind of a skills map look like for for all of those things across a time frame that says well actually initially it might be
Heavily reliant on ground works and construction then it moves into some other sets of skills that you need and sort of Define it that way almost more than thinking about whether it’s green jobs or great jobs or whatever what’s the skills framework that’s needed for the region collectively over a period of
Time fantastic thanks so good b for Ben shortly a remember lady over here please thank you um just to build on previous conversations about skills and equality of opportunity um there are clearly going to be lots of what were described as great jobs earlier on this afternoon um wellp paid skilled that have
Longevity the issue is that the energy sector is predominantly um male dominated there’s not very many women working in it at all and it it’s not alone in that that’s also true of the construction sector of it of quite a lot of sectors that as a region we’re
Looking to for all the good new jobs that that are going to come in and boost the economy so my question I guess really is to Amanda but also to B as well what are the combined authorities going to be able to do to create meaningful robust Pathways for women and
Girls to move into those sectors and just bearing in mind it was equal pay day yesterday which is the day that women to all intents and purposes stop getting paid because of the gender pay Gap thank you very important question thank you so Ben I think we can take two
In there for you around uh a regional umbrella think it’s something you be very familiar with and then secondly skills yeah well I think they’re both linking to each other directly don’t they so we we’ve started so I think you’ve got to start on the first question just to touch upon it because
It goes into skills you’ve got to start with the law hanging through which which is what the industrial clusters are right so you know you’re not going to start decarbonizing rural villages in North Yorkshire because the cost of doing that is so much more difficult when you’re trying to test the
Technology and it we’ve kind of followed the same kind of theory when it comes to skills so Devolution helps massively so rather than the Lear and skills Council handing out money to various institutes public and private for their annual allocation which is a very kind of rigid and inaccurate way of funding education
More generally uh we have the Devol funding for adult education it’s about 35 million a year that we have and when we inherited that three four years ago by the time we got up and running um we had I think it was 380 different providers of Education across tside
Darlington and Harley pool um from all four corners of the country we weren’t really sure what they were doing because it was bit it was a cut and paste in effect from the learning and skills Council four years on we have 24 providers we just got rid of loads of
Them that we’re just wasting a huge amount of money we’re delivering the exact same same educational outcomes but we’re doing it for 8 million a year less so the 8 million of Headroom that we’ve now got because we’re still getting the allocation from government is devolved to us to use for educational purposes
For Adult Educational purposes and that’s allows us to be a lot more Hands-On with trying to attract investors so the low hanging fruit for that kind of thing is sea wind they need just over a thousand direct employees within their facility and they know because they’re halfway through building
The thing they know how many receptionist they need lawyers accountants welders electricians they they know it and they also have the profile for when they come online so they’ll ramp up to that kind of 1,200 Jobs over kind of a two-year period what we’re able to do is say well give us
That we will fully fund those courses for either retraining of adults looking to get into a new industry or res skill for a new opportunity or people coming into colleges and then into kind of post kind of 18 uh skills and we will we do that we will then go and commission
Those courses and we will overtrain people and then we will just provide a conveyor belt of people that you can then interview to either employ or not employ and see if for example now have formal relationships with Reger college and hary bl College in particular they’re exploring one with Stockton and
That’s working extremely well we’ve actually done it in a separate industry with Amazon we’ve actually set up a relationship with d economic campus as well where we’re doing a graduate level version of that working with universities so it’s quite straightforward when you’re doing it big investor kind of single the challenge of
What we’re trying to do now is how do we apply that across an industry so the problem we have is there are smaller supply chain businesses who are worried about losing senior talent because they’ll probably be able to get a couple of quid more or a few quid more going to
Work for sea so there’s a shortage within industry so how do you take that model where you can bring together the supply chain and understand how many welders do you need but it’s not just how many welders you need there are different types of welding and different
Levels of it and try how do we take a portfolio effect on a Regional Supply Chain basis and then again using the money that have been devolved to us go and start actively commissioning courses over trade knowing that some are going to end up with CA some will end up with
NZ some will end up with BP some will end up with you know the supply chain we haven’t quite got the answer yet we we’re kind of fiddling around the edges about how that might actually work in practice but I think that’s how you crack it and I think you can only really
Do that with Devolution because the rules around the learning skills Council just are not fit for purpose because with the greatest respect to well-intentioned local colleges the way that the funding is set up is just to put bombs on seats and they might say that they’re really interested in
Outcome for local kids in the local area and I believe on a on toone level that’s true but the system doesn’t allow them to do that but with Devolution it does and where we would like to go and I think DF are in a a pretty Draconian Department I mean they don’t like
Devolution and we don’t really get anywhere with proper Devolution we should be devolving poor 16 because if you can get poor 16 in Fe through to adult education and you can then start to take really control of local colleges and local private providers budgets on an annual basis then you can can drive
The Local Economic industrial strategy that we have in tside and match up the skills at the minute we’ve got the strategy but we don’t have full control of matching the skills because the drivers for the colleges and the private providers are different from where the econom is going so half an answer for
You but then again just very quickly to seg go into the second uh third question that was asked you know we are seeing a raising of a profile of the of the region around these types of Industries and promoting uh women and other minorities um as part of those
Opportunities for example the first recruit by BP for the Net Zero tside uh project as an apprentice was a young girl um who came to the opening um she was the first one to be recruited until she’d heard of the opportunity and BP were actually done for some fantastic
Stuff going into colleges and talking about access to women in engineering she was going to go and think do a drama course which is fine great lots of people do well in drama courses but she completely changed her mind because she recognized opportunity on her doorstep
So didn’t so big thing for us is that brain drain keeping people within within the region not feeling like people have to move for a job but also people coming in these businesses actively coming in and saying actually we’re trying to recruit women we’re trying to recruit
Minorities as well and she felt like this is an opportunity for her and she took it she’s now been recruited apparently she’s doing fantastically well at harle Bol college so I think we will naturally see a shift there’s always more that can be done but we’re already seeing that shift also largely
Because of the um socioeconomic responsibility that these investors recognize as well either through local content through subcontrac into local Supply chains but also they recognize their wider social responsibilities which is good to see in practice right rather than just saying perfect thank you Ben um so we’ve got a couple of
Minutes left but I want to turn to Amanda because you’ll have some thoughts on skills just to pick up on that because I have the skills agenda on our um LEP as well and getting women and girls and we also in County Durham we have subsidiary of the council called
Business Durham which I chair and I’ve actually been there ched that business Durham meeting this morning and and we have lots of smes who we are working with with our education providers because what we need to do is it’s no good post 18 we need to get in at that
Early stage and we are working with I don’t know if anyone knows Tanya Cooper from steel Benders she’s part of of that that’s a teide based organization but she’s she sits on on business Durham as well and we’re looking to set up um something where we go into the F year
Five and six in in primary school so that we give these ideas of what jobs are out there for girls because it is still stereotyped and one of the the best examples I’ve seen is Hitachi and when they opened in newon a Cliffe they
And one of the examples is a lady who I met who was a hairdresser and they employed quite a few hairdressers to wire the trains because the dexterity they have having their fingers you can’t be taught that it was natural from what they were doing and they had no idea
That they could transfer those skills so it’s not just about young people and getting in there it’s about how we look at people who are already in work and who want to retrain and rescale and um just for B women aren’t the minority well actually and minorities no yeah um
But but we’re not a minority we’re actually majority now in in the country um we are a minority in some Industries and the UTC at Newton a Cliffe that college is really good where it takes young people from 14 to 18 and they don’t do a school day they don’t do 9
Till 3:30 they do 8 till 5: and they go out into the work environment and they do that training and there’s quite a lot of young girls going there now who are going into stem Industries and we know that that’s the future I I’ve sat listening to people this morning who
Can’t get recruits can’t find apprentices um but we need to let people know that those jobs are there and if we don’t get that careers advice and we don’t get that into people at an early age that these are the jobs of the Future these are the jobs and what
Qualifications you need to do to get them then we will just continue having the same problems fantastic thank you Ander so we literally have one minute left so I’m going to go through the whole panel if that’s okay and you’ve got to summarize the one key ask or wish
For this region and your question from sares by I know that Reef will be have to take that afterwards about the pipelines going in land um however much we love talking about pipelines even I’m saying we haven’t got time to talk about pipelines um so your one wish or ask for
The region go start with you Ben uh just the acceleration of regulatory certainty interesting Alex I agree with that and may I apologize to people uh there’s been a development in my little local issue and I had to make the call straight away well thank you for
Coming back I agree I agree with Ben that we actually need that certainty I would add quicker government decision making fantastic re well I would Echo that and then just add for longer term planning actually so we’re talking about planning approval but just a longer term plan for the infrastructure development
In the region particularly CO2 and hydrogen networks stay clear thank you Amanda you’re not allowed to agree [Laughter] what I’m going to say then is I don’t disagree with anything that’s been said however I would put in a request that government works with local government works with the Devol powers and gives us
The tools to be able to deliver because we can’t do it with one hand tied behind our back whether that’s regulation or whether it’s funding so we do need that thank you very clear and Lord Kenan I think it’s my job to try and deliver that regulat C and uh my little small
Way regulatory certainty which we will do and uh faster decision making is the bane of my life I can assure you I’m trying to do it as quickly as possible but there are lots of constraints even on us as as ministers trust me we try to make the decisions as quickly as
Possible and uh and overcome all of the bureaucratic obstacles that are in place thank you very much well that’s been a fantastic panel so please bring your hands together
1 Comment
Ahh sorry yah CAN’t! Way way to much one up-man ship! along with grifter tag along Government! Good show! EH!