So, here we are toiling away in the midst of recession. Low growth, high costs and to cap it all summer’s been rained off. Dreary doesn’t even come close.
Don’t you just wish you were somewhere that had prospects?
Fantasise for a minute – just imagine what business would be like if you were in a place where someone was spending a bit of money - £500m here, £140m there, with the odd £60m thrown in somewhere else.
In this climate? You are having a laugh...
Well, if you still think that’s fantasy land, the joke’s on you: it’s actually Nottingham. Now.
The £500m is the vast civil engineering project that will turn the one-line tram into a fully-fledged three-line network. It’s underway now.
The £140m is the [scandalously overdue] scheme to turn Nottingham’s southern link to the M1, East Midlands Airport and the East Midlands Parkway railway station into a fast dual carriageway. It starts in January.
The £60m? Well, it’s actually £120m – one £60m sum is earmarked for the transformation of Nottingham Railway Station into a transport interchange connecting rail, road and tram, the other £60m is the combined sum Nottingham can lever to deliver the schemes which comprise a Government-approved City Deal programme.
So let’s just tot all that spending up for a minute: that’s £760 million of confirmed investment in your city. When Capital Shopping Centres finally get round to revamping Broadmarsh and the Vic Centre (2014, according to an analysis last month) it will take that figure up to around £1 billion.
One. Billion. Pounds.
Doesn’t seem quite so dreary out there now, does it? At least I hope it doesn’t – and this is the point: I’m really not sure people have woken up to what’s about to happen here.
Okay, it won’t happen overnight. Large-scale schemes take large-scale planning and the wheels of an advanced, mature democracy turn irritatingly slowly (particularly in Whitehall, currently way out in the lead for the ‘Plain Useless at Getting the Money Out’ prize).
But these projects will create jobs before, during and after they are completed.
The infrastructure investments offer the prospect of turning Nottingham into one of the best business locations in Britain for connecting commerce, customers and workforce.
In some ways it’s the City Deal and the Growth Plan which supports it that offers the most tantalising prospect, because it provides an answer to a big question: Where does Nottingham’s economy go from here?
The slow decline of traditional manufacturing here meant the city didn’t suffer an economic shock. But this slow transition left it far too dependent on the service sector/public sector, which together accounts for more than 80% of jobs.
You can’t grow business services when business isn’t growing and the public sector is actually contracting. So we have to grow in a new direction.
We already have some established traction in life sciences which was present through Boots’ old drug discovery activities, has been continued in university R&D programmes, and is being commercialised on a substantial scale at BioCity.
There are substantial research activities, too, in sustainable environmental technologies and a kernel of promising ‘clean tech’ businesses.
There are also clusters of coders and programmers in this city, working in fields ranging from advanced, niche data analytics through to the production of blockbusting computer games. Digital content, they call it.
So, massive investment, promising new industries. What’s the missing link?
There are a three of them, actually.
One is an education system which manufactures the raw material these and other businesses need – skilled, well-qualified kids who leave schools and colleges with attributes which satisfy employers, rather than the insanity of a system which allows kids to pick dud subjects which satisfy nothing other than a meaningless educational KPI.
The second is encouraging enterprise through meaningful advice from people who’ve done it. Formal training goes only so far – wise words from people who’ve tasted failure to find success counts for much more.
Finally, Nottingham’s massive potential should be supported by a big, bold message. We have a story to tell about big things that are going to happen and major opportunities that will emerge.
Have we just bought ourselves a new future? You decide.
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