‘Sheffield has so much going for it but we don’t sell it well’

A former automotive industry executive who helped turn round the Spanish car giant SEAT has a new job getting under the bonnet of the under-performing South Yorkshire economy. Rob Parsons went to meet him.

AFTER THE best part of four decades on the road, former global automotive industry executive James Muir had been looking forward to a more relaxing retirement in his adopted home city of Sheffield when a job prospect came up that was too good to ignore.

The 59-year-old father-ofthree retired last December from the Volkswagen Group, where his final job had been overseeing its national sales companies across more than 20 countries around the world.

Perhaps his highest-profile role was as chief executive of struggling Spanish car giant SEAT, a “forlorn, runt-of-thelitter brand” whose fortunes he helped turn around against the backdrop of the global economic crisis.

A native Welshman, he opted to put roots down in his wife’s home city of Sheffield with his family and soon became the chair of trustees at Astrea, a multi-academy schools trust with two dozen sites around South Yorkshire.

But with the end of his paid career looming, his future plans involved enjoying life and spending more time with his family, and the idea of another big job was not in his thoughts.

“I thought, ‘I’m supposed to be doing my trustee job with the school and running the family and we have got a couple of building projects going on, I was going to see my mum, and I can get fit, and we’re going to buy a dog’, those sort of things,” he said.

It was at this point that he was told about the upcoming vacancy at Sheffield City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), the body created to help lead economic growth.

With his wife Julia already on the LEP’s board, his interest was piqued and he applied for and got the job. Sitting in its headquarters in central Sheffield, he tells The Yorkshire Post the role is a good fit with his career to date.

“I have become passionate about getting this region to be more successful economically than it has in the past,” he says.

“I think it has a lot going for it, but it doesn’t sell it very well. People who come here say it is the best-kept secret, greenest city, fantastic place to live, great universities, great healthcare, interesting people, fun place to be.

“But you talk to people in London or up in Scotland or in Germany, as I used to commute from Sheffield to Germany, and people ask ‘where is that’ or say ‘that is the steel town that hasn’t got any steel any more’, the coal mines and Orgreave.

“That legacy is still there, it feels like a city that hasn’t found its way to regenerate following closure of some of the old Industrial Revolution industries.

“There are many places like that in the North of England, and this is one of them, and we know it, the facts and figures tell that and I would like to try and make a contribution to giving this region a leg-up if I can.

“It is what I have ended up doing in the back end of my career, which is ‘can you do this? can you fix this?’ Am I good

enough to do that? Time will tell, I will give it a go.

“Am I willing to take the risk? Yes, because I am not afraid of failure. I was brought up to be a trier. I would rather fail trying to succeed than not dare at all.”

As with SEAT, the task ahead of him is considerable in what is one of the most deprived areas in Western Europe. Social mobility in South Yorkshire is 30 per cent lower than the rest of the country and educational outcomes are poor. He speaks of a “transformational” task, not just

an incremental one, in turning round the region’s economy and appreciates the challenge of persuading local leaders that such a task is plausible.

Though his role is voluntary and unpaid, he is working four days a week in what he describes as the “ramp-up phase” where he makes contacts and gets under the bonnet of his new role. In his bid to transform the South Yorkshire economy, he is already clear about what he wants to do and the role of the LEP.

A new governance structure for the organisation, a partnership between local business and civic leaders, comes into place on April 1. And he is focused on coming up with a strategic economic plan to put the region in the best position after Brexit when it is reliant on the new UK Shared Prosperity Fund model, replacing EU funds.

But a major priority is defining a city brand that can be sold around the country and further afield, something strong enough to get into the psyche of people outside Sheffield.

He cites his previous experience of developing the SEAT brand, a task which involved explaining to the company’s Spanish workers that their perception of the country’s olive oil and ham being the best was not shared elsewhere in the world.

“The conclusion was ‘we’re not very good at selling that Spanish brand’,” he said. “And I think that is a symptom we have here to a certain extent. We have so much going for this region and we don’t market it very well.

“A brand is something consistent that people recognise and stands for something. It has to be anchored in some heritage and we have some fantastic heritage. It’s about what does that personality look like as well.

“As well as the strategic economic programme, we need to have a brand that answers the question ‘why would I invest in the Sheffield City Region, why not in Manchester or Leeds or Birmingham?’ The strength of a brand is where you no longer have to answer that question.”