Review team to give status update

A conference will this week bring together business leaders to discuss the progress of the  North East Independent Economic Review.

This event for Lord Andrew Adonis's economic review is being held on Friday from 9.30am-2.30pm at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.

Andrew Adonis will be present alongside the review team, members of the expert panel and over 200 senior regional business and public sector representatives.

Together, they will hear presentations and discuss the evidence gathered so far. The debate will mark the start of the final stage of the review process.

The conference will be followed by a three hour meeting of the review team and their advisers as they move towards making their recommendations to the North East LEP. Their final report will be published later this spring.

Other members of the review team, which includes Will Hutton, principal of Hertford College, Oxford; Heidi Mottram, CEO of Northumbrian Water; Lord Don Curry, chair of NFU Mutual; Jonathan Ruffer, chairman of Ruffer LLP and Bridget Rosewell, economist and senior partner of Volterra Partners will be present on the day.

Representatives from the review’s expert panel of leading international academics and researchers will also take part.

There will be presentations on advanced manufacturing, skills, and the service sector, ahead of a debate on the submissions - some provocative - from the expert panel.

The review's conclusions - which has had strong support from central Government - will target measures to improve productivity and employment growth in the period to 2030 in the North East LEP area, and will provide the North East LEP, its partners and central government each with a set of strategic interventions to be implemented over the next five years.

Lord Adonis said: “The North East LEP area is already a world leader in many sectors and has a huge amount of economic potential for growth in these and new business sectors. Through the North East Independent Economic Review, we want to find achievable means to realise this potential in a sustainable way.

“The review team is doing an outstanding and highly committed job in compiling the information, and the response they have had across all sectors of the North East LEP economy has been hugely pleasing.

“This conference is the most important forum so far for discussion of the review. It gives us the chance to debate and respond to the evidence gathered.”