Regional leaders from across local government, infrastructure and construction met to discuss how to enable better infrastructure in the South West. It was an opportunity for cross-sectoral voices to come together as one regional community, to ask, and attempt to answer, the big questions. What does ‘good’ look like in the South West? What’s getting in the way of that?
And how can we deliver the net zero transition in a way that represents growth, prosperity and wellbeing for the South West and all its citizens?
Discussion ranged from high level theory and national strategic priorities, all the way to practical implementation, trouble shooting and delivering tangible societal change.
The morning set the regional scene. Comprising presentations, provocations and panels, discussion focused how ICE’s national Enabling Better Infrastructure framework translates at a regional level.
Colin Taylor, Emeritus Professor at Bristol University and chair of SWIP’s steering group, kicked off with a summary of SWIP’s analysis to date of our regional challenges and opportunities, and the value of building a pan-regional, cross-sectoral infrastructure community.
Our region: challenges and opportunities
The place we call home is diverse, beautiful and rich in natural resources and human talent. With over 700 miles of coastline, two national parks, 12 national landscapes and the thriving cities of Bristol, Bath, Exeter and Plymouth combining both cultural heritage and creative frontiers, our region is a tourism hotspot attracting nearly 20 million people each year and representing £6bn GDP.
And yet, whilst tourism is a significant contributor, the region’s cities boast more than ancient heritage and Banksy murals – they are formidable economic players. Bristol particularly is, according to one report from Centre for Cities, “the strongest performer of all of the UK’s large cities” – boasting around 60% more jobs in science, tech and digital than the UK average.
Strategically, the region also has a lot to offer. With regional gateways such as Bristol Port and Bristol Airport representing a combined regional GDP of over £3bn, the South West is home to a thriving nuclear sector (including Hinkley Point C in Somerset, Oldbury in Gloucestershire – the chosen site of Great British Nuclear’s next phase of development, and a range of SMR sites), the Gravity Campus and Agratas site in Somerset, nationally important naval and marine activity in Plymouth, and an accelerated rail delivery programme.
Despite all this, the region faces significant challenges:
- It is chronically underfunded in terms of capital investment – an issue stretching back decades. This is compounded by the fact that progress towards devolution is complex and the region only has one mayoral combined authority (MCA), which is the West of England Combined Authority (WECA). With the government’s devolution framework, which prioritises investment in mayoral combined authorities, this is preventing investment and ultimately growth and connectivity.
- Its economy is disconnected – containing some of the wealthiest, and most deprived, wards in the country.
- Its political backdrop is similarly fragmented – with Reform, Greens and Labour all staking claim to ‘base’ voters in recent elections. This reflects a variety of public views, and confuses political messaging around the net zero transition.
- Public understanding of infrastructure, and the need for a net zero transition, is low. There is a disconnect in people’s minds between the infrastructure they use, and the habits they have. This reduces buy-in to change and undermines political will to ‘make the tough decisions’.
- Overarchingly, the region has no unifying strategic vision. WECA, Devon and Cornwall Councils are all progressing separate sub-regional, ‘whole community’ visions, but our regional infrastructure is lacking the coordination required to maximise opportunities to boost job and skills for local people, carbon efficiency, productivity and profitability.
Colin Taylor set the economic scene – sharing the theoretical prerequisites for a thriving economy. Whilst the net zero transition requires major change at a societal level, Colin argued, there is a still a human-centric way through that the infrastructure community must be aware of.
Creating a functional value chain
The flourishing individual
Starting with the individual, he introduced the idea of the “resilient agent” – a fulfilled citizen equipped with a strong understanding of their life vision, mission, purpose and value, and a strong base of resourcefulness – including creativity, imagination, literacy and knowhow, and strong learning and collaboration tools.
For wider economic productivity to be optimised, he argued, the individual must be equipped with all of these things in order to be fulfilled.
A thriving regional ecosystem
We then discussed the complexities of the regional metabolism, or ecosystem, required to support the development of fulfilled individuals. Any economy includes a range of different parts and drivers – each bringing or requiring physical, energy or time-based resources.
An economy can be compared to an ecological system – which forms networks to acquire and use energy and resources to survive. Successful ecological systems have sufficient – but not surplus – interconnectivity to be robust, resilient, effective, efficient, and adaptable.
Too much connectivity means they become wasteful. Too little puts too much pressure on each link – meaning that if one link fails, it can lead to the failure of everything. Between these two extremes, a “window of vitality” exists, in which resources flow and capacity is lean – without being so lean that there is no margin for change or error. Infrastructure systems are the conduits for the energy and resources that human societies depend upon. We should design them to reside in their window of vitality.
Optimising our value chain to deliver net zero
Emerging economic theory is establishing a link between the efficacy of infrastructure, expressed in terms of “exergy” (the fraction of energy we can convert into useful work), and economic vitality, including growth. This reinforces that value in taking a systems approach to infrastructure design and delivery.
To deliver net zero in a thriving economy, SWIP has developed its inaugural net zero road map, which is based on three key pillars:
- Mindset and leadership: the region’s leaders must be ambitious, imaginative and willing to experiment and reform at pace to both optimise resource and remove waste.
- Collaboration: Cross-sectoral bodies, institutions and industries must coalesce around a common purpose, sharing data and ideas and holding themselves, and each other, to account on progress towards a clean, safe world for future generations.
- Carbon literacy: We must build skills, knowledge and understanding among the public and organisations to equip them to shape tomorrow’s net zero economy.
What role can our regional infrastructure play in meeting these challenges?
With projects like Celtic Sea FLOW (floating offshore wind) in the pipeline, Hinkley already providing thousands of jobs, and inroads being made on both urban and rural infrastructure, there are many reasons to be hopeful – but we forget about infrastructure renewal at our peril.
Read more
Other important projects in the region which were presented in the session include:
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