As the cuts bite, areas that are heavily dependent on public sector jobs are suffering. Matt Ross meets Sir Ian Wrigglesworth, who’s just helped hand out a billion quid to support private sector investment in these areas.

“There was a time when the steelworks on Teesside employed 20 or 30 thousand people,” says Sir Ian Wrigglesworth. Things are different now: the Indian company Tata employs fewer than 2,000 steelworkers there and Thai firm SSI, which recently bought Teesside’s huge, mothballed blast furnace, will reopen it with a workforce of about 1,700. The blast furnace’s ore yard, says Sir Ian, “runs as far as the eye can see, and mixes thousands of tonnes of iron ore and coke arriving on ships from different parts of the world – but it’s all run by one guy controlling the conveyer belts. When you had the mines, shipbuilding, steelworks, you had a large number of unskilled jobs that people could do. Those jobs just don’t exist now.”

Wrigglesworth is clearly frustrated by the predicament of parts of the North and Midlands – but he has, at least, been in a position to do something about the problem. In July 2010 he became deputy chairman – under regeneration veteran Michael Heseltine – of the advisory panel for the Regional Growth Fund (RGF): a £1.4bn pot allocated over the spending review period to, he says, “support sustainable, private sector jobs in areas that are over-dependent on the public sector”.

For the full interview, click here

Last updated 186 days ago by Civil Service World