A 10-year vision to maximise the Tees Valley’ s remarkable potential becomes reality
FEATURE
Investment – TVCA chief executive Tom Bryant at the new Darlington Station entrance.
PROSPERITY PLAN
A 10-year vision to maximise the Tees Valley’ s remarkable potential becomes reality
WORDS: PHILIP TALLENTIRE PICTURES: CHRIS BOOTH
An exciting plan to increase economic growth and regional prosperity in this region over the coming 10 years is now underway.
TVCA( Tees Valley Combined Authority) is the catalyst behind The Local Growth Plan, which stems from a government directive to identify key priorities where devolved powers and funding can be focused.
“ It’ s a 10-year blueprint that outlines what we want to do, what our aims are and how we are going to do it,” explained TVCA chief executive Tom Bryant.
“ It’ s called The Local Growth Plan, it has been approved and it is very much a plan that is going to be lived and breathed – it’ s very much a Tees Valley plan.
“ We’ ve done an awful lot of work with our cabinet, the business community, the Business Board and wider stakeholders, including the likes of the university and colleges, because we want this to be a plan that everybody sees themselves in.
“ It’ s a 10-year vision and it feels like, for the first time, we’ re getting a true sense of a Tees Valley vision where everybody understands their contribution to it.
“ I’ m excited about the impact this plan can have because we’ ve got unanimous cabinet buy-in,” added Tom.“ And I think what’ s important and a big step forward is that each of the five boroughs – Middlesbrough, Redcar & Cleveland, Hartlepool, Darlington and Stockton-on- Tees – have a distinct role in terms of what they offer us.”
With new prime minister Andy Burnham a big supporter of devolving power to the UK’ s regions, the timing of The Local Growth Plan couldn’ t have been better.
Now that the plan’ s in place, four key priorities have been identified by TVCA:
Inward investment“ We’ ve been really lucky in the region that we’ ve had a lot of investors come to us and that’ s partly because we have some unique propositions around things like the river and the port,” explained Tom.“ We’ ve got sites where there’ s availability of land and we have good power connections, but we recognised that we needed to be more proactive and really get on the front foot with inward investment.”
To that end, TVCA appointed Craig Peacock as director of inward investment last year. He works with the business
52 | Tees Business