It’s been just over a week since the political tables turned, our new Prime Minister has been busy visiting the devolved nations and hosting England’s Metro Mayors at 10 Downing Street. This early approach signals a spirit of partnership, engagement and the alignment of the UK’s collective ingenuity and resource towards a fairer, greener and more inclusive economy.

In England, the challenge set to regions and their mayors is rapidly creating Local Growth Plans that identify local specialisms capable of delivering sustained growth and productivity.  Combined Authorities are coming out of the blocks fast, marking a summer of frantic strategy development in a bid to present Local Growth Plans to the Government in good time for the Chancellor’s first Comprehensive Spending Review this Autumn.

You could say that we’ve been here before, with Regional Development Agencies creating Regional Economic Strategies, Local Enterprise Partnerships championing Strategic Economic Plans and Local Industrial Strategies that never saw the light of day – so what’s new?   

Things do feel different this time, the Chancellor speaks of stability, and we now have genuine powers and funding devolved to elected representatives at a local level. We now have the opportunity to establish systems at a local level to deliver real and sustained change. The introduction of Metro Mayors significantly provides the strong and visible local leadership that’s been desperately needed. To provide Mayors with the ammunition to champion regional competitiveness will however require a change to the way local Growth Plans are put together.

Although Regional Economic Plans have, in the past, been developed using sound and rigorous evidence and consultation, a common criticism is that they have failed to present distinctive capabilities, looking more like carbon copies of one another saying pretty much the same things. There is a logic to this and I’m sure that the National Industrial Strategy will focus on four or five broad sectors and the temptation is to align to these at a local level, after all, this is what the funding is likely to focus on. Regions do however need to pinpoint how their unique specialisms fit in, how they add to national competitiveness and how they can be harnessed and built upon.

Those specialisms are difficult to pinpoint from economic datasets, it’s the collective core competence of businesses and stakeholders from across the ecosystem that combine to present unique capabilities. It’s only from working with businesses locally and collecting data and intelligence on their skills that create an understanding of what’s truly distinctive.

Although there will be an inevitable urgency to develop Local Growth Plans, this shouldn’t be at the compromise of establishing uniqueness and specialisms that can genuinely deliver long-term regional competitiveness.

We look forward to a busy summer, drawing on our unique Supply Chain Exchange database to support governments and regions to pinpoint their distinct specialism, how they fit into the jigsaw and to champion the creation of unique Local Growth Plans designed to cement high-value positions in Global Value Chains.