After three years as Level Up, the new campaign has grown into Impact, and is supported by some of the leading businesses across the North East.
The venue yesterday was the Hopetown railway museum in Darlington, where businesses looked forward to a challenging and exciting 2025
Andrew Craddock, Chief Executive of Darlington Building Society, hosted the event and told our audience there was reason for optimism for the local and national economy.
He said: “It’s actually been a really tough year. But I think what I see for 2024 is that it is building foundations for us to springboard into 2025 and I really think ’25 is going to be a really exciting year for me, for Darlington Building Society, the town, for the region and for the country.
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“I think we’ve now got some political and economic stability and whilst I don’t agree with everything that the government has done – the National Insurance increase has obviously put everyone’s costs up – we have now actually got some stability.”
Rachel Anderson, Assistant Director of Policy at the North East Chamber of Commerce, identified two issues the North East must tackle imminently.
She said: “I think we’ve got two major challenges with skills. One is that we still have very poor adult literacy rates in the North East, and we don’t talk about it enough.
Nominate your business heroes – JUST CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE (Image: Newsquest) “Also AI is going to be a huge challenge for us in the year. The rate it is developing is going to accelerate over the next year and how we use it in all aspects of life and business and I’m not sure that we’re particularly ready for that as a region. I think we need to get ready for that very quickly.”
Teesside Airport chief Phil Forster is looking forward to a “huge and pivotal” 2025, which he hopes will see it move from being a “political football” to being recognised for its important role in the regional economy.
He said: “It’s not just about the passengers, it’s about the wider economic impact the airport is generating. And I think some of the stats that we come out with next year will really show the airport is going on the right trajectory.”
Durham County Council leader Amanda Hopgood said she was “extremely positive” about what the future would bring for the count and pointed to Sedgefield’s NETPark as one of the brightest stars in Durham’s commercial constellation.
Ms Hopgood said: “We have satellites up there flying around in space with “made in County Durham” on them. How many people know that?”
Simon Whitaker, Assistant Director of Strategy and Insight at believe housing, said they had continued to deliver “genuinely profound” successes for those who need their properties.
He said: “We’re now five years old and we’ve delivered our 1,000th home from new build, delivering about 200 a year.
“We’ve done loads of work in terms of driving down the length of time our homes stay empty between customers, which is really helping people get into the homes that they need and the impact that has on people’s lives is genuinely profound.”
Gary Sandberg, service and support director at IT specialists razorblue, said the firm had faced challenges thrown up by Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ first budget.
He said: “It has been a difficult year. We started off quite well, but as everybody has said, the budget has had an impact on us so we are ending this year positive and we’re very much looking forward to 2025.”
Dominic Coles, Global Enterprise Excellence Leader with Darlington’s Cummins engine plant, hailed a record year for the American giant.
He said: “From a global Cummins perspective, it’s been another record year. We’ve started to see ourselves get into all the different technologies, in terms of the transfer of carbon fuels to zero-carbon technology and we’re trying to understand what that looks like.
“From a Darlington perspective, it has been good in 2024 as well. We continue to deliver the traditional technologies – 60,000 engines have gone out the door in 2024 – and investment is coming into our region.”
- A full report of the first Impact event will be carried in print and online on Wednesday