Sunderland ‘on precipice’ over reliance on Nissan
‘THE CITY NEEDS TO ADD ANOTHER ENGINE TO ITS ECONOMY’, SAYS BUSINESS EXPERT
Reliance on firms such as Nissan leaves Sunderland ‘on a precipice,’ says a city-born expert.
Speaking on an English language news programme on French TV channel France 24, Centre for Cities’s Paul Swinney said broadening the city’s industrial base was the challenge for both local and national government.
“The city needs to add another engine to its economy,” he said.
“Nissan has been a huge success story, although they have been fairly low-paid jobs, and that is a challenge for Sunderland.
“It needs to be adding these extra engines, jobs growth in new areas, new industries that are going to create these higher paid type activities and put more money in people’s pockets
This week’s news that Nissan had scrapped plans to build a new X-Trail at Sunderland ‘was not a huge surprise’, he said: “It’s clear that one of the advantages of Nissan being based in the UK and being based in Sunderland is having access to the European market.
“I know that’s not the reason why they decided to change their decision, but, of course, as the UK changes the relationship with Europe, that is going to have an impact on how attractive UK cities are to this type of investment and it will alter investment decisions in the future.
“There is now a challenge here for Sunderland and perhaps other places in the north of England that attract this sort of investment.
“These places need to move on from companies where they have to keep offering sweeteners, and have to keep offering deals every couple of years and that’s a big challenge.
“In or out of Europe, or in or out of the EU, a place like Sunderland has to be able to reinvent its economy, attracting new industries that are going to create new jobs, rather than being on the precipice of another closure.
“I think for Sunderland’s economy, it certainly would be a bad thing if Nissan were to start to wind down its activities in the city, given that it is such a large employer and the city is so dependent on it currently.”
He condemned the failure of both Leave and Remain supporting MPs to address the UK’s future outside the EU.
“The big irony of the Brexit vote was that a lot of places, in England certainly, sounded a large alarm bell to say ‘we’re not satisfied with how life is at the moment’ but over the last two-and-ahalf years all we’ve seen, was just infighting between politicians jostling for position rather than setting out any clear domestic policy and any clear domestic strategy about how we are actually going to improve the economy of these places.”