OPEN LETTER – 6 DECEMBER 2024
Dear Partners, colleagues and friends,
Our region’s success: how much does this matter?
The energy and enthusiasm shown by Partners at our All-Partner Conference last week struck a resonant chord with all of us that it matters very deeply.
As conference delegates discussed, our Partnership has made significant and tangible progress over the last 18 months, putting foundations in place for long-term collaboration. Our programme is based on joint action and a shared goal of delivering sustainable economic growth. We detail some of the things we have delivered below.
Government’s investment in East West Rail presents new and expanding opportunities for our area. We know our region punches well above its weight on the global stage and is one of the world’s great science powerhouses. On a per-capita basis, its extraordinary innovation outperforms almost every other region globally. But our region is held back. Why? Because the barriers to growth have yet to be tackled: prolonged periods of under-investment in infrastructure - water, energy, digital and transport - and access to capital, talent and skills.
EWR was identified as critical transport infrastructure to improve connectivity among the region’s centres of enterprise and beyond. We thank the Government for this continued support and investment which acknowledges the importance that the Prime Minister places on infrastructure as the Government seeks to unlock growth.
There’s much more we need to do. The case for further investment is clear. Our region will continue to be held back until we connect and scale-up our strengths to fully exploit and reap the local and national rewards of spillover benefits our local economies have the potential to create as they come together to form a global science and innovation supercluster.
We must not leave the success of our region to chance.
We have built strong effective networks to operate cross-boundary, cross-party and across government departments to progress a shared regional ambition for sustainable economic growth.
We work closely in strategic alliance with our region’s Supercluster Board and industry leaders, the universities, our region’s sub-national transport body, England’s Economic Heartland and with East West Rail.
Through this alliance, we have ready-to-go programmes geared to ensure we work in tandem to maximise the return of benefits, created through significant public investment, directly to our communities.
As a Partnership, we are very supportive of extensive Devolution to leaders in the Region. The Devolution Bill is expected to outline future structures of governance which will need to be bedded in. It is important that the positive momentum created through collaboration - critical for our region’s, and nation’s, economy - does not stall through a premature ceasing of core central Government funding for the pan- Regional Partnership at the end of the current financial year.
The Government is right to review their investment in pan-regional partnerships when set against the backdrop of devolution, as well as local government reorganisation, planning policy reform, a new Industrial Growth Strategy and so on. We welcome the opportunity to put our case forward as these changes bring a greater need to foster cross-boundary working with a strong culture of collaboration. To achieve this, we must proactively invest in it.
Recognising the Government’s current spending review timeline, we immediately seek a minimum 1-year funding settlement to back our efforts to deepen the foundations and momentum created and support us to get on with our good work.
Government funding will help settle the ground as new Mayors and Combined Authorities come forward. It will allow us to work proactively with our strategic partners, with government and its Arms-Length Bodies to coordinate efforts for the long-term, holistic and joined up strategic plans that will turn this region into the world-class science and innovation supercluster it has the potential to be.
We continue to make the case for our Region and our Partnership to government because our partners believe the success of our region really matters.
Over to you.
The government is currently consulting on its minded-to decision to cease funding for PRPs after March 2025. That consultation is live and closes at midday on Monday, 16 December.
The consultation poses questions specific to different types of organisations but at the heart of the consultation, the Government wishes to understand the impacts a cessation of PRP funding will have.
We urge you to either make a submission through the official consultation portal or, write to Ministers or your MPs, to help make the case for continued Government investment in pan-regional collaboration. This is so we can continue the real and tangible progress achieved to date, and work with you over the next few months to set out what a long-term regional programme of action should be.
Together, over the past 18 months we have already delivered:
· A Regional Data Observatory, with insights and shared evidence base as well as a bespoke analysis service to support the region’s leaders to make evidence-based, strategic investment decisions. This will be an increasingly important resource, as requirements for new strategic investment Plan frameworks are introduced.
· An International Investment Prospectus, with an investor-facing brand narrative backed by regional partners in our universities and industry, to promote the region to attract foreign direct investment, growth and venture capital. We brought Partners together at UKREiiF 2024 and Expo Real and represented the Region at London Tech Week and other Government-backed events throughout the year.
· New pan-regional Environment Principles, providing a holistic framework to drive positive and ambitious change and deliver better place-making. Using the principles we can coordinate resources and expertise to deal with the local, national and international challenges we face, inform research agendas and R&D activity from innovation clusters and, take decisive action to enhance our environment.
· Shared projects to better connect people and their ideas, places and nature. We have established an innovation network of networks to catalyse further collaboration galvanised around addressing common challenges. And we have supported organisations to create and share expertise, tools and guides to join up action to deliver practical solutions.
To this email, we enclose our:
· Partnership’s 2023/24 Annual Review
· The Region’s Overview Report
· Our response to the Industrial Strategy Green Paper consultation
· The presentation deck and photography from our All-Partner Conference on 29 November 2024
The PRP funding consultation details can be found here:
We look forward to working with you.
The Oxford to Cambridge pan-Regional Partnership Team