Doncaster Sheffield Airport rail link decision makes a mockery of ‘levelling up’ - Dan Fell

They, along with a range of other partners, quite rightly, highlighted the hypocrisy of this given the Government’s purported commitment to ‘‘levelling up’’ the UK.

I tried not to let the story spoil my break and left the irate media response to trusted Chamber colleagues. Nonetheless, the story was responsible for my ageing dog getting the walk of his life as I stropped off across the hills of West Yorkshire to try and work off my bad mood and frustration that, yet again, Government is making harder than it should be to take our region forwards.

My sense of frustration was only exacerbated by the reality that this project is perfectly in line with the Government’s stated policy aims and the dispiriting fact that partners in Doncaster have been here before.

Gateway East Rail is a talismanic scheme for Yorkshire that will improve the region’s connectivity, enable economic growth, and create thousands of jobs. This is critical as the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated regional inequalities in relation to employment, education and health and up ended the lives of people who, already, had statistically reduced life chances.

As such, it is important to recognise that I’m not talking about economic data when I reference the job creation that could be facilitated by the Gateway East Rail scheme but about mums, dads, neighbours and communities that will have to find their way back into employment as we rebuild our economy and replace lost jobs with new ones.

Despite the presently constrained demand for international travel, it is clear that the aviation sector will remain paramount to regions and economies around the globe.

For this reason, it is negligent for our Government to have done so little to support the aviation sector since the advent of the first lockdown. The UK will be disadvantaged if we do not support a sector that is pivotal to our wider role in the world.

The truth is that ‘‘levelling up’’ is not about big infrastructure projects and transportation, it is about people. In South Yorkshire, we have more people claiming unemployment-related benefits than at any time since the 1990s. This is why South Yorkshire’s businesses and residents should be so angry every time it feels as though one of our key projects is backsliding or that government is trying to tell us that ‘‘levelling up’’ does not apply to us. Crucially it is also why no one is giving up on the plan to make Gateway East Rail a reality for our region.

Truly, the reason I was so irritated by the apparent thumbs down from Government, was because of a haunting sense of déjà vu. Indeed, I have a sense that South Yorkshire’s campaign for Gateway East Rail is redolent of Doncaster’s exhausting four-year campaign to open a University Technical College (UTC).

I have distinct memories of a former Secretary of State for Education addressing a CBI Conference and stating that businesses needed to ‘‘step up’’ their involvement in education while the Government promised that, in turn, it would deliver a technical skills revolution. I remember being considerably irked by the speech as, at the same time, business leaders and partners were rebuffed in their attempts to open a school Doncaster that would help Government with both of these stated aims. We were trying to help Government deliver its ambitions and yet, somehow, felt like we were on the naughty step.

Fast forward a few years and Doncaster UTC has just opened. Despite the enormous challenges of opening a new school in the middle of pandemic, it has seen the largest student intake of any new UTC in the country and has already demonstrated how embedding business in the curriculum can transform young peoples’ lives. It may come as a surprise to those in central Government that local decision makers might know a thing or two about what their local economies and communities need.

Doncaster’s experience of campaigning for the UTC showed that it is possible to swim against the tide and to get Government to support transformative projects in Yorkshire. Partners in South Yorkshire will doggedly do this again to ensure that Gateway East Rail is delivered. However, given that the project – like Doncaster UTC before it – is in complete lockstep with the Government’s own stated policy aims, my anger and frustration boil down to one simple statement.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

Dan Fell is chief executive of Doncaster Chamber

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