Chris Burn, Head of Business and Features- The Yorkshire Post
Henri Murison, Director, The Northern Powerhouse Partnership

In our places, Metro Mayors across the North working with businesses alongside colleges and wider providers need to ensure that we are developing the people and skills required to meet the future needs of industry – a workforce ready to deliver major infrastructure programmes, in energy on transition to Net Zero, in health innovation, and on digital with current constraints on STEM skills and manufacturing as we move through the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Innovation is critical to the North’s future, and our places stand ready to lead the way, but we need to significantly increase investment here based on our strength within the N8 Universities and beyond. R&D spend currently is overwhelming focused within the Golden Triangle, short changing the North on a vast scale. This session will consider the role and need for further innovation accelerators, how we can support business-led innovation, what private and public sector partnership can unlock, and critically, the mechanisms needed to bring R&D spend under our control, correcting historic underfunding and tip the scales to ensure the North has the backing it needs to drive innovation across our places.

Improved digital connectivity is an essential component of unlocking the North’s capability and tackling the productivity gap. This session will consider the potential impact of transformed digital connectivity across the North, as well as exploring what are the barriers currently are, and the ways in which the North’s civic and business communities could tackle these challenges together.

This session will debate how the business community is responding to the net zero challenge, In what ways is the North leading the way, such as in Carbon Capture and Storage or Hydrogen and what more government needs to do to empower the North to lead the transition to a greener future.

What are the key asks that would underpin a transport plan for the North, across the city regions and wider pan Northern network? This session will consider, in the aftermath of the Integrated Rail Plan, what we need in terms of HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail, as well as the roll out of mass transit and better bus connectivity.

Transformative impact of culture, socially and economically. In light of Bradford’s successful City of Culture 2025 bid, this session will explore the long term social and economic impact of a thriving culture sector in the North’s towns and cities.

This session will debate what the main barriers are to our young people receiving the education they need, what the business community see in terms of the impact of low educational attainment by disadvantaged children within the communities they operate in and what role can business play in supporting educational aspiration amongst young people in the North.