It is a rivalry of generations – the stuff of gloating headlines and snarky jibes. But the heat between Norwich and Ipswich is doing the East’s economy good, write Angus Williams and Eleanor Pringle
There is no excitement in East Anglia quite like witnessing Ipswich Town running out on to the football field alongside their arch rivals Norwich City.
The noise. The white heat of battle about to commence. The bragging rights at the water cooler for weeks to come.
But imagine if the likes of Wark, Butcher and Muhren could have played alongside Pukki, Sutton and Bruce?
Of course a healthy rivalry is good. Both Town and City lift their game when – rare these days, sadly – they get to square up against each other. And the same applies to our economic centres.
Economic competition is a key infrastructure in any market and any region.
Not only does it motivate companies – to provide better quality goods and services – it also keeps policymakers on their toes, according to Professor Joshua Bamfield of the Norwich-based Centre for Retail Research.
“Rivalry is a good thing absolutely – but it needs to be about healthy competition and about places levelling up together as opposed to one taking away from the other,” he said.
“One of the classic examples of this is in the Midlands – Mansfield versus Chesterfield. They’re two towns about ten miles apart and there’s some hostility there.
“Instead of looking at how they could attract more people to their towns they only ever spoke about taking footfall away from their neighbours.
“Parking was a classic way of doing this – if they slashed parking to it being free for an afternoon or they reduced the cost then they knew they could get people to come to their high street over the rival.
“But looking in that region – further around the peak District – we have Hebden Bridge. That’s the sort of competition you want to see because it attracts people based on the variety of its offering as opposed to detracting from elsewhere.
“When you look at a region like Norfolk and Suffolk this example becomes important because of the Cambridge factor. When you chat to the average person on the street about living in the East of England they see Cambridge as virtually the Midlands – partly because it is so well connected to the rest of the country and it’s so hard to get to from here.
“Norwich and Ipswich need to level up as a whole. Some of that comes down to variety but some is down to infrastructure and access to our coastal towns and between the two main regional hubs.
“For generations we’ve talked about duelling the A47 and it’s a promise which has never been kept. I’ll be interested to see how the towns funding announced for Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft is used to increase accessibility.”
Mr Bamfield’s point is illustrated in the fact that some of East Anglia’s roads haven’t been fully updated in generations.
The A140, still the main link between the two centres, dates back to Roman times when it was known as the Pye Road.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, the road formed a key link between two key centres – the Iceni capital at Caistor St Edmund, just outside Norwich, and the Roman fort of Camulodunum (now Colchester).
And, tarmac aside, the road itself has not changed that much since – seriously.
In Roman times it would have been between five and eight metres wide – it basically still is. The single-carriageway portion of the road is only between six and 10 metres.
Investing in roads like this is one of the key ways to ensure that the economic recovery of the cities is spread across the entire region, according to the Centre for Cities director of Policy and Research, Paul Swinney.
He believes jobs created in the urban centres need to be easily accessible from the rest of the region.
“The first element of spreading the recovery is by having good local transport links,” he said. “Sometimes we jump to the idea of saying we need to invest in public transport. But most people actually travel by car – whether we like it or not.
“The second element is around making sure people have the skills to access those jobs. You can have the road in but if you don’t have the skills to get the job, that’s a problem as well.”
And money spent on public transport to help people access jobs should go on buses not trains, he added.
“Trains are the glitzy, shiny things that everyone gravitates towards,” he said. “But the majority of people in the UK who commute by public transport are on a bus.
“I think the thing for Norwich and Ipswich now is about moving towards a London-style model around franchising services.
“They need to work out if it is possible for the two areas to start franchising buses and improve the quality of services.”
Terry Hunt, chairman of Ipswich Vision, said Ipswich and Norwich’s rivalry was good for the region.
“It helps to raise the bar in terms of ambition and expectation. I see absolutely nothing wrong with that,” he said.
According to Mr Hunt, the New Anglia LEP is key in sharing best practice across East Anglia but, he pointed out, towns should not just limit themselves to looking at their near neighbours for inspiration.
Mr Hunt said Ipswich’s plan to become a “connected town” is proof of this.
“It’s based on example of the 15-minute town, which Paris has adopted,” he added, “And if it’s good enough for Paris, you would hope it will good enough for us.
“If Norwich comes up with some really ground-breaking ideas, of course we will look very closely at what they’re doing.
“It’s about not thinking parochially and realising that the economic success of Suffolk and Norfolk depends on a broader canvas,” he said.
On sharing practise C-J Green, chairwoman of the New Anglia LEP, said: “Collaboration will be absolutely essential if we are to effectively restart and rebuild from Covid-19. As Norwich and Ipswich open back up as restrictions ease, local authorities, BIDs, Chambers of Commerce and other partner organisations will support businesses in reopening as safely as possible and the sharing of information and initiatives which have proved successful will be of co-benefit.
“We want all our businesses and institutions to recover and will encourage them in becoming more innovative and resilient as they look to the future.”
The Cambridge Norwich Tech Corridor is another organisation that aims to foster growth in the region while maintaining the individual strengths of each city.
Linn Clabburn, programme director for the corridor, said: “We believe that it is possible for the whole region to thrive without compromising the growth in individual locations. Rather than shifting wealth within the region, we’ve always tried to make sure our efforts are focussed on growing the wealth in the region.
“We don’t want the region’s slice of the pie to be cut differently, we want to get a bigger slice of the pie.
“Our approach has been to try to get under the skin of the different locations to understand what their strengths are and to try to build their niche.
“By doing this, we are able to see how different locations can compliment each other to create a stronger whole.
“Although competition is healthy, the diverse and complementing nature of the expertise and businesses across the corridor means that we are able to tell a much more compelling story about the region than if
each town or city was trying to do the same thing.”
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