AN economic development body set up by Sir Ian Wood is set to drive “significant progress” for the north east economy after unveiling an ambitious programme of action and investment for its second year of operations.
Opportunity North East (ONE) was established last year to counter the effects of the oil and gas downturn. It launched with an initial commitment of £25 million over five years from the Wood Foundation.
Referring to ONE’s approach of identifying sector-specific opportunities to accelerate long term economic growth, Sir Ian said the work was already making a difference.
“Effective co-operation between the private and public sectors is increasing and momentum is building around our projects and programmes.
“This year should be one of significant progress for the region’s economy,” he said.
ONE will invest up to £3.5m in 2017/18 in projects and programmes across its priority industry sectors, which will secure more than £3.2m of match funding from partners, as part of a goal of achieving full leverage of £25m over the course of the five years.
Sectors such as food and drink, agriculture, life sciences and tourism will be developed in the coming year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel