NOTTINGHAM plc needs to look east to Asia for its trade and business opportunities. The city's economy and outlook must become more international.
Politicians and leaders must try harder and respond faster to global trends. And it is imperative that local investment and training is geared towards the creation of jobs for Nottingham's young people at a bleak time of international recession and local austerity.
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Moving forward: Sir John Peace, chairman of Standard Chartered Bank, Experian and Burberry, speaks at the Nottingham Business Summit.These were some of the messages that emerged at the official launch of the city council's draft Nottingham Economic Growth Plan at a breakfast business summit held at the Council House on Friday morning.
The document sets out 40 proposals to help steer the city's economic direction over the next five to ten years and covers key areas such as transport, digital connectivity, education and skills and business birth and growth.
Emphasising that the plan is still under consultation, the authority invited nearly 200 people from local businesses, education, support agencies and neighbouring councils to have their say and throw questions at key decision-makers.
These included the chairman of Standard Chartered Bank, Experian and Burberry, Sir John Peace; University of Nottingham vice-chancellor Professor David Greenaway; city council leader Jon Collins and the authority's chief executive Jane Todd.
The event was chaired by Nottingham Post business editor Richard Tresidder. However, it was the presence of a Cabinet Office official that flagged up the fact that the economic plan's overall direction is geared towards central Government's emerging City Deal policy, which seeks to give cities new powers to shape their own economic futures.
Miatta Fahnbulleh, who is head of a Cabinet Office policy unit dealing with the future economic direction of cities, spoke an official argot peppered with words such as "empowerment" and "transformative". But she made the clear point that core cities like Nottingham are being given power to negotiate more control over areas such as skills training and transport planning.
Such powers will be bespoke and unique to each city, but will have to demonstrate bold, innovative thinking and embody partnerships between the public and private sectors.
The powers will also have to be negotiated with central Government. But, the onus will be on Whitehall civil servants to approve such proposals rather than turn them down.
Or as Ms Fahnbelleh said: "The burden of proof would rest with Whitehall to show why it was defending the status quo." This, then, was the context in which the Economic Growth Plan was being launched. But, were the city council's proposals, set out on page four of a glossy 40-page booklet, as bold and innovative as the Government wants?
The proposals include specifics and general, even bland, aspirations. No.3, for example, is a wish to "attract, retain and develop people's talents" while No.19 is an intention to develop a single information gateway where businesses can get information about grant and investment support.
No.28 is a desire to "provide a first-class service to prospective investors" while No.13 talks about delivering ultraband "to support the digital content sector" – something which is already being developed in the Lace Market to benefit digital media companies.
Jane Todd, city council chief executive, remarked that some of the proposals were not new.
Yet despite the fact that there were scores of the city's business and education leaders in the city, there was relatively little debate on the proposals' merits themselves.
Even so, there were plenty of questions around the issues. Graham Cartledge, chairman of the Newark-based international architects Benoy, still felt that Nottingham lacked a sense of vision and direction.
Where were the big ideas, he asked, to pitch Nottingham into the world league of influential cities?
"It's still a very small city in a big world," he said. "The whole of the Midlands put together can be swallowed up by Shanghai."
Ms Todd said to him: "Then give us some ideas." Mr Cartledge replied: "Let's start with transport."
Chris Leslie, MP for Nottingham East and shadow financial secretary, who was on the panel on the stage, quickly asked why it was that engineering projects which took six years to complete in China took 25 years to finish in Britain.
However, he pointed out that Britain has "this thing called democracy" and nobody should think that cities abroad have it easy.
Nottingham, on the other hand, was "at the apex of the UK in terms of transport and we are right on the bridge of communications with Europe." Mr Cartledge had the last word by picking up on an earlier point that it would cost £35m to straighten out the Midland Mainline rail connection to make Nottingham-London trains faster.
"But that's peanuts in the global economy," he added. "We have to think on a big scale and look at the detail to make it happen."
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