A note from Russell

Since 2015, the North-east Regional Economic Partnership has been delivering strongly against the Regional Economic Strategy. With representatives from Universities, big business, Opportunity North East, Scottish Enterprise, the Chamber and local authorities among others taking collective stewardship of the big ticket items that already are and will continue to shape our future economy.

However, it would be fair to say that although this region is known to have a strong and active senior management team, it does lack the overall focal point of a single charismatic leader of the type that have driven positive change in other successful parts of the UK in the recent past and currently taking the form of high profile Metro Mayors in some English regions. Following a strong period of delivery is there a risk that we may start to suffer from strategic drift? How do we address this?

It’s also important that all of the participants share and demonstrate the same definition of working in partnership and play their ‘A’ game when collectively bidding for projects and funding.

Everyone is clear that public finances are stretched like never before but it’s vital that this doesn’t lead to lack of vision and ambition. The Chamber believes that it is the role of local government to create the framework and conditions that will act as a catalyst to enable the private sector, investors, companies and entrepreneurs to do their bit. Unchecked, simply repeating that there’s no money will become a damaging, self-fulfilling

Sir Howard Bernstein has been there, done it and got an interesting range of T-shirts! The Chamber and Deloitte are bringing him to Aberdeen on 6th June to enable groups of invited stakeholders to tap into his wisdom.