Member Article

John Anderson CBE on the new North East Enterprise Zones

The confirmation that Wearside will play a key role in the development of new North East Enterprise Zones is fantastic news for Sunderland.

As well as cementing our vision for the development of a low carbon economy, we now have the potential to create thousands of jobs for the region and attract significant investment from global firms.

On a personal note, it is very interesting to see developments come full circle, for I was there in the days when the first round of North East Enterprise Zones were created by the previous Conservative government. In some areas EZs proved to be costly and unsuccessful, fortunately this was not the case in Sunderland. In 1990, the timing was right for speculative office developments such as Doxford International Business Park, which has of course since provided substantial employment for Wearside.

The site now occupies 1.35m sq ft, made up of office space occupied by employers including Nike, Barclays and Royal Mail. The other regional developments created as part of the last round of EZs include Quorum and Cobalt business parks, which collectively house over 10,000 workers, and are occupied by tenants including Proctor and Gamble, Orange and IBM.

However, some parks created more recently, still under the previous EZ mantle first initiated in 1981 (make no mistake these are long-term projects) have not been so successful. Some of the offices built in East Durham over the past decade occupy less than 50% of their capacity today.

This points to the need for a fresh approach with the development of these new EZs, which I am confident we are going to get. Last time around the EZ mechanism offered huge incentives in the form of tax breaks for developers and financial benefits for tenants. This time around the incentives are more modest, but directed towards the development of a low carbon economy for our region, which will reap huge benefits for everyone in the long term.

I believe this will appeal to the sensibilities of a new generation of North East business people who understand this vision, and are serious about developing a future for business in the North East.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by John Anderson CBE .