Action call after SAS men acquitted
Planners call for action outside cities
The Ministry of Defence should be stripped of its immunity from prosecution after being blamed for the deaths of three reservists on a special forces selection march, families have said, after two SAS men were acquitted.
The three were pronounced dead after suffering heatstroke on July 13 2013.
THE NORTHERN Powerhouse needs to make places work better for people, with infrastructure investments that help to improve quality of life, the Royal Town Planning Institute says today.
The Institute is calling for an inclusive, collaborative and pan-Northern approach to tackling issues such as demographic change, health, the future of town centres, rural and coastal communities, jobs and skills, graduate retention, and barriers to good growth.
Its ultimate aim is to help ensure that prosperity generated by the Northern Powerhouse is shared as widely as possible, not just in the key cities.
The calls come a day after a major conference in Leeds also heard calls for a more “inclusive” and “collaborative” approach from Yorkshire’s towns and cities to securing more Government investment to unlock the North’s collective economic potential and sharing the benefits evenly.
Among the speakers yesterday was Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, who told the conference the region had the unique ability to both keep its individual city and town identities, and at the same time “be greater than the sum of its parts”.
Using the example of recently leaked plans for a £2.9bn upgrade of the TransPennine rail route, he said: “The economic rationale behind making it a national priority is that it will benefit the whole North. Someone from Newcastle could use that transport infrastructure to get to Manchesties ter, the same way that somebody from Dewsbury would use it to get to work in Huddersfield, or someone from Batley would use it to get to work in Leeds.
“If people in those communi- have got decent jobs and their kids are going to good schools, I don’t think it will really matter where the economic lines are on paper. Because the economic lines that will pay for it will potentially stretch from Manchester to Bradford, from Bradford down to Sheffield. Those are the real economic connections that currently don’t work from a travel to work perspective, that don’t work from an investment perspective and an infrastructure perspective.
“If you unlock those barriers, you will find that what benefits Bradford, will benefit Manchester and vice versa. That currently isn’t true because connectivity doesn’t allow it. Change that and you give people a genuine collective self interest, and you don’t have to compete with each other any more.”
Meanwhile the head of Transport for the North (TfN) used yesterday’s event as an opportunity to rally support for the expected submission in December of the business case for Northern Powerhouse Rail, a proposed overhaul of rail links which – together with HS2 high speed rail – would transform train travel by linking the North’s six main cities and Manchester Airport, as well as other significant economic centres.
Chief executive Barry White told guests that TfN’s transport plan – a £70bn 30-year vision unveiled earlier this year – also aimed to boost the region’s economy by £100bn and create 850,000 additional jobs.
But he stressed that to achieve those aims, the Government “should invest 50 per cent more per annum on a sustained basis in the North of England than the current levels of investment”.