This time last week, the VONNE team were busily doing the final preparations for our annual AGM and Conference, and we’re pleased that the planning paid off as we welcomed over 100 attendees into our virtual event space for a successful event. Comms Officer, Amy Coates took some time to reflect on the event, our speakers and the importance of the VCSE sector within our communities when considering a Levelling Up agenda.
The conference this year focussed around the timely theme of Levelling Up, looking at what that means for the North East, addressing regional inequalities and the cost-of-living crisis. We were joined by some fantastic and engaging speakers, Keith Burge, Managing Director of ERS and trustee at Virgin Money Foundation, John McCabe, Chief Executive of North East Chamber of Commerce and Luke Myers, Research Fellow at IPPR North.
Presentations
Keith Burge spoke first, digging into the 12 key missions of the Levelling up white paper, using real-life examples and statistics to question how realistic those missions are and what chance we have of achieving them. He talked about what Levelling Up actually means, that it isn’t just about economics (or certainly it shouldn’t be), and how the focus should also be on quality of life, increasing lifespans, levels of happiness, pride in communities and reducing homicide, serious violence and crime in worst affected areas.
He gave some sobering statistics about the north/south divide, including that last year saw 43% growth of wealth in the South East of England, whilst wealth fell by 17% in the same period in the North East.
Expressing his own, honest opinions, he highlighted that climate change, Brexit and skills shortages are major issues not being addressed. Levelling up spending is being dwarfed by other spending and inflation is killing economic development, with less per head being spent in the North East than any other part of the UK. Decision making is slow and ill informed, meaning devolution is needed, with sustained investment, government stability and a greater level of delivery capacity.
John McCabe, Chief Executive of the North East Chamber of Commerce lifted spirits with his presentation, acknowledging that the North East is below national averages but that by working together we will help close those skills gaps and give everyone a fair shot at Levelling Up together. He noted that the region is already starting to mobilise, as people have a growing realisation of a need to work collaboratively to grow and improve the North East at pace. And finally, he stressed the importance of cross sector collaboration because Levelling up matters for everyone. We need to get behind all Levelling up opportunities across the north east, parts of regions shouldn’t be pitched against each other – levelling up should be a good thing for the whole region, as boosting one area can have a knock-on effect to other areas.
Finally, Luke Myer, Research Fellow at IPPR North spoke of their desire for and research into Progressive Levelling Up and the benefits of this.
Speaking frankly, he commented that the North East is more regionally divided than ever. Government rhetoric hasn’t been followed up by spending and resources, government have undermined their own paper with the way they’ve spent levelling up funding. It’s a stark situation, the current agenda is a good one but not being delivered. It’s too top down, opaque and failing to engage with communities. IPPR North feel the answer is a bottom up approach, designed in people’s experiences of life, and that’s what progressive levelling up is.
Luke then talked through IPPR North’s approach for their participatory research, and the common themes that have come from their workshops.
A key, and optimistic point from the research is that community matters, People love where they live, pride of place is high in the North East and people want their place to reach it’s potential by having a greater voice in decision making and longer term decisions. Overall, people are hopeful for the future. They want to be able to access opportunities and see improvements of services, people are proud of where they live.
IPPR are looking at how they can turn this feedback into policy, they will be publishing their research in January and are still keen to get thoughts of people in the region. If you’d like to know more about their work, you can take a look at their website here.
Discussions
After a short break, our delegates then jumped into breakout rooms to discuss key questions from Luke around Progressive Levelling Up, looking at:
- How can central and local government best empower community organisations?
- In what ways are VCSE organisations better positioned than government to 'level up' communities?
- What examples are there of local government working differently with community organisations in the North East?
- How do we make devolution work better for communities across the country?
We had some great feedback from the rooms, including comments on how we should take positives from the adaptation that happened as a response to covid, our ability to mobilise, initiate and engage in doing things differently – how can we make this benefit communities and regions?
Lots of people also stressed the need to raise the profile of the VCSE sector, with a VCSE lead within government to support devolution and policy decisions. The government need to understand what VCSE sector is, what we do and the trust we hold in communities. VCSE organisations are embedded in their communities which means they can deliver bespoke and trusted services and support.
Looking at how devolution should work better, it was noted that the story of devolution needs to be told to make it resonate with people’s lives, show why it’s important and how it could work. Need to be clear on why we want devolution, why it will work better.
Reflecting back and looking forward
Of course, all of these conversations took place just hours before the Autumn Statement was released. Learn more about that and the VCSE sector’s response to it here.
Overall, it was wonderful to see and hear so many people from our region and our VCSE sector so engaged in these important conversations and committed to making our communities better for people to live and thrive in. There’s a lot of work to be done in the North East, but we also have a lot of pride and that’s evident from the people who joined us today.
If you’d like more information on the topics discussed at our Conference, you can access our Digital Delegate Pack here, which includes videos from our Health and Wellbeing Associate, Jane Hartley talking about the importance of Levelling Up for the Health sector. Henri Murison, Chief Executive of Northern Powerhouse and Henry Kippin, Managing Director of North of Tyne Combined Authority also took the time to answer the questions put to our delegates by IPPR North, and you can watch those videos here.
Thank you to everyone who attended the AGM and Conference, thank you to our speakers and huge thanks to our sponsors – the Engagement Team at Newcastle University, Northern Powergrid, RBC Brewin Dolphin and Womble Bond Dickinson.
