The Lancashire city has transformed its growth model through public investment and innovation.
The socialists are learning the art of the market and I'm sure the Conservatives have little defence, at least for now. It looks like the tide is turning. The labour controlled council is even going to start a community bank to provide loans to local business. And that might even win a lot of traditional Conservative voters over.
Labour may not be in government but its ideas are already reshaping Britain. This week’s Budget resembled a raid on the party’s manifesto: higher spending on the NHS, higher government borrowing (rather than seeking a budget surplus), a digital services tax and the abolition of PFIs.
And beyond Westminster, Corbynomics is already being implemented. There is no more successful example than Preston. The Lancashire city, which I reported from earlier this year, has been named the UK’s most improved urban area in a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers and Demos (Preston was ranked 14th overall, ahead of London in 15th place).
When a planned £700m redevelopment of the city centre collapsed in 2011, the Labour-led authority resolved that Preston would chart its own course. Rather than chasing inward investment from large multinationals, as it previously had, the city forged an alternative growth model (council leader Matthew Brown cited research showing that “big supermarkets cost jobs”).
Before 2013, major public bodies, such as the University of Central Lancashire and Lancashire Constabulary, had a combined annual budget of £1bn, but startlingly little of this money was spent locally. Inspired by the “Mondragon model” in the Basque Country and the “Cleveland model” in the US, Brown’s team persuaded six of these “anchor institutions” to procure more goods and services from Preston-based firms (such as local builders, printers and farmers), rather than relying on outsourcing companies often headquartered in London. The council also became the first northern employer to pay the full living wage.
Since then, the share of the public procurement budget spent in the city has risen from 5 per cent in 2013 to 18 per cent (a gain of £75m), while across Lancashire it has risen from 39 per cent to 79 per cent (a gain of £200m). Unemployment has fallen from 6.5 per cent in 2014 to 3.1 per cent and, as the Demos study notes, Preston has also achieved above-average improvements for health, transport, work-life balance, and youth and adult skills.
The New Statesman
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