The North East is a region of great contrast: to the west are the hills, moorlands and forests of the north Pennines and Borders; to the east is a 186km stretch of dramatic North Sea coastline, of which 138km has been designated Heritage Coast – 13 per cent of England’s total.
The main conurbations have developed around the traditional industries of coal, steel, and shipbuilding, and are grouped alongside the principal river estuaries of the Tees, Wear and Tyne. In the centre of all this lies agricultural lowland, the east of which has been defined by its past reliance on large coalfields and mining communities. Many such communities have now been successfully regenerated around hi-tech and service industry.
Two thirds of the region is rural, a third of which is designated as National Park (Northumberland and part of the North York moors), or Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (North Pennines and the Northumberland coast). The region also has two world heritage sites: Durham Cathedral and Hadrian’s Wall. The North East boasts seven per cent of England’s listed (or scheduled) monuments, and 3.2 per cent of England’s listed buildings within its borders.
There has been great change in the economic and social profile of the North East over the last 30 years. Between 1981 and 1997 the region lost 110,000 jobs across primary and manufacturing industries, and this significantly changed the statistics for employment by sector. Manufacturing still remains a comparatively important area of the local economy, but it now accounts for less than 15 per cent of the workforce.
The regional economic base has diversified into areas such as microelectronics, the offshore industry, biotechnology and automotives. Other key strengths in the area include food processing, advanced materials and ceramics, mechanical and precision engineering, and plastics processing. There has been significant growth in the service sectors, – particularly in public administration, education and health. The retail sector is also strong and accounts for 10 per cent of all businesses.
Tourism has successfully increased across the region and is now estimated to provide 55,000 jobs in the area. Newcastle-Gateshead has been identified as one of the UK’s five centres of cultural excellence, and there are more than three million visitors to museums and art galleries in the North East each year. It has been calculated that £2.5 billion of the North East GDP is generated, either directly or indirectly, from this industry.
An extensive range of publicly funded regeneration initiatives and projects has been put in place across the North East to improve the standard of living and boost the economy.
One such scheme, the Northern Way, has just announced plans to invest up to £10 million in pilot projects across the north of England, with the aim of getting thousands of unemployed people into work and financing other initiatives to boost the North’s economy.
The Northern Way is jointly administered by three regional development agencies (RDAs): Yorkshire Forward, Northwest Development Agency, and OneNorthEast.
The Tees Valley and Tyne and Wear are two of the eight city regions that have been identified by the Northern Way as core generators of new growth, which are needed to bolster economic performance.
Funding priorities for the project are:
· improvements in the government’s ‘Pathways to Work’ pilots, which includes two in Durham and the Tees Valley
· developing the economic evidence base for transport priorities in the North
· supporting enterprise in education initiatives such as the Women into Enterprise programme
· marketing the North and its assets and business potential to Europe, North America and Australia.
According to the National Travel Survey conducted by the Department for Transport, the number of people in the North East using public transport is greater than the average for England and Wales – 15 per cent compared to 13 per cent between 1999 and 2001. The number of journeys by car is also lower than the figure for England and Wales – 81 per cent to 84 per cent during the same time period.
However, the number of miles travelled using private transport has risen, from 4,257 miles per person between 1995 and 1997, to 4,651 between 1999 and 2001, representing a nine per cent increase compared to the 1.6 per cent increase seen across Britain. This could be a direct result of the growth in service industries, as people travel further to reach work. But perhaps it should not necessarily be seen as a sign that deprivation is reducing: 36 per cent of households in the North East is still without regular use of a car.
The wider picture
Independent surveys consistently rank the North East as one of the best regions in the UK for its quality of life. But across social and economic indicators, the North East still performs poorly compared with the rest of the country. Of the North East’s population, 36 per cent live in the most deprived 10 per cent of all the wards in England, while 56 per cent live in the most deprived 20 per cent.
In stark contrast, just 1.5 per cent of the population of the North East live in the least deprived 10 per cent of wards. Significant clusters of deprivation exist, particularly within Easington, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool and Sunderland, and there is also evidence of isolated patches of deprivation in the rural areas of Durham, Northumberland and Tees Valley.
On educational standards, the North East compares well to the rest of England. Of those living in the region aged between 16 and 74, 56.4 per cent are educated to GCSE level or above, compared to 58.2 per cent across the country. At key stages 1-3 (ages 5-14), a similar proportion of pupils in the region reach expected standards in the basic skills of English and Maths and science to the proportion of the English student population as a whole.
However, while 28.9 per cent of the UK population have no qualifications at all, this rises to 34.7 per cent among the population of the North East. This is also highlighted by statistics from outside the classroom – there is only 11.9 per cent employment in sectors with over 40 per cent graduates in the North East, compared to 29.9 per cent in Britain. Conversely, there is 41.6 per cent employment in those sectors with less than 15 per cent of graduates in the region, compared to 37.2 per cent across the country.
In relation to health, the North East compares unfavourably with the other English regions. Within the area itself, there are significant health inequalities; poor health prevails in areas of deprivation and where there are concentrations of older people.
Health issues where the North East measures at around the national average are infant mortality and smoking cessation rates (although smoking figures are still high for the region).
But for the other six standard health indicators, the region ranks amongst the worst in England. In relation to teenage pregnancy, the conception rate per 1,000 females aged 15 to 17 was 49, compared with the national average of 42 (2001).
The North East has the lowest life expectancy for males (74.4 years) and females (79.1 years) compared to England (75.9 years and 80.4 respectively). This figure can be understood through the three mortality indicators – years of life lost – for coronary heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory . The worst example is the coronary heart disease figures for the under-75s; for England the rate is 48.7 per 10,000, whereas for the North East the figure is 99.1 per 10,000 – the highest of the nine regions.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given this poor record, access to health services are poorer than in many English regions: in 2001, there were 1,733 patients per doctor and 1,601 patients per dentist in the North East, compared to 1,726 and 1,290 respectively across England.
Over the last 10 years there has been a downward trend in crime in the North East. The total number of crimes committed in the area during 2002/03 was 290,490, the lowest recorded crime rate of any region in the country. When the population size is taken into account, however, a different picture emerges. The region’s crime rate of 115 per 1,000 of the population is slightly higher than the 113 per 1,000 of the national figure, and four other regions had lower offence rates.
The North East is divided into three police force areas; there were 73,817 recorded crimes in Cleveland (25 per cent of total regional crime), 51,177 (18 per cent) in Durham and 165,496 (57 per cent) in Northumbria. Translated, these figures mean Durham’s crime rate is lower than the national average, while Cleveland and Northumbria’s are higher.
