The aim of the Industrial Strategy was to boost productivity by backing businesses to create good jobs and increase the earning power of people throughout the UK with investment in skills, industries and infrastructure.
In the 4 years since the strategy was published, the UK’s business and economic environment has changed. Creating and supporting jobs remains the government’s central economic focus, but helping to drive growth in existing, new and emerging industries is also a priority. This is why we are transitioning the Industrial Strategy into our Plan for Growth and its related strategies.
Find out more about the Plan for Growth or sign up for the BEIS Business Bulletin.
Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership is unashamedly ambitious for the future of our places and people by harnessing technological advances to create sustainable communities.
Through the development of our Local Industrial Strategy, we are identifying opportunities to respond positively to the need for growth, but not growth at any cost.
Over the past 5 years, we have made good progress in reinvesting in our larger towns of Watford, Stevenage and Hemel Hempstead, with further regeneration in our smaller towns of Waltham Cross and Bishop’s Stortford.
In March this year, the government announced it was providing £3.7 million for 5 new Garden Towns to fast-track delivery of 64,000 new homes across England.
Hemel Garden Communities, on the west of the county, was one of the successful bids in this new round.
The bid was developed in partnership between Dacorum Borough Council, Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership, St Albans City and District Council, Hertfordshire County Council and The Crown Estate, to deliver a mixed-use residential and commercial development for Hemel Hempstead, delivering up to 11,000 homes and 10,000 new jobs.
Hemel joins Harlow-Gilston, another planned new settlement that has been awarded Garden Town status, on the county’s eastern fringes.
In announcing the new funding for Garden Towns, Housing Minister Kit Malthouse said the new towns will not only provide homes for families, but will be vibrant communities where everyone can benefit from new infrastructure.
Its custodian is Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation, whose values are underpinned by a series of principles developed by Ebenezer Howard.
These include land value capture for the benefit of the community; long-term stewardship to ensure that communities stand the test of time; integrated public transport systems with access to core services in walkable neighbourhoods; bio-diverse, attractive spaces and a strong local job offer.
The government’s commitment to new Garden Towns has been welcomed by the Town and Country Planning Association, which has been campaigning over the past 6 years for a new generation of garden cities to help address Britain's housing crisis.
These large settlements would allow for the highest sustainability standards, economies of scale and better use of infrastructure which could not be addressed on a plot by plot basis.
They would include a complete mix of housing types, including social and affordable housing; zero-carbon design; sustainable transport; vibrant parks; local food sourcing and create local employment opportunities. Fundamentally, TCPA advocated for them to build on the Garden City Principles of land value capture for both societal and commercial gain.
Running parallel to this campaign to drive up standards in existing and new housing stock has been the TCPA’s campaign Room to Breathe.
It is a response to the findings of the TCPA’s Raynsford Review which showed that deregulation of the planning system and permitted development rights (PDR) is creating devastating outcomes for people.
Here in Hertfordshire, the impact of PDR can be felt in the dramatic loss of employment space over the past decade across the county.
According to a report commissioned by Hertfordshire LEP, this loss of employment land is equivalent to the total office space in St Albans, Watford and Welwyn Garden City combined.
Responding to the report by surveyors Lambert Smith Hampton, Hertfordshire LEP Chair Mark Bretton said the report indicates that the impact of PDR is more keenly felt here in Hertfordshire than in other parts of the UK.
It is the western commercial anchor of Hertfordshire’s east-west growth axis, which is likely to accommodate around 50% of the county’s housing growth, with an enterprise zone and a new Garden Town at each end.
As lead partner, we have the opportunity to shape its development with potential for national significance.
With an unprecedented level of housing growth, pressure from adjoining areas, especially London, Hertfordshire’s services and transport systems will face increasing stress.
Now more than ever we need to respond positively to this need.
The onus is on us collectively to find new and innovative forms of development that can accelerate housing delivery, find modern live-work solutions while meeting a high quality threshold for sustainable design, materials and build methods.
With the development of our Local Industrial Strategy, we have the potential to both check and challenge current and new ways of working and become a UK testbed by building on our legacy of ideas and pioneering heritage to pave the way for future generations.
Find out how we are developing our Local Industrial Strategy.
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The Prime Minister Theresa May has unveiled the UK’s first-ever Tourism Sector Deal – an ambitious deal that aims to position the country as a major global power and influencer when it comes to tourism.
Through this sector deal, the government – working in partnership with the visitor economy – aims to be on the front foot, boosting UK productivity through tourism.
In-turn, they will support the development of key skills within the UK’s tourism workforce, as well as working with destinations to enhance their visitor offer.
‘Tourism Zones’ – announced as part of the sector deal – would also be created in areas of the country with a dominant tourism-based economy.
First and foremost, we have a vibrant and successful visitor economy. Our destination management organisation, Experience Oxfordshire, outlined at their annual ‘insights’ conference in May the significance of the sector, not just to Oxfordshire, but the further impact it has on the UK economy too.
Our visitor economy is currently worth £2.2 billion a year (up 6% on the previous 12 months), that’s 10% of the county’s overall GVA.
We currently welcome around 30 million visitors to the county each year, with the sector helping to support around 37,000 jobs – or 10% of employment in Oxfordshire. Of those 30 million visitors, many of those are travelling ‘on business’ too.
Oxford as a city is clearly a major draw for both domestic and international visitors, but we also boast a brilliant rural landscape – including the globally-recognised Cotswolds – and other major attractions such as the award-winning Blenheim Palace, top hotels, Bicester Village and Westgate Oxford and an array of genuine world-class museums and exhibits.
As we move towards a post-Brexit economy, key assets like these have never been more crucial to the UK.
The sector deal reflects this, saying measures will deliver a ‘direct boost’ to holiday destinations through the new ‘Tourism Zones’, helping to create more jobs, as well as supporting improvements in transport connections.
In 2018, the UK attracted 38 million international visitors, who added £23 billion to the national economy – making tourism the third-largest service export. The sector could deliver a 23% increase in inbound visitors by 2025.
In Oxfordshire, we welcomed 680,000 international overnight trips, accounting for £340 million spend.
Opportunity knocks for Oxfordshire, potentially through the creation of a Tourism Zone, allowing us to further exploit business tourism opportunities for the county.
To coincide with this deal announcement, we were delighted to welcome Andrew Stephenson MP – the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister For Business and Industry – to Oxfordshire, to help him understand how initiatives like the new Oxford Pass, and national initiatives such as the Discover England Fund England Originals project, are making a positive impact.
The government’s Industrial Strategy also sets out a long-term plan to boost productivity, with the tourism sector cited as a key sector that has the scale and geographical reach to deliver on this ambition.
Through our own Oxfordshire Local Industrial Strategy, we will recognise the major role that our visitor economy can play too.
It is important that – as a county – we continue to collaborate. Oxfordshire will be a major player in ensuring the UK remains a world leader in tourism, helping the country to stay globally-competitive and meeting the undeniable opportunities presented through this sector.
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Would it be sensible to have an Industrial Strategy that overlooks an economic contribution equivalent to the 10 leading cities after London?
The answer is clearly no, but this would be the risk if rural areas were not fully incorporated into the development and delivery of the Industrial Strategy.
England’s rural areas in 2017 generated gross value added of at least £246 billion, host over half a million registered businesses, and many more unregistered ones, and employ 3.5 million people.
They are integral to regional economies, make a substantial contribution to the vitality of their urban neighbours, and sustain communities of over 9.5 million people.
Thankfully Industrial Strategy policy makers and rural stakeholders have been working hard to ensure that the strategy embraces our rural economies and places.
Most recently this was boosted by a major workshop hosted by Rural Enterprise UK at Newcastle University on the rural contribution to the Industrial Strategy.
As we move into the next pivotal stage of delivery, more than ever the contributions of rural areas to supporting growth and productivity need to be universally supported and embraced across Industrial Strategy processes and measures.
Our team’s analysis of the government’s own small business data is challenging assumptions that rural economies lack dynamism, perform less well, or are simply dependent on urban growth.
For example around twice as many rural firms report having goods or services suitable for exporting than those which currently export.
Rural areas are also at the forefront of major socio-economic trends such as an Ageing Society and Clean Growth – 2 of the Industrial Strategy’s Grand Challenges.
So how can rural representatives and other stakeholders ensure that Local Industrial Strategies are as relevant, accessible and visible to rural as to city and urban areas?
How can the Industrial Strategy's Grand Challenges be converted from grand and society–wide challenges to regional and local opportunities for rural areas?
Bringing together stakeholders from literally across the UK, from the Isles of Scilly in the south to Shetland in the north, the event gained insights from leaders in government-sector organisations, sub-national agencies and partnerships, business and community organisations, and researchers from Newcastle University’s National Innovation Centres for Ageing and Data and those of us long engaged in researching SMEs and rural economies.
It was clear in our discussions that all of the Industrial Strategy's features and foundations are also drivers of rural productivity or growth.
Each raises long standing and distinct rural challenges and prospects that require attention, which play out differently across the diversity of rural places, yet often remain under explored or under utilised.
In summary, participants highlighted several prerequisites if rural contributions to the Industrial Strategy are to be fully realised:
One of our own highlights of the day was to hear a senior Defra official welcome this occasion as a rare event at which the main Department ‘talking rural’ was not the government’s own rural champion Defra, as is normally the case, but instead a host of leading contributions from other government departments.
Indeed, in his keynote presentation, the Director of Industrial Strategy Sam Lister made the case for respecting rural as an equal partner in the UK’s future economies.
Both interventions say a lot about the positive progress made by both departments in considering the rural reach of the Industrial Strategy and the contributions of many stakeholders who have worked to enhance recognition of rural areas and their economies.
Many participants welcomed this new recognition and shared space.
Continuing this shared endeavour is more essential than ever, and at the university we are keen to help to extend this dialogue, and convert ‘talking rural’ into visible and valued actions for the future.
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The world faces a dual challenge.
If we are going to solve this challenge, we all need to share it. Government and industry have a part to play in creating change, and BP’s 2019 Energy Outlook suggests that the transport sector will really lead the charge in the years to come.
From planes and trains, to cars and trucks, around a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions are created by the ways we all choose to get around.
And with the number of cars on the roads globally set to double in the next two decades, the emissions from those cars will need to reduce significantly.
Such is the scale of the dual challenge ahead that the transport sector is pursuing every opportunity to decarbonise.
Whether its exploring low carbon fuels or planning for a hydrogen-powered future, be in no doubt that what might seem a world away today could become the norm before we know it.
As far as road transport is concerned, electric vehicles (EVs) have an important role to play in delivering decarbonisation. Of course, to deliver carbon savings the electricity itself needs to be decarbonised.
Here at home, we see that the UK has been making great progress with offshore wind and the promise of more to come, especially with the publication last year of the UK’s roadmap for the delivery of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS).
It is why BP acquired Chargemaster, the UK’s leading provider of EV charging infrastructure, last year and continue to invest in providing convenient access to fast charging points across the UK.
BP now provides a network of 7,000 charging points across the UK, and this will continue to grow.
In May, BP hosted the ‘Powering the Charge’ conference, bringing together key stakeholders from across industry and Government to explore the potential of an accessible, widespread, high-power charging network.
It was also an opportunity for BP’s Downstream Chief Executive, Tufan Erginbilgic, to announce the roll out of 100 ultra-fast charge points at BP forecourts this year, with a commitment to install more than 400 ultra-fast chargers between now and 2021.
This will help enable mass adoption by addressing concerns over range anxiety and providing a solution for those that cannot charge at home.
However, we must be realistic and recognise that electric will not be the answer for transport decarbonisation overnight.
Current battery technologies cannot create the power or range needed for heavy goods vehicles travelling long distances, and there are limited options to employ electrification to aviation and marine uses.
Indeed by 2040, our research suggests that two thirds of road vehicles could still be powered by internal combustion engines (ICEs).
BP believes that the combination of improved ICE technology, hybridisation, and the adoption and development of biofuels and advanced fuels has the potential to make a meaningful, cost effective contribution to meeting global carbon commitments.
In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that, in some scenarios, alternative fuels such as hydrogen and e-fuels could provide over 50% of transport energy by 2050.
BP is already active across many of these areas, using our global scale, experience and partnerships to play a leading role.
But to deliver what the world needs requires a bold, coordinated response beyond what we can achieve on our own. It will need the world to embrace multiple mobility solutions and require investment and policies that will truly support their development.
Through a partnership between government and business, the UK’s Industrial Strategy and Grand Challenges will help to boost productivity, create good jobs and secure investment in skills, industry and infrastructure.
In this regard BP is strongly committed to the UK, investing in new technologies in the energy transition that support growth and exports.
For example, in 2017, BP Ventures invested a total of £44 million in 9 UK businesses aligned with our Upstream, Downstream and Alternative Energy interests. This is in addition to our investments in BP Chargemaster and our solar developer, Lightsource BP.
More broadly, we supported an estimated £9.6 billion contribution to UK GDP and 141,860 jobs that same year.
For the UK to be leading the charge, we will need technology-neutral policies towards lowering transport emissions.
This includes incentives and support for sustainable biofuels, whilst providing easy access to ultra-fast charging. We will also need to recognise the benefits of advanced fuels and lubricants, and explore the role of gas in decarbonising transport, which is well suited to sectors such as heavy goods vehicles.
These will not be small changes. They will require open-mindedness, collaboration and investment. But they are the changes we will all need to make, and quickly, if we want to keep the world moving in the right direction.
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On 20 May, the International System of Units (SI) underwent its biggest overhaul since its establishment in 1875.
4 of the 7 base units - the kilogram, the ampere, the kelvin and the mole - will now be defined against universal constants.
The redefinition is an important milestone in the development of the Industrial Strategy - not least because the redefinition of the kilogram was made possible using technology developed right here in Britain.
Britain’s role as a world-leader in metrology (the science of measurement) is central to accessing emerging markets, crafting new industrial processes, and engaging with society-scale challenges like tackling climate change and improving healthcare outcomes. £342 billion worth of goods are sold on the basis of the measurement of their quantity, equating to £6.23 billion a week.
In addition to this, goods worth around £280 billion per annum are weighed or measured at the business-to-business level.
The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK’s National Measurement Institute, is therefore a key asset to the economy. It was here that the Kibble Balance was developed, a device that precisely measures mass using electrical current, without which the redefinition of the kilogram would have been impossible.
NPL provides the innovation infrastructure that underpins the development of future technologies, a key part of the recently published International Research and Innovation Strategy.
It is through NPL’s international partnerships that the SI redefinition, and the subsequent benefits to science and innovation around the world, can take place.
While defining measurements more precisely may seem obscure or abstract, there are tangible benefits that will be felt throughout society.
For example, potent drugs that are administered in tiny doses will be able to be measured more accurately, allowing doctors to provide personalised medicine, tailored to the needs of individual patients.
Measurements of complex components of aircraft will be more exact, improving safety and ultimately saving lives.
Previous redefinitions have facilitated the emergence of entirely new industries. The definition of the second in 1997 enabled us to secure the accuracy of Global Positioning Systems (GPS), a now ubiquitous technology.
It also facilitated better fraud protection on high-frequency trade, a basic cornerstone of the integrity of our economy.
As the home of UK time, NPL plays an important role in underpinning this technology.
The precision of atomic clocks allows for the mapping of the Earth’s gravitational field, which can be used to understand the composition and structure of the Earth in exquisite detail and prospect for natural resources.
NPL also offers industry training, a postgraduate institute and internships to ensure the provision of technical skills that enable these developments in fundamental science.
As the government’s Industrial Strategy includes increasing spending on research and development from 1.7% of GDP to 2.4% by 2027, such programmes are indispensable.
The redefinition of the SI units will mark the first time in history that the universal measurements we rely on globally will all be based on immutable constants of nature, rather than physical objects.
In the case of the kilogram, this will remove the need to calibrate back to the original artefact -- the prototype kilogram stored in a vault in Paris.
This will have a democratising effect on trade. Not only will countries will be able to calibrate their own measurements accurately, but individual regions and even businesses will one day be able to do so independently. As the home of the original Kibble Balance, the UK will be able to ride the crest of the innovation and cost-saving implications of this change.
Being able to calculate and calibrate measurements electronically will underpin much of the industrial innovation we will see in the coming decades. That innovation is likely to centre on connectivity, artificial intelligence and data -- developing sectors collectively referred to as 'Industry 4.0'.
The UK’s Industrial Strategy places innovation in industry 4.0 as a priority. NPL plays a vital role in translating cutting-edge research into practical benefit for UK industry by giving big business and SMEs alike access to measurement expertise, services and skills development.
The UK has a rich tradition in leading the way in advanced research, from cryptology to artificial intelligence and quantum computing. This is facilitated by world-leading institutions like NPL and their contributions to fundamental science.
World Metrology Day 2019, which was chosen specifically as it falls 144 years (12²) after the formal adoption of the SI units, is an important day for a number of reasons. It marks an international collaborative commitment to science that transcends politics.
And it is an opportunity for recognising the importance of technical skills education, a vital component of our Industrial Strategy of training the next generation of innovators.
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Two-thirds of the world’s population is predicted to live in cities by 2050.
There will be double the number of people aged 60 or older and the planet will be 2 degrees warmer. As these trends emerge we are seeing radical shifts in consumer expectations and values.
Governments are searching for ways to meet the demands of rising urban density with outdated infrastructures and pressure to curb carbon emissions.
The challenges of moving people and goods between, around and within cities will become ever more complex, and will rely on radical solutions, not just iterations on the old.
Vehicles are expected to be comfortable, reliable, safe, economical and ecological, and connectivity is taken as necessary, not just desirable.
Coventry – the heart of the automotive industry – is leading research and innovation around the future of design in the context of the future of mobility.
Coventry University’s National Transport Design Centre (NTDC) is a hub for technological innovation, not just exploring the future of transport and the insights behind design but also the development of design itself and the tools used.
NTDC brings together creativity and innovation by understanding factors which influence vehicle, transport system and infrastructure design.
By using the latest VR equipment and combining it with traditional physical prototyping, we create complete mixed reality scenarios for designers, technologists, coders, artists, gamers, material specialists and fashion experts who come together for a fully immersive experience to explore, assess, research and develop new areas of transport design.
In collaboration with industry giants like Geely and MIRA, NTDC creates industry-ready designers of the future who are cross disciplinary in their vision and skills.
NTDC recently joined forces with Uber Elevate to help the tech giant develop flying taxis and has linked up with Williams Advanced Engineering to research ‘platooning’ – where connected vehicles travel nose-to-tail to reduce energy consumption, emissions and congestion.
Current research using advanced motion capture technology is analysing how train interiors can be adapted to aid passengers carrying luggage and how occupants can most effectively be extracted from damaged vehicles.
Future research being conceptualised involve empathic design, such as vehicles of the future that meet the needs of an ageing population.
The possibilities are endless, with some of the most innovative, creative and disruptive design thinkers leading the future of mobility strategy at Coventry University, which has grown up alongside the car industry for more than a century.
Craig Callum who studied automotive design at Coventry University and went on to design LEGO’s iconic car collection, joined NTDC in late 2018 as its director:
My vision for the Centre is being a world leading collaboration hub in the innovation ecosystem of future transport systems… by conceptualising design that takes us to the frontiers of engineering, materials, technology, art and gaming but also being integrated with human factors and user-centricity leading to safer, efficient and connected future mobility solutions.
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How should we position Greater Lincolnshire for the future?
This is the question at the heart of our work to develop a Local Industrial Strategy in Greater Lincolnshire.
A similar conversation is going on in places across the UK, and indeed across the world, as communities grapple with the impact of global trends such as technological disruption, demographic change and a shifting political environment.
These trends operate at a global level but they are felt locally.
It is increasingly recognised that interventions to help re-balance the UK economy - so that the benefits of globalisation and economic growth are more evenly distributed - will need to be locally nuanced.
But what does this mean in practice? Especially for an area like Greater Lincolnshire which has a dispersed geography taking in smaller cities and towns as well as rural and coastal communities?
We have given this issue a lot of thought while developing our recently published framework and call for evidence.
To get to this point we have needed to undertake significant research and consultation, layering multiple different types of information and inputs in order to draw out the opportunities that are distinctive to Greater Lincolnshire.
This is about more than picking sectors - it is about considering a range of local lenses through which we view the environment that our businesses operate in such as the dispersed rural and coastal geography, the characteristics of our population, the nature and scale of our businesses.
We are particularly keen to develop areas of competitive advantage, where we can find new solutions based on crossover points between sectors/industries and technology.
This approach is aiming to pass what is being described as the 'Tipp-Ex test' – meaning that you should be able to tell where the strategy is about even if you remove the words Greater Lincolnshire.
These are the emerging priorities, which we believe will pass this test:
Greater Lincolnshire grows 25% of England’s vegetables and processes 70% of its fish. The share of jobs in food processing is 4.5 times higher than in the UK.
Through the LIS we want to create new jobs in higher skilled occupations (engineering, software, digital production management), increase investment in innovation and support more businesses to adopt new technology and enhance productivity.
Greater Lincolnshire has above average and growing levels of employment in this area. More than 80% of our businesses describe the cost of energy as ‘quite’ or ‘extremely’ significant as a barrier to business growth.
We are developing new solutions which can build on a range of significant physical assets including the increasing number of anaerobic digestion plants based on farms across Greater Lincolnshire and off-shore as well as on-shore wind power.
Through the LIS, we want to develop platforms to enable public and private collaboration, pilots to test new methods / technologies such as smart grid building the business case for new forms of energy and water capture, storage and distribution.
By 2030 the population of over 75s in Greater Lincolnshire is projected to increase by 50% and make up 1 in 7 people.
Between 2014 and 2024, it is expected that there will be a net requirement for over 26,000 jobs in the sector, higher than any other sector in Greater Lincolnshire.
The new National Centre for Rural Health has recently been established in Greater Lincolnshire to generate new solutions and market opportunities in rural areas.
Through the LIS, we want to develop an innovative health industry that meets the challenges of an ageing and rural population, increase the involvement of SMEs working in partnership with public providers and work with the public sector to support more efficient use of public resources.
The visitor economy is worth over £2.2 billion to the Greater Lincolnshire economy.
In coastal areas the sector makes up a particularly large proportion of the local economy. 30% of East Lindsey’s Economic Output and 20% of North East Lincolnshire’s.
However, employment within the sector is highly seasonal and high prevalence of the sector correlates strongly with areas of higher than average deprivation.
Through the LIS we want to support less seasonality in the sector, generate better quality employment, develop a tourism offer that attracts higher spending visitors throughout the year underpinned by a vibrant creative and cultural offer.
25% of the UK’s rail freight is handled by Greater Lincolnshire’s ports. The port of Grimsby/Immingham is the UK’s largest port by tonnage.
Alongside this, logistics is a growing specialism within the region. Infrastructure has been a long-standing priority of the LEP given peripheral nature of our area.
Through the LIS we want to look at how to build on these assets and generate new solutions for developing infrastructure in a dispersed economy.
Our call for evidence has now closed and as we sift through responses we hope to further nuance and drill down to develop a clear plan of action over the coming months.
As our work progresses, our hope is that these priorities will open up discussions at both a national level and with a colleagues in other areas across the UK as we identify shared interests and issues.
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The recent 'Future of Mobility: Urban Strategy' publication marks a pivotal moment.
For the first time, the UK has a set of strategic guiding principles to help steer us on the complex path from today’s transport system towards the future.
These nine principles are sound, clear and broad, ranging from the need to safeguard walking, cycling and mass transit, to conscious consideration of inclusivity and data ownership, and firmly driving towards safe, lower carbon solutions.
The healthy tension between them is clearly acknowledged.
In my view, they could act as criteria against which the benefits of emerging new mobility solutions could be appraised and compared – both in isolation and combination – to determine the best specific transport and planning strategies at local, regional and national scales.
Those looking to criticise might suggest that there is no indication of which principles are most important or urgent, but to me the fact that they exist is the first essential step towards exactly these details. All are also vitally important in moving the agenda forward.
The first is a recognition of the need for a step-change in collaboration across public and private sectors if we are to reach genuinely ‘good’ and long-run sustainable (across economic, social and environmental axes) mobility outcomes for people and places.
The second, closely linked to this, is the need to guard against technology being introduced for its own sake. In other words, we need to understand what we’re trying to achieve and then seek out technologically smart, appropriate solutions to meet that need, rather than the other way around.
To make this work, we need to cultivate the right conversations across public and private sectors.
We have a reasonably good understanding of the public sector players, from national government to local authorities, with the sub-national bodies, combined authorities and Local Enterprise Partnerships in-between.
In the private sector space around mobility, however, we seem to have two assumptions in play: 'private sector = tech firms', and 'sole motive = commercial return'. Neither is true.
It is time to expand this and bring more private sector stakeholders into the collaboration ‘tent’ alongside the technology specialists. By this I mean strategic land-owners, investors, developers, house-builders and similar.
Most are aware of the anticipated major shifts in mobility. The more forward-thinking have been asking for guidance and advice in these areas for some time now.
Without a published strategy, they have been able to do little but fall back on existing planning policy if they want to secure planning permission. Now is the time to move this along with much more focus.
This is easy to say but complicated in practice. Different public and private sector stakeholders naturally act in different geographies, with different timelines and with different core interests.
In parallel, as Future Mobility Zones are introduced and trialled, we will learn about which elements of the future mobility bundle tend to work best and in which context, and of course we will see the relentless emergence of new technologies as well.
The good news is that we aren’t looking for a single, national mobility solution to solve everything at a stroke, or to be implemented at the flip of a virtual switch.
Instead, we are looking for a patchwork of local and strategic mobility solutions that will overlap, join and evolve. Ideally, some of these will generate revenues to fund others, and together they will form a coherent and sustainable system.
Working together, we can get more comfortable with the idea that our physical transport infrastructure assets (roads, rail etc) are relatively fixed but the digital system overlay is likely to evolve multiple times over the life of these assets.
This means that there is room for experimentation and improvement, so we can optimise for safety, efficiency, accessibility and fair returns.
Orchestrated well – and quickly, the mobility changes that we are already experiencing could make vast new areas of land accessible for new homes and jobs, give us cleaner air, reduced congestion, fewer road deaths and a better quality of life.
Done carelessly and without the right collaboration, we could make every one of these aspects worse – and it is all of us who will have to carry that cost.
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It is undeniable that Oxfordshire presents significant potential for the UK economy, particularly in the context of a post-Brexit economy – but to maximise this potential, collaborative working across all stakeholders, is absolutely essential.
Assets such as the University of Oxford and its world-class research programmes, Harwell Campus, Culham Science Centre and a thriving automotive sector not only have worldwide reach but are already internationally-established too.
And they are set to become even more vital – not just for Oxfordshire, but ‘UK PLC’ – as we move towards a more ‘globally-facing’ economy.
In addition to these significant international assets, we are world-leaders in the transformative technologies of digital health, space-led data applications, connected and autonomous vehicles and technologies underpinning quantum computing.
A science and innovation audit – authored by the Oxfordshire Transformative Technologies Alliance in the autumn of 2017 – suggested that, if fully-utilised, these four technologies alone could potentially add £180bn GVA growth to the UK economy by 2030.
It's a story that we feel needs to be told as regularly as possible to both national and international audiences.
As a Local Enterprise Partnership, we have already ‘taken the Oxfordshire economy’ to Westminster on three occasions over the past six months, highlighting both the capabilities and opportunities these technologies have to offer through House of Commons economic briefings.
The Oxford-Cambridge Arc also offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to the UK economy through leveraging all the economic strengths across that region.
Collaborative working between Local Enterprise Partnerships, universities and local authorities has seen us highlight the potential from this emerging economic region, which currently contributes around £111bn GVA each year, with potential to do more.
Success – both within Oxfordshire and the wider Oxford-Cambridge Arc – can be accelerated if we position the Arc’s potential clearly in the minds of global investors – but again, this can only be done effectively by bringing everyone together, including our key businesses, government, local authorities and academia.
Collaborative working across all areas of our work needs to be met by ambition too.
Oxfordshire’s Local Industrial Strategy directly responds to the UK Industrial Strategy – launched by the government in November 2017 – which aims to increase growth and productivity across the country and create more prosperous communities.
Our Local Industrial Strategy is ambitious and positions Oxfordshire as one of the top-three global innovation ecosystems, highlighting our world-leading science and technology cluster.
It provides a business-led framework, detailing how we can realise our full-potential, raising productivity and supporting greater commercialisation of our unique innovation assets.
Working in collaboration with key partners, we want our Local Industrial Strategy to be a pioneer for the UK and our emerging transformative technologies and sectors.
Only through collaboration will our asset-rich, vibrant economy be able to deliver on these many opportunities, not just for Oxfordshire but for the wider UK economy too.
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