Midlands Engine – force for change

The ultimate in me-too policy making? Delete Northern, insert Midlands. Delete Powerhouse, insert Engine. Hey presto, you have a regional policy for central England, a zippy slogan which central England is a bad idea. But beyond this, it’s hard to find much clarity.

Bob Tattrie, managing partner at Birmingham-based Trebor Developments, expresses a widely shared view when he says: “It doesn’t hurt to have a badge – and the Midlands felt left out after 18 months of talk about the Northern Powerhouse.”

Most property people take a pragmatic view: if the Midlands Engine delivers, so much the better; if not, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

But is that enough to build a regional policy? The Midlands Engine’s boundaries, its purpose, its capacity to achieve anything beyond restating the obvious – are all in doubt. The vast, unfocused, size of the concept leaves some observers at a loss to explain its purpose, or how it could deliver.

Tim Garratt, Nottingham-based managing director at Innes England, says: “I don’t know what Midlands Engine means, or what it includes, and that is the brand’s problem. It’s like all those vanilla place-marketing messages – everyone saying they are open for business as if there was an alternative, as if anyone ever said they were closed for business. The East Midlands already has an identity issue so adding it to the West Midlands makes an even more difficult concept to sell.”

There are some basic problems. For instance, how far east does the Midlands Engine reach? Should it stretch to Felixstowe, the starting point of the Golden Triangle’s logistics supply chain? Does it include Cambridge, the UK’s flourishing science capital? Or Luton, whose airport research park is included in the Midlands Engine pitch book?

The government’s prospectus is clear: it is just the East and West Midlands economic regions. But not everyone sees it like that. Jonathan Browning is a former managing director at Jaguar, the iconic British car maker, and also a former chairman of Vauxhall. Today he is chair of the Coventry & Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership and a big cheerleader for the Midlands Engine.

“Midlands Engine is Welsh borders to the East Coast, and that includes places like Cambridge although there’s some vagueness on the southern boundary and places like Luton,” he says.

This is all news to Cambridge City Council. “We’ve heard of the Midlands Engine, but it’s not us,” said one surprised official. They are keen to co-operate with parts of the Midlands – Rutland, Northampton, and Oxford (if that’s in the Midlands) – but the big concept does not excite.

Then there is the problem of co-ordination across so many towns and cities. The West Midlands region has 33 local authorities, the East Midlands 43. Add 11 local enterprise partnerships and the new mayoral Combined Authority for the West Midlands and you have 88 individual bodies to co-ordinate.

Smudging their interests into one shared vision will not be easy. Garratt says: “There are a dozen cities in the Midlands, each wants what is best for itself. In the end the most powerful will dominate. There is already a general feeling that Midlands Engine is a vehicle for Birmingham to dominate the rest.”

Browning thinks that’s nonsense, and explains: “This is about a focus on engineering, manufacturing, innovation – all unlike London – and manufacturing is at the heart of the area, of its heritage and its future, although I don’t want to draw boundaries too closely round engineering – because we’ve also got innovation in drugs, genetics and digital technologies.”

Yet even here – at this fundamental level of debate about what Midlands Engine means – there is disagreement. The very word “engine” gives Garratt pause for thought because it suggests metal-bashing and car-making in a way that, for Nottingham, isn’t very helpful. “It’s not Nottingham’s message, we’re much more hi-tech, and that’s the challenge of the one-size-fits-all Midlands Engine,” he says.

The danger, says Garratt, is that the Midlands Engine boils down to the few things everyone can agree on but which, as a result, mean very little.

“How are we going to co-operate. Yes, we all want prosperity, when did you ever hear anyone arguing against prosperity, but what does prosperity mean?” he asks.

Undaunted, and despite a poor history of co-operation within regions, let alone co-operation across regions, Midlands engineers are going to give it a try.

Sir John Peace is the newly appointed chair of the Midlands Engine. The chairman of Standard Chartered and of Burberry, he is also Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire – so a big wheel in the Midlands Engine. He says: “It’s true that there have been challenges in the past, but there is a strong spirit of collaboration – an unprecedented willingness to work together to achieve greater economic growth and turn the Midlands into one of the world’s strongest regional economies. Brexit has sharpened our sense of unity. All parties are well aware of the need to work together to ensure that the Midlands thrives post the EU referendum.”

“The prime minister has stated that she wants to address the “gaping chasm” between London and the rest of the country and, more importantly, has recognised the untapped potential of the Midlands as well as the role the region will play in the UK’s new relationship with the world. The Midlands’ decision makers know that this is a key moment for the region and that their individual concerns must be set aside to ensure we are at the forefront of the country’s industrial strategy and Brexit plans.”

The fear of missing out if industrial strategy is rewritten provides the stick in a carrot-and-stick approach to making local leaders co-operate. The carrot is provided by infrastructure.

The Northern Powerhouse cities – particularly Manchester’s 10 boroughs – have proved that clubbing together to win big infrastructure projects can create a strong common purpose. Could it work in the Midlands?

Trebor’s Tattrie hopes the Midlands Engine can make the best of the opportunities of HS2 high speed rail and perhaps help to take the M6 toll road into public ownership. Others hope the embryonic transport partnership, Midlands Connect, formed in 2014 from 28 local councils, Network Rail and Highways England, might provide the glue to hold the region together. But the Midlands generally has good infrastructure. The more urgent problem (according to many business observers and Centre for Cities data) is skills.

Birmingham and Coventry have unusually high proportions of unqualified workers (about 15% each) ranking them 59 and 60 out of 63 UK cities. No Midlands city appears in the top 10. Local commissioning of the Adult Skills Budget is to be fully devolved to the West Midlands Combined Authority in 2018/19 – but that covers only part of the Midlands Engine area.

The worry is that resolving skills problems is not as glamorous as building big railways and as a result may be less effective as political glue.

Browning agrees that big projects will help stick the region together – but he also looks to wider co-operation. “Infrastructure is part of this, but not all of it. Getting control of funding is another, and we can use that to reinforce existing connections with a new emphasis on the east-west flow of people and goods. It’s the kind of thing the Midlands Engine can do,” he says.

“We need to focus on a limited number of priorities, four or five, such as place-marketing for overseas investment, making sure we have the right skills, but we won’t try to do everything for everything. We’ll do what works best at a Midlands level.”

Others think a focus on infrastructure would be a mistake. Rob Groves, regional director at Argent, says: “This has to go beyond HS2. It’s not just about highways and railways but about schools and skills, which need a boost, we need skilled labour.”

So how will the Midlands Engine work? Martin Yardley, Coventry City Council’s acting chief executive, may have the answer.

Yardley has been watching the way Manchester and the Northern Powerhouse authorities use different levers – and different headed notepaper – to achieve their objectives. They have political objectives and Northern Powerhouse councils are (apparently) agnostic about which bodies or people deliver them. This, says Yardley, is a lesson worth learning.

According to Yardley “Midlands Engine” is another tool ready for using. If it does the job, use it – if it doesn’t, don’t, and if the government wants to see Midlands Engine branding on projects let them have it, if it means you get the money.

“I can think of projects – big projects – where Coventry council initiated the idea, but a funding bid comes from the local enterprise partnership and the government attribute the announcement to the Midlands Engine,” he says.

“It’s about turning yourself to face whatever direction the money is coming from, about using whatever vehicle works, and if a project goes out from one body and comes back from another it doesn’t matter. Just catch the funding.”

In short, if ministers want to hear “Midlands Engine” in return for money, then shout it from the roof tops.

Yardley’s down-to-earth Coventry savoir faire may tell us a lot more about the Midlands Engine – what it can do, and how it can work – than the ambitious marketing talk.

Not to be confused with…

The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) is not to be confused with the Midlands Engine.

The combined authority is the body through which the directly elected mayor of the West Midlands will do his or her job. It covers Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton. Each council will have a seat on the authority, with the mayor as chairman. A growing list of other authorities – including Telford and Warwickshire – are joining as more distant members, but have no vote.

The mayor has just one vote. The council leaders have the rest, so he or she can do very little without sweet-talking council leaders, or making their life politically impossible by going over their heads to the electorate (a dangerous tactic). Sion Simon, the Labour candidate for mayor, is arguing for a more powerful executive mayor – but may find councils reluctant to give up control.

Argent regional director Rob Groves welcomes the idea of the Midlands Engine, particularly if it is business-led, but thinks political devolution – in the form of the West Midlands Combined Authority – could make a more immediate difference.

“We want the combined authority to take on strategic planning and investment responsibilities,” he says, slamming the “very frustrating” problems of having to turn to Whitehall for what are effectively local decisions.

The mayoral contest – between Labour’s Simon and John Lewis boss (and local LEP chairman) Andy Street for the Conservatives – will take place in May.

The devolution deal is flexible and could expand, but today it covers transport including buses, Metro extensions and combined ticketing, housing delivery and land supply, adult skills, some business support issues, and enterprise zones.

Marketing the Midlands Engine

Developing a strong inward investment brand is a key part of the government’s prospectus for the Midlands Engine, and how well the Midlands Engine performs will be partly dependent on how it spins itself. A shared pitch-book for regeneration was launched at this year’s MIPIM event in March with branding provided by the government.

Insiders at place-marketing organisations in the Midlands sound enthusiastic – it isn’t in their nature to sound otherwise, and to go off-message in public is impossible. They are all members of a promotions group under the general guidance of Midlands Engine chair Sir John Peace.

Several place-marketing organisations have tough tasks of their own. Newly created Marketing Nottingham & Nottinghamshire has a complex mix of identities to manage. But Nottingham sources were upbeat. “The Northern Powerhouse cities manage to combine regional and city marketing messages, so I don’t see why we can’t, and anything that gets us a hearing is a good thing,” one told EG privately.

Layer after layer of “place-marketing” geographies could make the Midlands Engine a hard sell. Inside the Midlands Engine sits the East Midlands (never very well defined) and the West Midlands. Inside the West Midlands sits the confusingly named West Midlands Combined Authority – which in fact excludes most of the West Midlands. Inside that is Greater Birmingham. Inside that is the City of Birmingham itself.

Marketing Derby managing director John Forkin says: “UK cities are too small to be noticed in the international market, so Midlands Engine is a help with international profile. Investors want to see the big picture first, and to do that we have to co-operate with our neighbours in the Midlands.”

Shared missions to China and the US, and a shared presence at MIPIM, will help, he says.