Industrial strategy for Greater Manchester launched

The government has published details of a new industrial strategy for Greater Manchester, which aims to turn it into the UK’s leading green and digital-city region.

A key part of the strategy is to achieve carbon neutral living in Greater Manchester by 2038, ahead of the national 2050 target.

It also sets out plans to consolidate the city-region’s leading position in the digital and creative sectors.

The strategy sets out plans to capitalise on the city-region’s unique assets by:

• launching the UK’s first city-region Clean Growth Mission to achieve carbon neutral living in Greater Manchester by 2038.
• establishing Greater Manchester as a global leader on health and care innovation, creating new industries and jobs, and improving population health and extending healthy life expectancy;
• positioning Greater Manchester as a world leading region for innovative firms to experiment with, develop and adopt advanced materials in manufacturing;
• building on Greater Manchester’s position as a leading European digital city region, to maximise growing assets in cyber security, enable the digitalisation of all sectors and capitalise on the links between digital and creative industries that feed internationally-significant clusters in broadcasting, content creation and media;
• ensuring that the education, skills and employment system allow everyone to reach their potential and employers have access to the skills required to deliver the Greater Manchester Local Industrial Strategy.

The mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham said: ‘We want to be the UK’s leading green city-region, which is why our ambition to achieve carbon neutral living in by 2038 is right at the heart of these plans.  We will show that these plans are not just the right thing for people and the environment but also right for our economy.

‘We’re also setting out how advanced manufacturing along with the digital and creative sectors will now help to grow our economy and help us become a wholly digitally-enabled city-region.  The local industrial strategy will enable us to drive our productivity and prosperity as we create the good, green jobs and skilled workforce that will power this thriving city-region’s economy into the future.’

And business secretary Greg Clark added: ‘Greater Manchester has a strong and proud manufacturing heritage and this new local industrial strategy, developed in partnership between Government and local leaders across the city region, will ensure its world leading position in this field is secured and built on for the next generation.

‘At the heart of this strategy is clean growth and Greater Manchester’s determination to reap the rewards of the UK’s transition to a net-zero economy reinforced by the city region’s ambition to be the first carbon neutral city in the UK by 2038.’

The full Greater Manchester Industrial Strategy document is available to read here.

Photo by aleksejh (Pixabay)