World Firsts, Devolution and Decarbonisation at Insider's Invest in Cheshire breakfast

Insider Media

Following Insider's Invest in Cheshire breakfast event, which took place on Thursday 1 October 2024 at Chester Racecourse, Remy Greasley speaks to some of the region's key stakeholders about what is in store for the region in the near future.

Transcript

00:00I'm Gemma Davies, Vice-Director of Economy and Housing at Cheshire Western Chatham's

00:16Economic Resource Centre. I have responsibility for economic growth, farming, housing in the

00:24We're really excited about devolution, so we're part of the Cheshire Revolution Sub-Committee

00:31so three local authorities working with Enterprise Cheshire Revolution and we are in a really

00:39positive dialogue at the moment with the new government around what devolution would be

00:44for Cheshire equality. It's really about making sure we get the right devolution agreement

00:50for our residents, for our businesses, for our community, so that's really, really important.

00:56So we're very much in the early stages of that conversation at the moment, but this

01:03government has been planning to do more devolution, it wants to have more devolution, particularly

01:09in the north. So we're really excited, we've done a lot of work on health information

01:16previously as well, we've talked to previous governments about devolution, so we've done

01:22a lot of the groundwork, but it's really about thinking about what are the right powers,

01:28what is the right focus for our devolution discussions with governments. So it really

01:37is a case of watch this maze I think at the moment for us, and this government wants to

01:42move quickly with devolution, so we can start to see things happening sooner rather than

01:49later, so that's the idea.

01:52So housing is a big challenge here, so here in Cheshire, we've really brought housing

02:01forward, we're an attractive place for people to live, so there's a fighting chance for

02:06housing in our area. I think one of our key challenges is about making sure we get the

02:13right housing in the right places, and it's about inclusivity and it's about accessibility

02:19to the housing market, so making sure that we've got affordable housing, it's making

02:25sure that we've got a future proofing housing as well, so thinking about energy efficiency,

02:32thinking about communities and neighbourhoods, people want to live in places where they

02:37feel comfortable living in, so it's making sure we get the right mix of housing at the

02:44right volume in the right places, and that is a real hard puzzle to make sure all those

02:50things come together, but we've got a clear local plan, we've got ambitions for our town

03:00centre, so getting more people living in town centres, so sustainable locations where

03:07there are services, trying to get less dependency on the private car with our housing would

03:13be great, we're also a big rural area, 70% of our area is rural, so we need to think

03:22about that in terms of making sure we have sustainable rural locations as well, so lots

03:29and lots to do, lots for us to do, working with the private sector in terms of housing

03:34development and bringing it back to the public.

03:37Hi, I'm Philip Cox, I'm the Chief Executive of Enterprise Cheshire Warrington, and we're

03:41responsible for the strategic planning across Cheshire and Warwick, so we've got some huge

03:46opportunities for this area, we can anticipate before Christmas the government will make

03:52a final investment decision about a high net programme, as soon as we get that decision

03:57that triggers £5.5 billion worth of private sector investment into the area, creates 6,000

04:03to 6,000 new jobs, and that's then a down payment on a £30 billion, again private sector

04:12investment programme, we've got a completely decarbonised Warwick West industrial cluster,

04:17making us the first place in the world to do that at the scale of, I don't know, some

04:22huge opportunities for the area.

04:24Wow, world first, and especially in clean energy, that's a great position to be in.

04:29It's a fantastic position to be in, we've become a place where you would come to if

04:34you need the skills, you need the expertise, you come to us, that's a fantastic expert

04:39opportunity with expertise and skills and so on and so forth, and we've been internationally,

04:44internationally, but it also makes us a great place to do business if you're a business

04:51that needs to decarbonise its operations, so we've become very, very attractive and

04:55a few of us have started to coin the phrase, leading the way, re-industrialising, re-industrialising

05:01the North.

05:05I'm Lindsay Kidd, I'm the managing director at HM3 Legal.

05:08Oh, it was brilliant, yeah, lots of insights and high energy, really useful I thought,

05:13really good to have two different panels as well, I thought that worked fantastically

05:17well, it was great.

05:18I think it can be a real differentiator in your business, particularly where there's

05:23pressure on talent, as the panel definitely touched on today, so it's also an opportunity

05:30really to differentiate your culture as treating it really as, I think, as a business priority

05:37rather than just a HR task. It takes hard work, you've got to work at it every single

05:42day to improve it, keep improving it to make sure that your people can be their best and

05:47therefore do their best, but for every business that takes the effort to really lean in to

05:53improving their culture, it can be their secret sauce that improves their business and drives

05:58their continued commercial success.

06:07HM3 Legal

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