Earlier this month Labour peer Lord Adonis set out a series of recommendations designed to kick start the region’s economic renaissance on behalf of the North East Local Economic Partnership.The report’s aspirations will be widely shared across the region: improved transport infrastructure; encouragement for knowledge-based industries; a skilling up of the regional workforce; improved support to encourage business growth and inward investment and better collaboration by government and key partners to raise the profile of the region as a national and international centre for business.
So far, so good. But questions may well be asked about the absence of measures to support civil society given its potential contribution in many areas ranging from raising community aspirations, through addressing educational exclusion, to running many of the regions key tourism, heritage and arts organisations.
The importance of this omission, I feel, should not be overstated. In all likelihood the initiatives outlined by Adonis will in practice involve engagement with civil society organisations, and through them to the communities that will need to be engaged for the LEP strategy to succeed. However with New Labour’s Third Way a distant memory and the Big Society project out of the limelight, this is perhaps a timely reminder of the need to ensure that policy makers’ remain informed of civil society’s key role in the region’s social and economic life.
What can we do to promote this awareness? Early in May we will be launching Tyne & Wear’s Vital Signs, initiating a conversation about the role of community philanthropy and civil society in the area. Northumberland’s Vital Signs will follow in October. The scope of the reports will be wide and include areas like employment and the local economy alongside more predictable concerns such as health and the environment. We will be asking local philanthropists, those working in the community and voluntary sector and local residents to read it and let us have their views. Hopefully in this way we will gather a body of evidence that can be used by ourselves and others to ensure there is a continued recognition of the role of civil society and philanthropy in all aspects of regional life
