There’s nothing post-industrial about the Tees valley

Heavy industry remains a fact of life in the Tees Valley, now and into the future. Linda Edworthy, director of policy and strategy with Tees Valley Unlimited, talks to Mark Cantrell about the particular challenges this brings to regeneration efforts

In the old industrial heartlands of B ritain, regeneration has almost become a by-word for ridding them of the unsightly, decaying relics of dead industries, but in the Tees Valley – which encompasses Teesside – there’s nothing by-gone or decaying about them.

Traditional, heavy industries remain very much a fact of life in the area, so for those tasked to regenerate the sub-region – socially, economically and physically – the challenges, whilst familiar in many respects, also encompass much more than is otherwise expected.

Of course, in this day and age, where industry is associated with yesterday, some of those challenges involve over-coming negative perceptions found beyond the Tees Valley border. These days, the ‘knowledge economy’ is all the rage, with regeneration creating the kind of places fit for the hip laptopwielding ‘knowledge workers’ to be seen drinking their lattes. Industry, on the other hand, whether thriving or struggling, is somehow considered a bit grim.

For those working within Tees Valley Unlimited (TVU), however, industry is not synonymous with the past, nor does it preclude the creative endeavours of the knowledge economy. The two can co-exist. One might say the organisation is looking to have its latte and drink it.

“Any negative press that hits the national news, such as the mothballing of the TCP [Teeside Cast Products] plant by Corus, obviously does cause come negative perception,” said Linda Edworthy, TVU’s director of policy and strategy. “What we are trying to get across is that the Tees Valley isn’t all about what are considered to be ‘old industries’. Even the more traditional ones are very different now than they were 10 or 20 years ago.”

Mothballed last year, the TCP plant has since been bought by Thai company Sahavirya Steel Industries (SSI) for £300 million and is looking to recommence production of slab steel, taking on 800 workers out of the original 2,000 or so employed in its previous Tata-owned Corus incarnation. For Redcar, where the plant is sited, it means jobs that will boost the local economy, but it also demonstrates that heavy industry is still a player in the area’s future.

“They might be heavy industries, but they’re very modern, and we have key sectors of petrochemicals as well, which are very much at the forefront of technologies, and bring a lot of highly-skilled jobs,” Edworthy added.

“There’s a lot of new emerging sectors and a lot of our industries are moving into greener energy. We’ve got a lot of energy plants based on green energy, perhaps more so than in other parts of the country.”

This, of course, all has a knock-on effect in terms of housing, as Edworthy explained: “There is still a strong demand for housing. The key challenge is to ensure that it’s the type of housing that people actually want nowadays.”

People want a comfortable home they can afford, naturally, but in economic terms it’s additionally about helping the local workforce live and work locally. Beyond that, however, it’s also about building the kind of environment conducive to attracting business investment in the Tees Valley economy – again by helping to have a workforce able to live locally. The abolition of the Housing Market Renewal (HMR) Pathfinder schemes, however, has caused a considerable headache and “presents a major challenge” for housing regeneration.

“We’ve got some very large areas of housing still to be purchased and demolished, never mind actually being redeveloped, so when the funding stops it’s very difficult to get private builders interested at that point,” said Edworthy. “With the market conditions the way they are, a lot of builders will choose to go to easier sites elsewhere in the Tees Valley or in the North East.

“So we have got the challenge of trying to look at different ways to deliver the activity without significant public sector funds available for it. We are still in discussion with the Government about whether there can be any further support.” Tees Valley was successful in getting £26 million in support from the Regional Growth Fund; though this is targeted at supporting and promoting business investment, by its focus on jobs creation it is bound to exert a benefit to the local economies. The TCP plant, mentioned above, is to receive £1.65 million towards training, for example.

Business regeneration, however, does add to the pressing need for housing renewal; a ripple effect, with organisations such as TVU right at the epicentre.

“Whilst the focus is on jobs, and quite rightly so at this point, the key issue for us is the difficulties of leaving the area without funding for housing, in terms of housing regeneration. The initiatives the Government is coming out with, say around the New Homes Bonus, or the Empty Properties Fund, are not really applicable to an area like Tees Valley.

“So cutting the HMR fund has been a major problem for us. W e’re not at the point where the private sector will readily intervene because there isn’t the value in the sites for them at this point. T here needs to be more involvement, potentially through the public sector, or in partnership between the public and private sectors to make that happen.”

That’s where Tees Valley Unlimited comes into play, one might say, since it is a voluntary public private partnership (PPP) established between the five local authorities, working with Registered Providers and business in the subregion across a whole range of regeneration issues.

As the embodiment of the local authorities, not mention their partner organisations, TVU has a vision to create a high-value, low-carbon economy. No, the organisation isn’t planning to wave goodbye to its heavy industries; they remain very much a part of the future. That said, TVU is keen to help them make the most of new technologies, and the legislative environment, to make them as environmentally sustainable as possible. Encouraging the emergence of new green industries is also a key part of the vision.

More than this, however, is its ambition to diversify the Tees Valley economy so that it can become more resilient to unexpected economic shocks. With such a dominance of big global industries, its business ‘ecology’ is recognised as being somewhat top heavy.

“We’ve got a large number of big businesses; we need to grow our small and medium-sized businesses and increase their number,” said Edworthy.

“Our small business start-ups are very good in terms of surviving, we exceed the national average in terms of our survival rates, but we haven’t got enough new business starting in the area, so our ambition is to get the area to be much more entrepreneurial.”

Working with children in schools, the organisation is looking to encourage them to think about starting their own business as a potential job opportunity, and to work with those made redundant from the public sector, or other businesses, to think about self-employment as a valid job opportunity. It’s
sowing seeds, but inevitably, it takes time for such potential to germinate.

“It’s not just a Tees Valley issue, it’s very much a North East issue, but because there’s been so many big businesses that people have worked fortraditionally, it’s not been in the culture,” Edworthy added. “That takes time to change, but we’ve got some real signs that we can do this, and also attract more small and medium-sized businesses to the area.

“That takes us back to what underpins all that: the housing offer on Tees Valley needs to be right; the transport infrastructure needs to be there. The housing is there for people to live in but they are also there to make sure it’s a vibrant place to live. That it is a place where people want to live.”

Jobs and homes – in a sense it’s the national story in a Tees Valley nutshell.