Working projects
Over the past decade, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly have set out on a remarkable voyage of renewed self-discovery. For those living in the county, it is sometimes difficult to believe that this is the same place it was that few years ago…
Cornwall has a rich history of inspiration and invention; the achievements here of the ‘blue sky’ thinkers of their days, from steam pioneer Richard Trevithick to wireless innovator Guglielmo Marconi, changed their worlds.
But the closure of Cornwall’s last tin mine in 1998 marked an emotive low for a place and culture by then short on confidence, feeling down on its luck and prone to hark on its past. In truth, it was just a cog-tick in the winding down of traditional industries in decline for decades.
Tourism had taken up some of the slack as jobs vanished on the land, under it and at sea – but largely offered low-skilled, low income, seasonal and part-time work. While it brings around £900 million a year into the local economy, and provides about 16 per cent of the available jobs - it is often relatively poorly paid. Although another 30 per cent of workers are employed in the public sector, the average weekly wage in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly is still only around 80 per cent of the average across the rest of the country.
Averages tend to mask another picture – of pockets of wealthy places and others of real poverty, in some of the most deprived villages, estates and areas in the UK.
Thelma Sorensen, the chair of the Cornwall Business Partnership, puts it succinctly. “At one time, having a low wage economy was seen as a strength for Cornwall, as an attraction for new employers. It is not. It is a weakness.
“Cornwall has to raise its aspirations and build on its ambitions by developing innovative and environmentally sustainable businesses providing well-paid work.”
Those ambitions and aspirations have underpinned European regeneration programmes which have laid the foundations for an economic renaissance.
Cornwall was given European Union Objective One status because its prosperity, by agreed measurements, was well below 75% of the European average. That attracted a total of £900 million of European grants, matched public funding and private sector investment between 2000 and 2006. As well as helping to pay for a couple of big ticket items – the Combined Universities in Cornwall and the actnow broadband – it triggered a shotgun blast of social and economic stimuli. Critically, it also cemented the principle of webs of interested local alliances – in the jargon, ‘partnerships’ – working together for the greater good.
The breadth and vision of these partnerships was breath-taking in a place which for years had struggled to invest in the future. It ranged across the nurturing of new low-carbon industries, fixing infrastructure problems, refurbishing historic townscapes, building ‘green’ workspaces, developing added value food production, spending on education and skills…the list goes on.
All of which achieved a great deal - not least a renewed confidence, energy and self-belief - but Cornwall was recovering from such a low base it had already qualified for follow-on Convergence funding worth a total of over £700 million through to 2013. This, by contrast, is more of a silver bullet, tightly targeted on research and development, knowledge transfer and business innovation; stimulating enterprise and accelerated company growth for jobs, and training a better-educated and skilled workforce to fill them.
This Euro-investment programme has also put Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly in an almost uniquely fortunate position during the current economic turmoil. It’s a truism that businesses which invest in innovation during the bad times are best placed to capitalise when the good times roll around again. Cornwall is guaranteed that shot of investment for the next four years.
Mark Yeoman, Deputy Director of the Convergence Partnership, says: “The really clever and catalytic thing about European programmes is that they invest in people and in business at the same time. That involves making sure that people have the right skills and helping them back into work where needed. It is also about creating the infrastructure and helping businesses position themselves for a digital and low carbon economy.”
Cornwall Council’s Economic Green Paper, published in January 2010, sets out its own priorities for growth and regeneration clearly: it has a vision of a distinctive, high-value, knowledge-based, ‘green’ Cornwall for all.
There’s still much to do. The European investment in regeneration was never intended as a quick fix. It is laying the groundwork for a robust and varied economy, the true potential of which may only be realised over the next 15 years. There was a big spurt of growth in the first years of this century – the second highest in the country – but a range of economic activity measures show Cornwall still lagging well behind national averages.
There are other challenges. Through the last century, average life expectancy in the UK rose by 30 years. By 2020 more than half the adult population will be aged over 50. In Cornwall, that picture is even more marked. 25 per cent of the population are aged over 65, compared with 20 per cent nationally. That has many potential repercussions; for one, increased pressure on care services for older people – and opportunities for providing them - and another, that many people can expect to have a longer working life.
But – bringing the story full circle back to the achievements of Trevithick and Marconi (not to mention miners’ lamp inventor Sir Humphry Davy and gaslight innovator William Murdoch) – recent progress has revived both an understanding of - and a belief in - the power and capacity for change that great design can offer.
