JLGC visiting Boho Zone start-up hub in Middlesbrough, a university-council collaboration funded by the combined authority
A key mission of JLGC in London is facilitating staff training in the UK to familiarise local officials from Japan with public policy in the countries covered by our office. Since the office’s opening in 1989 this has taken a variety of forms, but usually involves hosting by UK local authority partners offering an immersive experience for Japanese colleagues to gain a working appreciation of the operating context of local public services in the UK. As a consequence of the pandemic however, staff training for Japanese colleagues at JLGC (who are seconded to our London office from local authorities in Japan) was deferred until the lifting of pandemic restrictions and work from home guidance in the UK.
This year the office appreciated the ability to finally resume such in-person activities through visits organised by partners of JLGC in the UK, the first of which was two days spent with the Tees Valley Combined Authority and several of its constituent member councils. As well as featuring prominently in government programmes for ‘Levelling Up’ (which would be commonly understood as regional revitalisation in Japan), in recent years Teesside has secured the status of having the largest concentration of Japanese firms in the UK, ranging from Fujifilm to Hitachi Trains, with councils in the region having expressed their gratitude for the on-going relationship with Japan through such engagement with JLGC.
Japanese colleagues were able to visualise levelling up on the ground in visiting Middlesbrough Council’s flagship ‘Boho Zone’ adjacent to the town’s railway station (now served by Hitachi Azuma trains to London) and port, which acts as a hub for digital agencies across a number of sites and has been an acclaimed spur for the local digital talent stream, business expansion and university-business collaboration, as well as enhancing the public realm of a once run-down notorious area. The following day we were hosted by colleagues from the combined authority’s investment and policy teams at Teesside International Airport for a session looking at both the mayoralty’s economic governance footprint and also the importance of the airport’s renaissance under public ownership for the region’s future. This was followed by a site visit to the Stockton factory of Japanese company Nifco, part of the automotive supply chain for a number of UK car plants (including Nissan and Toyota), hearing how the local council’s economic development team had enabled the site to expand in partnership. The day concluded with a visit to Stockton Borough Council’s economic development team itself, who guided Japanese colleagues around the town centre to see its plans for the radical redevelopment and repurposing of its 1970s shopping centre buildings into a new urban park (which has attracted global media and planner interest since its approval by local leaders).
In recent years JLGC has been hosted on a number of occasions by staff of the Greater London Authority and its Housing Policy Team. This enables colleagues to gain a deeper understanding of not only London’s housing challenges as a world city but how the Mayor of London’s Housing Strategy aims to tackle them, particularly in relation to the delivery of increased affordable housing for the capital’s rising population. Staff also heard about the team’s role in London’s key investment projects such as the Royal Docks, where London’s city government will relocate in December 2021 after two decades at London City Hall (the visit took place at the GLA’s Union Street building which houses the headquarters for the London Fire Brigade).
The Tees Valley may be steeped in railway heritage as the world’s first steam locomotive hauled line in 1825 with the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, but our visit to the Epping Ongar Railway in West Essex heard how a former branch of the Central Line on the London Underground had been repurposed as a heritage railway which attracts large numbers as a visitor attraction as well as providing volunteering opportunities for retired residents locally. The line, opened in 2004 after its closure to passengers on cost reduction grounds a decade earlier, has proven a durable tourist asset for the local economy as we heard on our visit that day to Buckhurst Hill Parish Council to learn more about community governance in the West Essex parish on the edge of Epping Forest. Having learned about the governance and finances of the council from leading councillors, as well as discussing the parish’s role in the community during the pandemic, staff were able to visit a number of facilities and green spaces directly managed by the authority, again led by the parish chairman.
The final training visit of 2021 took place at Leicester City Council where staff from the Smart Cities Team accompanied by the Assistant City Mayor outlined the local authority’s approach towards defining how a smart city plan can promote more inclusive growth among a diverse and disadvantaged local population. The council’s Smart City Policy, with its emphasis as much (if not more) on people rather than just technology, aims to work across a number of the Sustainable Development Goals such as eradicating poverty, achieving climate action and promoting decent work. We were also able to see firsthand how global interest in the discovery of Richard III’s burial site in 2015 had led to the substantial revitalisation of the city centre through its development of visitor attractions.
We were joined on several of our visits by two staff of our Headquarters on the resumed training programme for CLAIR staff based in Tokyo, with Ms Haruko Sugawara (seconded from Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department) and Mr Masaji Ishikawa (seconded from Nagoya City Government), who both researched public authority measures towards tackling the pandemic in the UK on their own visits to the Metropolitan Police, Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Hertfordshire County Council and the London Borough of Southwark.
JLGC would like to thank all the local authority hosts of our staff training this year for taking out time from their usual work in enabling us to deliver the first comprehensive full week (in total) of placements across all areas and tiers of service delivery. We would also appreciate any expressions of interest by other partners in UK local government in hosting future staff training for new Japanese colleagues from April 2022 – contact us at mailbox@jlgc.org.uk
