The Impact event at Hopetown in Darlington opened with a talk from the Echo’s history and heritage expert Chris Lloyd on the worldwide impact of the Darlington to Stockton railways.
Panel members who all signed up to back the Impact campaign then reflected on the past year while giving their perspective on what lies ahead for their own businesses and the North East as a whole.
Andrew Craddock, Chief Executive of Darlington Building Society, saw reason for optimism for the local and national economy.
He said: “I think it’s been a really tough and challenging year.
“There’s been a lot of change and a lot of uncertainty in the markets.
“When you look at the housing market, the mortgage market, we have had the election and then we have to wait months and months and months for the budget and we’ve got various place rate cuts, we’ve had new bits of regulation coming in which we’ve had to take account of.
“So it’s actually been a really tough year. But I think what I see for 2024 is that it is building foundations for us to springboard into 2025 and I really think it is going to be a really exciting year for me, for Darlington Building Society, the town, for the region and for the country.
“I think we’ve now got some political and economic stability and whilst I don’t agree with everything that the government has done – the National Insurance increase has obviously put everyone’s costs up – we have now actually got some stability.
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“So I think the housing market into 2025 is going to be quite buoyant, I think stamp duty changes will accelerate some of the transactions into the first quarter, but the rest of the year will be quite stable. So we’re really looking forward to 2025 now.
“We’ve done this investment program, we’ve set foundations and we think we can really grow and succeed as we move into the new year.
“I think if you look at all the projections for the economy, I think we’re going to see growth next year, maybe not fabulous growth, but a level of growth.
“Inflation is down to reasonable levels, I think employment, which is the key thing for for me, looks relatively stable and bank rate starts to come down.
“I don’t expect a rate cut in December but I think during the course of next year, I expect a rate cut once a quarter. So by the end of ‘25 we should be down to about 3.75 which will again help affordability, help people to borrow money, to invest in their business and to buy houses.”
Rachel Anderson, Assistant Director of Policy at the North East Chamber of Commerce, identified two issues the North East must tackle imminently.
She said: “I think we’ve got two major challenges with skills. One is that we still have very poor adult literacy rates in the North East, and we don’t talk about it enough.
“If we are going to move people towards getting those jobs, getting those skills, we’ve probably got about a quarter of our available workforce who are nowhere near that at the moment and we need to start tackling that.
“Also AI is going to be a huge challenge for us in the year. The rate it is developing is going to accelerate over the next year as well as how we use it in all aspects of life and business and I’m not sure that we’re particularly ready for that as a region. I think we need to get ready for that very quickly.
“Our universities are on it, but we probably need a clear North East approach to that.”
Teesside Airport chief Phil Forster is looking forward to a pivotal 2025, which he hopes will see it move from being a “political football” to being recognised for its important role in the regional economy.
He said: “When I look at a company such as Willis Aviation Services, they’re a big, big firm in the US. They’ve now got over 100 staff based at Teesside Airport. And these are some very good jobs, aircraft engineers with £70,000, £80,000 or £90,0000 salaries.
“The big thing I want to push next year for the airport is the impact that it is now starting to have. One of my frustrations always has been that the airport previously has been a political football and that needs to stop.
“It’s not just about the passengers, it’s about the wider economic impact the airport is generating. And I think some of the stats that we come out with next year will really show the airport is on the right trajectory.
“When I look at the year we’ve just had, we’ve had the best passenger numbers in ten years and we’ve got the best leisure travel airport in the British travel awards.
“But next year is going to be a huge, pivotal year in terms of some of the announcements we’ve got planned.”
Durham County Council leader Amanda Hopgood said she was “extremely positive” about what the future would bring for the county.
She pointed to Sedgefield’s NETPark as one of the brightest stars in Durham’s commercial constellation.
Ms Hopgood said: “Is the world perfect? Absolutely not. But I have to say, we have had a really good year, and I am extremely positive as to what the future has got to bring because it is in our hands, especially with some forms of devolution across the region.
“It’s more important now than ever that we diversify and have the levels of skills and education that are needed.
“In County Durham, we’ve got NETPark, which is one of two investment zones from our devolution deal, and it’s a centre for space. It’s going to be a centre for space technology for the whole country, and it’s amazing and we’ve just got to get out there and tell people.
“We have satellites up there flying around in space with “made in County Durham” on them. How many people know that?
“Everything you do in your daily life is linked in some way to space, and that work is being done at Sedgefield, it’s amazing.”
Our Impact panel: Amanda Hopgood, Andrew Craddock, Rachel Anderson, Dominic Coles, Phil Forster, Gary Sandberg and Simon Whitaker (Image: Sarah Caldecott)
“We’ve just invested another £62 million in the next stage of that – and just for the record – we have put the infrastructure in first to make sure that we have got that road network in to make it successful.”
Simon Whitaker, Assistant Director of Strategy and Insight at believe housing, said they had continued to deliver “genuinely profound” successes for those who need their properties.
He said: “We’re now five years old and we’ve delivered our 1,000th home from new build, delivering about 200 a year.
“We’ve upgraded or refurbished about 3,000 homes across the region, all of which has been really positive.
“Also, we’ve done loads of work in terms of driving down the length of time our homes stay empty between customers, which is really helping people get into the homes that they need and the impact that has on people’s lives is genuinely profound.
“There are two sites now which we’re really excited by at St Helens and one in Brandon, both of which are completely off gas. Their efficiency ratings are amazing. The spec is brilliant.
“The people living in them are really, really loving them and the impact that has on their energy bills, for example, which are at least 50% less, is really exciting. “ He said believe has also helped 150 people into employment this year alone and more than 500 in total since its inception.
The association has also invested over a million pounds in community projects since 2019 – including solar panelling, mental health support and lunch clubs for the elderly – which Mr Whitaker said has generated £21m in social value.
Gary Sandberg, service and support director at IT specialists razorblue, said the firm had overcome difficulties thrown up by Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ first Budget.
He said: “It has been a difficult year. We started off quite well, but as everybody has said, the budget has had an impact on us so we are ending this year positive, but a lower positive than we wanted.
“We haven’t grown as much as we wanted and have had some of our smaller clients go into administration because of the impact of the Budget, which obviously has an impact on us as well.
“But we are working with our current client base, making sure that we can still provide all of the services they need, make sure it is affordable for them as well as us at the same time.
“So this has been a difficult year, but we’re very much looking forward to 2025.
“We have expanded into the North West, we have more of a presence there now, which is important. It’s perfect that we’re built on Teesside but expanding to other parts of the UK.
“The North West, just like the North East is a massive expanding region. There’s lots of opportunities for us over there, but we’re not going to lose our focus in the North East. We want to remain local while expanding our footprint in other areas.
“We have a presence in Scotland as well to expand on, so it’s all looking good going into 2025. We’re going to be looking at what we can do to grow, we’re always wanting to grow, but unfortunately, because of the Budget, because of economic constraints, we’re probably going to have to look at not as many new employees.
Dominic Coles, Global Enterprise Excellence Leader with Darlington’s Cummins engine plant, hailed a record year for the American giant.
He said: “From a global Cummins perspective, it’s been another record year. We’ve started to see ourselves get into all the different technologies, in terms of the transfer of carbon fuels to zero carbon technology and we’re trying to understand what that looks like.
“From a Darlington perspective, it has been good in 2024 as well. We continue to deliver the traditional technologies – 60,000 engines have gone out the door in 2024 – and investment is coming into our region.
“Cummins see the Darlington site as a key element in relation to trying to figure out what this new technology needs to be. Our acquisitions have been based on understanding the different types of drive trends that our customers are going to want in the future, because no one really knows.
“Our new drive train test facility is the only one in the world that can take a small transit van all the way up to a double decker bus and test the technology of drive trains all the way from traditional diesel through natural gas.
“It’s a hydrogen explosion-proof test facility, it’s the only one in the world and it came to Darlington because we’ve got the best engineers in the world in our location.”
Mr Cole added that Cummins had invested heavily in Darlington’s as a centre to develop “fuel agnostic” engines which have a common base engine with the same bottom end, but different cylinder heads for different fuels.”
He said: “We’ve had $18 million of investment in the plant itself, which is another great nod from a global organization like Cummins into the skills and into the region.
“That’s so we’re getting ready for the next generation of engines. “
