Nottingham's Growth Plan: The race is on

If Nottingham’s Economic Growth Plan is going to work it will have to break new ground and do it quickly.
Those were the key messages to come out of the launch of this draft plan at The Council House this morning.
It was encouraging to see some of the most high-profile figures from across the city turn out for its launch – a measure, perhaps, that there is recognition across the board that we are at a critical point in the city’s future.
Prof David Greenaway, the economist who leads the University of Nottingham, gave a beautifully succinct vision of where the world economy is at and where it leaves a place like Nottingham. Miatta Fahnbulleh, who is head of the Cities Unit in the Cabinet Office in London, told the room that Government was ready and willing to help cities which could show they had a vision for growth and knew how to deliver it.
But it was Sir John Peace, the chairman and co-founder of Experian, who made possibly the most thought-provoking contribution. His speech was about the need for Nottingham to fully comprehend the late Steve Jobs’ guiding principle: Think Different. But it was book-ended by two films, one which delivered a machine-gun barrage of statistics about the connected world’s change-at-the-speed-of-light, the other a portrayal of the corrosive impact of youth unemployment.
It consisted of a series of young people talking frankly about the difficulties they faced trying to find work, several of them delivering a judgement that many people in business should find pretty shocking: that the more doors they knock on, the more they got the feeling that business is turning its back on the young unemployed.
Sir John’s view is that youth unemployment is a potentially poisonous problem which has now reached levels which dictate that all responsible businesses should step up to the bar and do everything they can to help tackle it – whether that is going into schools to directly address the skills/attitude problems employers complain about, or offering young, unemployed people work experience or apprenticeships.
Sir John, who is also chairman of Standard Chartered Bank, moves in some very well-connected circles and I suspect his view also reflects the significant political pressure bearing down on corporate Britain to show that it needs to act less selfishly and more responsibly.
There is much to commend in the draft Nottingham Economic Growth Plan, and the City Council is already hard at work on some of its key features (notably a serious bid to secure crucial funding for investment in digital infrastructure).
Beyond council leader Jon Collins and chief executive Jane Todd, it is being steered by Councillor Nick McDonald, executive assistant for economic development, and John Yarham, the officer who heads economic development.
Nick McDonald repeatedly emphasised that the council did not want the plan to be seen as a council document, and the challenge now is to get Nottingham’s business community involved in its development before it is finalised in April.
I was sitting next to Adam Bird, the chief operating officer of the technology company Esendex during the presentation and he made a couple of interesting points afterwards: that the council has got to overcome the natural tendency of most businesses to simply ask ‘What’s in it for me?’, and that the plan will work best if it focuses on creating an environment that allows business to get on with the job.
For all sorts of reasons, time is short. Outside the barely believable myopia of the Eurozone and away from our own obsessions with recession and regulation of banking, the Asian economies are accelerating at a meteoric pace and the American economy is waking from its slumbers.
The Nottingham Economic Growth Plan needs real vision and some clearly identifiable targets. But it also needs to be short, sharp and deliverable.
The race is on…