For the purposes of this project, the ‘region’ refers to the Greater Essex area. This encompasses the administrative areas of Essex County Council (hereafter ECC) with Southend-on-Sea Borough Council and Thurrock Council.
Historically, the Essex economy has been intrinsically linked with London, in terms of waste management and energy production, and also the provision of people to work in the service sector and the construction industry. Essex has a proven track record in the engineering industry and in manufacturing, both these sectors still have a strong hold in the south of Greater Essex, spanning the Thames Gateway South Essex area. Essex has benefited – and will continue to benefit – from advantageous geography in terms of ports and gateway functions. Our businesses should take every opportunity to maximise the benefits of our proximity to continental Europe.
The Greater Essex ‘region’ has sound historical origins as both Southend-on-sea Borough Council and Thurrock Council were previously part of the ECC area (1889 -1998). More significantly, Greater Essex’s existence also has a strong rationale from a pragmatic policy perspective. This position is outlined in detail in the ECC policy pamphlet City Limits (see link); where ECC employ the logic behind city-regions to ‘county-regions’ such as Greater Essex. ECC argue that the drivers behind city-regions’ economic potential – such as scale, productivity, clustering, and infrastructure - are characteristics which could equally be applied to Greater Essex. In fact City Limits demonstrates on a sample of the relevant data, the Essex countyregion meets any economic definition that might be applied to city-regions with Essex’s commuting flows, migration patterns, and retail footprint all being sufficiently coherent for the county to be validly classified a functional economic area. ECC subsequently argue that Greater Essex is the most appropriate level for ‘regional’ policy making, to support the functioning subregional economies operating at North, Mid, West and South Essex levels.
The relative simplicity of the term ‘Greater Essex’ does hide many layers of sophisticated governance arrangements that lie underneath and alongside the partnership. Essex County Council is part of a two tier structure and thus is split between the district and boroughs of Harlow, Epping Forest, Brentwood, Basildon, Castle Point, Rochford, Maldon, Chelmsford, Uttlesford, Braintree, Colchester and Tendring. Southend-on-Sea Borough Council and Thurrock Council are unitary councils. Other statutory partners include five Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) Essex Police, Essex Fire Service, the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).
In addition there are two significant growth areas in the county which allow us to direct locally specific initiatives and straddle the administrative boundaries described above, and in some cases our borders with neighbouring authorities. Thames Gateway South Essex (TGSE) in the south of the county includes the Essex districts of Basildon, Castle Point and Rochford. The Haven Gateway is a shared endeavour with Suffolk County Council and engages the Essex districts of Tendring and Colchester and is based around the ports of Harwich and Felixstowe and the town of Colchester in Essex. ECC chooses to work through a combination of structures to enable clear focus on economic conditions and not admin boundaries. In working through these structures, it is clear that the focus is the economy and not administrative boundary.
Outside of these, two other ‘policy areas’ are developing. We have a strong facilitation role to play ‘Harlow and West Essex’, otherwise known as the ‘M11 corridor’ encompasses Harlow, Epping Forest and Uttlesford, whilst a less formal, fledging, partnership called ‘Heart of Essex’, which builds on the 2006 ‘Mid Essex Economic Futures’ report (see link), is emerging in Mid Essex bringing together the relatively affluent areas of Brentwood, Chelmsford, Maldon and Braintree.
Southend-on-Sea is the largest conurbation in the East of England and the closest seaside resort to London located within the Thames Gateway - the Government’s top priority for regeneration and growth. It is home to around 160,000 people in 71,000 households. There are 17 electoral wards in the Borough and more than 6 million visitors come each year, bringing in £200 million to the local economy.
Thurrock is an area of contrasts with a long history of change and adaptation. In an area of 165km (squared) of which over half is green belt, Thurrock has semi-urban population to the south and scattered rural communities to the north. The Borough is divided into 20 electoral wards and is home to around 150,000 people.
In terms of the English regional policy framework, Greater Essex falls under the auspices of the East of England region. However ECC argue a regional approach is often not sufficiently sensitive to the diversity of economies across the East. The regional level can ignore, due to its scale, the distinctive local resources, challenges and opportunities facing sub-regional areas. The dangers of an overly regional approach are no clearer than in the East of England’s Regional Economic Strategy (RES). The RES describes the region as a global leader in research and development, and it is. However, those strengths lie in Essex – not just in Cambridge, for example, with vast numbers of researchers based around Ford at Dunton and the significant levels of innovation emanating from Basildon Hospital (see link to Health Enterprise East which documents this).
Greater Essex has traditionally been viewed as part of the ‘South East’ of England. Indeed, many of the policy positions taken by Greater Essex Councils are very much aligned to the South East region; this is facilitated by very good working relationships at officer and member level in Greater Essex with the South East.