Building capacity to deliver PSA regional performance
targets
John Goddard
Deputy Vice Chancellor and
Professor of Regional Development Studies
Newcastle University 1
As
Professor
of
Regional
Development
Studies
in
Newcastle
University since 1975, can I add my welcome to the North East?
Following a recent public lecture in Newcastle on the role of
universities in city and regional development, Jonathan Blackie
asked me to provide some background to your visit in terms of the
long history of public policy interventions designed to tackle the
economic underperformance of this region. Web reference
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/events/public-lectures/item.php?the-role-ofthe-university-in-the-development-of-its-city-and-region I will then
link these remarks to the current challenges confronting your Board.
I must start by emphasising that the region has a long history of
pioneering new ways of tackling poor economic performance.
My
University has played a key role at every stage. The first attempt
to help the region catch up with the South East after the great
depression was through the building by the state of “advanced
factories” in the Team Valley in 1936. My predecessor played a key
role in its design and development.
In the 1960s the visionary
regional leader Dan Smith saw the connection between education
1
Speech to the REP PSA Delivery Board 17 April 2008
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and economic development and worked with the University and the
Polytechnic in delivering his vision of “education upon Tyne”
creating a city centre campus for the universities.
In the 1980s I
and my colleagues in the University’s Centre for Regional and Urban
Development Studies challenged the long term viability of a policy
of attracting mobile industry to the region.
We persuaded the
European Commission to move towards a new policy of support for
indigenous
development
particularly
through
technological
innovation.
With support from the European Structural Funds a
number of initiatives were launched in the region to build links
between industry and the research base in universities.
This
culminated in the first Regional Economic Strategy which “placed
universities at the heart of the regional economy”.
While the initial focus was on technology in isolation the region has
come to realise the importance of places and the local milieu to
fostering innovation.
For example our International Centre for Life
brings together genetics research, the NHS, business incubation and
public understanding of science in one location.
By linking
regeneration and science funding we provided Gordon Brown with
the model for the designation of Six Science Cities.
Here Newcastle
Science City has built on culturally led regeneration which has
attracted and retained creative people to the region and is using the
physical assets of the former hospital and brewery sites to bring
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science and business together.
Similar developments are in train
in Netpark in County Durham where Durham University is a key
actor.
In focussing on key sites or what the RES calls innovation
connectors, the current policy has resonance with the identification
of growth points in County Durham during the 1960s. In summary,
economic development and place making have gone hand in hand in
this region for seventy years.
How has this come about?
In my public lecture I highlighted the role played by key individuals
in
launching
local
initiatives
designed
to
raise
economic
performance and also shape national policy from the bottom up.
I
guess one challenge your Board faces is how to ensure that as more
and
more
organisations
are
required
to
support
economic
development they all have the capacity to act together in a way that
contributes to meeting PSA regional targets.
In my view capacity fundamentally relates to the skills and
competences of individual actors.
However much we seek to
change the institutional map of who does what where there will still
be overlaps of the roles and responsibilities of different agencies.
Working together will only deliver conjoint outcomes if people in all
the key stakeholder organisations have a common understanding
of the drivers behind regional economic performance and how they
can contribute in their own domains, not least by working with
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partners to deliver desired regional outcomes.
A key point of that
understanding relates to the trajectory of regional development and
the success or otherwise of policy intervention.
In this regard the proposed local economic assessments could play
a dynamic role.
Gathering the evidence base and assessing the
outcomes of particular interventions should be part of the capacity
building process.
Moving beyond counting outputs to ensuring the
delivery of outcomes will only come from building trust between
partners.
Understanding outputs from each part of an inter-agency
business process in a way that contributes to the delivery of longer
term outcomes needs sustained joint working. Evidence gathering
must be the responsibility of actors in the process not external
researchers/consultants (although advise can be sought in relation
to data capture protocols). The actors must understand the linkage
between individual interventions and the delivery of outcomes
reflected in gross statistics.
There must be an acceptance that the
outputs from one Agency may contribute to the targets of another
to the overall benefit of the region.
This emphasis has important implication for the design of scrutiny
and
public
accountability
regimes.
These
need
to
be
developmental rather than judgemental and extend the work of the
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NAO
and
Audit
Commission
more
strongly
into
the
inter
organisational domain.
In delivering on this agenda, the critical actors are those with
boundary spanning roles.
It should be a key function of HR
departments to ensure that these people have the necessary
knowledge and skills to work with partners, ideally by running staff
development programmes that involve participants from one or
more outside organisations.
Programmes such as Common
Purpose and the Top Management Programme provide good
models.
Knowledge of others should include understanding their
national policy drivers and the skills to undertake conjoint working
which seeks to influence these policies in ways that ensure positive
regional outcomes.
I would like to conclude by illustrating my remarks with the
example of my own university in relation to joint working with ONE
NorthEast and Newcastle City Council.
We have an MOU with ONE
and this is detailed in the slides I have handed out.
We will be
implementing the MOU through a staff development initiative
focussing on conjoint planning to enable us to move on from a
project by project approach to an agreed rolling programme.
A
three way partnership around the delivery of Newcastle Science City
has
also
been
established
which
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clearly
articulates
the
complementary agendas of the partners. From the university side
this has been driven by a recognition that local engagement and
contributing to national goals as well as competing globally can be
mutually supporting.
This approach could be a model for other
regional partnerships.
Civic universities like my own are seeking to link all of these levels
and connect the various domains addressed by the PSA targets.
pursuing this we still face barriers at the national level.
In
For
example I was disappointed to find little reference to universities
and higher level skill in the SNR. And while the DIUS White paper
highlights the importance of place, the role of universities at that
level is yet to be clearly articulated.
In short, and from the perspective of the contribution of higher
education to addressing uneven territorial development, we still
have a long way to go in joining up government.
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