by Jamie Reed, Copeland MP

Last updated at 11:37, Thursday, 03 May 2012

TWO weeks ago, I laid down a challenge to those agencies – public and private – tasked with securing our long-term prosperity.

This challenge upset many people. It has caused some to hide in trademark fashion, but it has also brought to the surface those who really do care about and understand the challenges facing us as a community and the spectacular future we have before us if we make the right decisions now.

We are right to be optimistic about our future, but we also need to be honest: West Cumbria stands at a fork in the road. Unless we make the right decisions now, our future will be characterised by high unemployment, a collapsed housing market, rapidly declining public services, decreasing educational attainment levels and deteriorating public health.

Even in a recovering global economy, without the right decisions being made locally in a timely manner, our prospects will be grim.

As tough as the climate may appear to be right now, the government’s spending cuts have yet to bite and we have yet to feel the effects of their austerity programme. This is why the delivery of projects now is so critical.

The call for accelerated delivery isn’t just about the credibility of those involved or the necessary investments we need to safeguard our future; it is about keeping our economy operational as the most fierce attack it has ever experienced soon begins. Left and right, private and public, our one unifying aim should be delivery, delivery, delivery.

The challenges facing us mean that there are no comfort zones and no one individual or organisation can or will be immune from the consequences of the choice that now faces us. Any belief in ‘business as usual’ is a betrayal of everyone in our community. Why? Because it isn’t our local councils, NMP, the NDA or anyone else who feel the consequences of the failure to deliver but our community. More to the point, it’s our money, taxpayers’ money that keeps every single one of these organisations alive – we have the right to expect more.

The stadium failure, and with it the loss of the RL World Cup, is an embarrassment beyond words. Given a winning lottery ticket, the partners involved conspired to lose it. Britain’s Energy Coast – the best vehicle to deliver upon our ambitions – has left its £4.5million investment for the stadium on the table and this makes this failure to deliver even more inexplicable.

NMP arrived on the Sellafield site with much fanfare. There were to be “more jobs than we have people”. So far, the community has only seen redundancies. The NMP promise is non-negotiable and I intend to do all I can to ensure that they deliver upon their promises. If they do not deliver, I will ask the NDA and government to re-open the tender process so that new operators for the Sellafield site can be found.

Cumbria County Council is perhaps unique in being the only Local Education Authority in the country that has either turned away or spectacularly mis-managed proposed multi-million-pound investments from successive governments. It’s shameful, but does anyone remain surprised?

It is genuinely hard to believe how any LEA could be responsible for so many catastrophic errors during what was a never-to-be-repeated era of educational investment.

The NDA has been a reliable partner. When the NDA has made promises – and their investments have been significant – they have kept them. With regard to economic development more widely, having helped to establish Britain’s Energy Coast, local government has consistently fought a rear-guard action to destroy it. These are the enmities that will defeat us all and this is the serial behaviour that will continue to thwart delivery if left unaddressed. Enough is enough.

If we make the right choices, if the NDA and government makes the right choices and critically, if NMP makes the right choices, then our best days remain ahead of us, characterised by unprecedented opportunity and economic growth. The repository and the acceleration of this process are critical. New build is not yet guaranteed. The agencies which serve us must show business and government that they are credible partners and vice versa. We really are all in this together. Delivery, delivery, delivery. Nothing less is acceptable.

First published at 11:11, Thursday, 03 May 2012
Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk