Mayor's city pitch at MIPIM 2023

For UK cities to be engines of growth, opportunity, and prosperity, there can be no more business as usual. That is why at the MIPIM conference in Cannes last week, EG gave some of the UK’s core cities a platform to showcase why their city is the place to invest and what the built environment is doing to help transform them.

In this live recording that took place in the EG Pavilion, deputy editor Tim Burke spoke to leaders from Cardiff, Derby, Central South, West Midlands and Newcastle, who outlined their vision for their city or region’s future and the ways in which they see public and private sectors coming together to shape that.

Hear from:

• Huw Thomas, leader, Cardiff Council
• Paul Simpson, chief executive, Derby City Council
• Gavin Hall, lead of office and head of department, central south planning, Savills
• Andy Street, mayor, West Midlands
• Pam Smith, chief executive, Newcastle City Council

Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands, pitches the region to an audience of international investors on the Estate Gazette Pavilion at MIPIM 2023 below. In his segment he covers why the West Midlands is the region of choice for Investors and highlights numerous regional strengths including our world-class connectivity options, culturally diverse population, numerous capital investment opportunities, how bigger firms including HSBC and Goldman Sachs have relocated to the region, and much more.

The presentation starts at 31:55.

Transcript of Andy Street’s Investment pitch at MIPIM 2023:

[00:32:06.390] – Andy Street

Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. Lovely to be here. We are not the sunniest place in Britain. We definitely don’t have any wines, but the canal water can be drunk. Right, let’s have a little look at what’s going on in Birmingham and the West Midlands. I’ve got a few slides, just with a few pictures, which hopefully will tell our story. It’s one of confidence, re-emergence, feeling upbeat, and I’ll tell you why. So that’s me. We know about that. So, Birmingham the heart and the West Midlands. The heart of the country in every sense of that word, obviously, geographically, emotionally and economically as well. Let’s have a little look. So, a vibrant, multi-city region. Three cities. Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and Coventry. Four boroughs, Walsall Wolverhampton, Solihull, and Dudley. And, of course, we love people coming us hosting, because you do sense that vibrancy and the youthfulness to it. And we saw it, of course, last summer, better than ever before, when Birmingham hosted the Commonwealth Games. A celebration across the whole of the West Midlands, from Cannock to Leamington. And I think everybody who interacted with it had an incredible time. And the stats say 80% of people in the UK now have a much-improved impression of our region than before. 

So, everyone’s thinking of bidding for this in the future. Get your bids in. It’s definitely a wonderful thing to do, but it’s about the head and the heart. So, the heart says, emotion welcome, the head says it’s also the place that’s been leading in terms of winning international investment outside London for each of the last five years. And we’ll talk about some of the brands there in a bit, some of the underlying features we do have brilliant connectivity. The heart of the country, the airport going from strength to strength. Those are the pieces of data there. Just re-establishing the link to Qatar, the new Saudi airline coming. So clearly connected in that way. And, of course, connected in terms of the road network. 92% of all businesses within a four-hour drive of the West Midlands. And most importantly, the HS2 link to Birmingham is on target, despite all the news last week about delays elsewhere. The two stations in Birmingham and Solihull will open on the latest timetable and we will be connected to London in under seven years from now. And, of course, in the property cycle, that means it’s really happening very quickly. 

£40 billion – we should remind ourselves that’s just leg one. And that is the biggest infrastructure investment anywhere in Europe. In terms of the economy, the data is clear. Largest combined authority economy in the UK. And we pull out manufacturing because it’s still so, so important to us. It’s the biggest manufacturing cluster and for any region, the share of manufacturing is higher in the West Midlands than anywhere else. Population 4.7 million. So on the scale of a small European country, and that matters to compete to have an economic plan for the region. But the stat and other people offer their stats around this. But as is really quite dramatic, the usefulness of the population, a quarter of our population in the region under the age of 20. Birmingham is the youngest city in all of Europe. Huge advantage in terms of future employment and of course, we are the most diverse place as well. And Birmingham now is a majority non-white city. Again, that mixing point of cultures, we see it as a huge advantage to us. As I say, diversity is our strength. And we told that story with great confidence and modesty in the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony last year, which was all about our history and what we’ve become as literally the melting pot of the Commonwealth.

Home to global brands, a number that we’ve been really proud to bring in in recent years, this is the home of the HSBC UK headquarters now in central Birmingham, and obviously wonderful to be able to talk about them after yesterday’s dramatic news about their role. Brands like Goldman Sachs obviously also choosing the city as their headquarters in the last couple of years ago, they came to us. But it’s not just the economic piece, it’s also this fuller offer, as others will have said, in their own ways as well. And if you think of the history, from Shakespeare through Tolkien and of course, to Peaky Blinders, as the phenomenon that is, of course, taking the world over, you can get the gear in New York or Singapore or Adelaide, you get the gear. And the rich culture, of course, Birmingham, the city that has the ballet, the orchestra and of course the theatre. All elements coming together as well, of course, with younger, more innovative culture as well. The birthplace of rugby. And did you know, we might not be top of the league at the moment, but also the football league founded in our region as well. So the sporting history, of course, established and we celebrated it, as I said, with the wonderful Brummy ball of the games last summer as well. 

Now then, in terms of our economic pitch going forward and our message at MIPIM, it’s really simple. We take all those underlying ingredients of success and we tell the story of innovation. This is the place for investment around the cutting edge, new innovative sectors. So we are the only multi-city, 5G test bed in the UK, best connected of any region in terms of 5G technology, about 50% of our population now, with access to 5G. We are the first future mobility zone in the UK. Think of electric vehicle manufacturing, the battery sector is very much concentrated around Coventry. So brands from LEVC to Polestar to Lotus, all setting up their evacuation manufacturing in and around Coventry. And, of course, increasingly, we’re a centre for what we call data driven healthcare. And again, that advantage that we have, the diversity of our population being the perfect place for drug trials. We say to drug companies, you can have the population of the world in one city in Birmingham for your trials. And then if we turn to creative and digital technology, a fast-growing area of our economy, our tech sector grew by £4 billion last year and is by any standards the fastest-growing tech sector anywhere in the UK. 

And our biggest sector, of course, business and professional services. And we’re seeing again how the tech sector is blending with this to bring new financial FinTech companies to the region as well. And the fastest growing area of our economy now, low carbon, and particularly taking our manufacturing expertise and applying it to the green sector. So green manufacturing, the fastest growing area of the economy. All, of course, underpinned by the talent that we have going forward. And again, I’ve heard others say similar things. The fact is, the West Midlands has the highest number of students coming forward every year, particularly strong in the STEM subjects and in engineering as the attractor for investments. And that’s why we’re confident, as I say, of our position in the health sector as we go forward. This a new health innovation campus and one of the big ideas that we’re selling at MIPIM this year, the Knowledge Quarter at the other end of the HS2 line from London. So we have the Knowledge Quarter in Kings Cross bleeding into Houston at our end with Aston University, Birmingham City University, a vast undertaking indeed, right there for a concentration of knowledge intensive industries. 

The other HS2 station is at Arden Cross – probably the biggest investment site in the whole of the country. Certainly the most attractive investment site in the whole of the country, in Solihull the first stop outside London. Brilliant news. Since last year, Mews have stepped forward as the master developer for this site. In the city centre we’ll be talking more about Smithfield, a huge Lend Lease development, actually the biggest urban regeneration site in the country. And in Wolverhampton expertise in brownfield regeneration, a wonderful scheme that we’ll be talking about -Canalside – the clue is in the title there. Consequence of all of this regeneration is that we are achieving our housing numbers, if not slightly surpassing them, which is obviously a very good thing to be able to say. And then terms of urban regeneration, one of them that I am particularly proud of again, in the last year, we’ve secured the funder from Hill and Co for the regeneration of Coventry city Centre. This is an entertainer housing led redevelopment and I think this will end up being the exemplar of city centre tired retail areas being regenerated, and the vibrancy of Coventry’s economy enables that. 

So that’s the story. We’re feeling confident, we’re open for business and if you want to come and see our pavilion, it’s just on the Croisette. Thank you very much indeed. 

[00:40:46.910] – Tim Burke

Andy. Thank you so much. I lived in Birmingham for a number of years and returned last weekend for a stag due. And I can confirm that it is very much a vibrant and youthful city. And I can also confirm that by the end of my weekend, I realised I was neither vibrant nor youthful.