Building the case for Lancashire’s levelling-up

Leaders from Lancashire’s built environment sector have said the county needs to come together and present a united, strategic vision to maximise its potential and attract investment to power its future.

Speaking at a major conference at Blackpool Football Club’s stadium, leaders and experts from the construction and related sectors, warned that unless it can sell that unity and overarching strategy, ideally led by a figurehead such as a regional mayor, the county would lose out on millions of pounds of investment to “aggressive” rival areas.

The Built Environment Conference: Investing in Lancashire’s Levelling Up featured top property professionals and experts and focussed on how to get the most out of Levelling Up, the need to meet the worrying skills gap in the construction sector, better use of the local supply chain, the drive to improve transport infrastructure and how culture should be integral to projects in the county.

Delegates heard that a co-ordinated approach was needed to take full advantage of the levelling up agenda, with culture, innovation, skills improvements and the cutting of needless planning red tape vital to facilitate big transformative projects.

The event, organised by Lancashire Business View and presented in association with Preston-based AG Built Environment Consultancy, Blackpool Makes it Work and Harrison Drury Solicitors, came in the wake of a raft of recent bids for central government funding for major regeneration projects across the county.

The bids include the £50m Eden Project North project, Blackburn with Darwen’s new Business Improvement District at £60m, Blackpool’s £65m Multiversity project, Lancashire County Council’s £50m bid for complementary public transport, Hyndburn’s £23m bid to transform the Market Hall, and others, valued at a total of around half a billion pounds.

Speakers welcomed those bids as a starting point but repeated the message about the need for a county-wide strategy and unified leadership.

Tom Higgins, director at construction giant Laing O’Rourke, which is currently working on the new Everton FC stadium in Merseyside, said that culture, vision and focus were vital for success.

He said: “Lancashire should have a joined-up approach. And as for a mayor – I think from a construction industry perspective, if you don’t do that, you are dead in the water. Everyone around you is doing it, there’s only so much in the pot, if you don’t have it, then someone else will.

“Culture drives innovation, innovation drives growth and growth drives economic prosperity.”

He said that Lancashire has areas where the cultural approach could be driven and a 30-year vision presented to central government and investors, but it had to be part of an overall strategy.