James Mills is a web developer in the North East of England and founder of Refresh Teesside »
Mike Hughes is the Head of Business for the Evening Gazette. He will be blogging on all matters of importance to Teesside businesses - and some that are just worth knowing »
Jez Davison, business writer at the Evening Gazette, is a regular blogger on all things business - particularly finance, entrepreneurship and the state of the Teesside economy » 
Karen McLauchlan is the Evening Gazette's deputy business and features editor - with special interest in all things industry, property and arts related » 
Jeremy Middleton is a venture capitalist and the co-founder of FTSE-200 company HomeServe » 
Deloitte, which has 23 offices across the UK including Newcastle, is among the country's leading professional services firms » 
ClimateNE & Climate Change Schools Project support the move to a low-carbon, resilient economy and help businesses avoid risk and realise commercial opportunities. Posts by Jen Atkinson, Krista McKinzey and Harriet Thew » I was at an event yesterday to discuss future research work by the Northern Way into policies which will help close the ã30bn North-South output gap.
One of the interesting questions lingering in the background, however, is how the North East is actually managing to do this already.
Recent trends show a steady clawing back of the gap between the region and the rest of the country on a series of important indicators.
Most impressive was the recent economic growth rates. The latest data only relates to 2006, but it showed the region far outstripping the national average and out-performing all regions outside of London.
But yesterday we saw up to date stats which shows the region's amazing recent performance is continuing to improve. Employment stats showed the region has again performed far better than the national average over the past year and is getting closer and closer to the UK rate.
Indeed, I was talking last night to a new NECC member who has recently moved to the North East because he was told what a great place it is to do business. Now he's set up his business here, he agrees - but the problem he faces now is finding people to fill vacancies at his company. It highlighted how we need to respond correctly to the recent growth in this region, which includes doing all we can to make sure the supply of skilled workers remains.
But it's a far nicer problem for the region to have than some of the others we've faced in our history.
- Post to:
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
Nowpublic
Reddit
« Previous | Home | Next »