A place where opportunity thrives: Kim McGuinness

Kim McGuinness looks out from a full height window.

In the distance, beyond weathered roof tiles and the swoops of a scheming seagull, a two carriage, navy and grey-liveried train slides silently across the High Level Bridge towards Newcastle.

The scene, filled out by summer blue skies and wispy white cloud, is all rather poetic, a picture of modern-day functionality coalescing with Victorian majesty.

So too is Kim’s vantage point, up high in the Pattern Shop, the Grade II-listed former workshop where Robert Stephenson built steam locomotives in the 1800s that gave rail travel to the world.

Rescued from crumbling despair, the site, tucked away on Newcastle’s Sussex Street, has been renovated – with a number of its original windows, beams and stanchions salvaged – into modern business space.

And standing on its third floor, Kim, elected the first North East mayor in May’s landmark ballot, has a similar reinvention blueprint to engineer lasting change for the region.

Using powers transferred from Whitehall in a headline-grabbing £4.2 billion devolution deal, her draught outlines a region where pillars of lower child poverty, increased social housing, an overflowing net-zero skills pipeline and a publicly-controlled and greener transport network rise from foundations fashioned by centuries of industrial advances.

It could, though, have all been so different.

A child of Newbiggin Hall estate, the 1960s suburb in Newcastle’s West End, Kim’s move into politics was more serendipitous than strategic.

The daughter of a father who was a scaffolder at shipyards and Blyth Power Station, and a mother who, in Kim’s childhood, worked part-time in “sometimes insecure, low-paid jobs”, Kim was the first person in her family to pursue higher education, studying history at Newcastle University before entering roles in finance, education and the charity sector.

Kim says: “I’m from a typical North East working-class family on a council estate.

“I never had any intention of being a politician – there wasn’t a singular moment or an awakening.

“But I was politically aware; I’d been a Labour Party member for a long time, and when you’ve been in a family like mine, you know you’re better off with a Labour Government.”

“The change to Labour in 1997 brought some real opportunities for people like me; we got a new school building, we got a new community centre,” says Kim who, as mayor, leads the North East Combined Authority, which covers the council areas of County Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, North and South Tyneside, Northumberland and Sunderland.

She says: “But when I moved back to the North East after working away, things were changing.

“The coalition Government’s austerity programme was starting to bite; I saw the libraries, the community centres and the leisure centres – lifelines for me when I was younger – starting to go, and I didn’t think it was acceptable.

“So I started knocking on doors with my local MP Catherine McKinnell, ahead of the 2015 General Election, and she suggested I stand as a councillor for Newcastle City Council.”

Feeling she didn’t fit the mould of a councillor, Kim rebuffed the idea. Catherine, though, was insistent.

Kim says: “I told her it was something I saw people doing at different stages of their lives; my typical view of a councillor was someone at the other end of their career.

“But she said, ‘you’re wrong, we need more women, we need more people that are reflective of the local community and who have life experience to bring with them’.

“I said I’d think about it for the future, but she came back again and that time I agreed to stand.

“I was unsuccessful, but the door knocking, the conversations and the realisation there was an opportunity to make a difference was infectious.

“So, a year later, in 2015, I stood for the Lemington ward and was successful.”

From there, Kim quickly took on a cabinet role, overseeing a communities, culture and sport portfolio and then a culture, sport and health remit, before stepping away from the council chamber in 2019 to pursue the role of Northumbria police and crime commissioner.

She says: “I’d starting doing some work while on the cabinet that was focused on preventing crime and violence, by supporting people with their health through tackling deprivation.

“And when the police and crime commissioner role came up, I saw the opportunities I’d have to reach into communities and make a difference.”

“I’m really proud of my record,” says Kim, who was twice elected to the post, which holds Northumbria Police to account by acting as a bridge between the public and the force’s everyday operations.

She says: “We saw crime fall, and a significant reason for that was our focus on crime prevention and how the police could better work with public services.

“We recruited 700 officers and established the violence reduction unit, to understand and tackle the root causes of youth violence, and then help young people make alternative choices.

“Of course we want more police on the streets and results in court, but we’ve got to turn the taps off by giving young people a chance to be themselves.

“We also did very good work around violence against women and girls, and women’s safety in public spaces, with many people saying they felt safer on public transport.

“And the mayoral role is about continuing all of that work and more, not least in helping increase the number of women in politics.

“I’ve had people say to me, ‘my daughter was so excited to see you elected’, with others telling me they’re really pleased to see a woman in post.

“I stood against five men in the mayoral election and, prior to that, there were more metro mayors called Andy across the UK than there were women mayors.

“There are now three mayors – Claire Ward in the East Midlands, Tracy Brabin in West Yorkshire and I – but there is still a huge amount of work to do.

“It has become more difficult for women in politics, with those who put their heads above the parapet to serve faced with hideous online abuse and threats.

“But we need to encourage more women to stand and make a difference, to change the political landscape and make it a more welcoming place for women.”

Kim adds: “I love the region and its people, and I want things to be better.

“The last Government’s ‘levelling-up’ policy was a complete failure.

“It should have spelled opportunity, but it was so badly delivered and so focused on a handful of glossy infrastructure projects – a lot of which didn’t happen – that to mention the phrase now causes people to give a tired sigh.”

In response, Kim, who claimed more than 58,000 votes than nearest rival – and former Labour North of Tyne mayor-turned independent candidate – Jamie Driscoll in May’s ballot, says she has created a manifesto that commits to great change across child development, social housing and skills.

It also pledges significant transport improvements, not least the revival of the mothballed Pelaw-to-Ferryhill Leamside rail line, which has stood idle since the early 1990s when freight trains joined Beeching-hit passenger services in the buffers.

Building on a longer campaign to resuscitate the route – which cuts through green boltholes and old mining settlements between Gateshead and County Durham – work is well underway on a business case for a so-called Washington Metro Loop that would link the line to the Nexus-run light railway network and create new connections at Washington and Follingsby.

Kim says: “I’ve set out a very ambitious – and long-term – vision.

“Some things, like extending the Metro and Leamside Line investment, will take time.

“But as work continues on those projects, we’re making improvements to other areas.

“Right from my first day, I was very clear we needed to gain control of our buses and we’ve already made progress.

“We’ve started to look at how we build more homes, particularly more social housing, and we’re establishing a high streets commission to breathe new life into our built-up areas.

“We’re also assessing a different approach to upskilling our workforce, to make sure we’re at the forefront of the green industrial revolution, whether that’s building more sustainable houses or delivering for the offshore wind sector, for example.

“And that means ensuring young people, including those from our deprived areas, have access to training and jobs.

“They are the people who will create the future, who will work in ways we can’t yet imagine.

“We have to be ready.”

Kim adds: “I want more people to see they can have successful careers in the North East.

“To do that, we’re looking to work more with schools to support ambition and highlight opportunities, and are looking at how we can support people to get into jobs without necessarily having to achieve a certain level of qualification.

“We’re working to identify skills gaps that will implement relevant training courses, and are focused on putting more of these courses into certain communities, to help remove barriers for people who might not want to go to a shiny college building.”

Fundamental to delivering such, says Kim, will be industrial relations.

Such commitment was showcased recently by £25 million North East Combined Authority funding to support the remediation of former shipyard land in readiness for construction of the £450 million FulwellCain-led Crown Works Studios.

Set for Pallion, beside Sunderland’s River Wear, bosses say it will generate as many as 8450 jobs and operate as one of Europe’s largest film and television recording complexes.

But commercial sector backing, says Kim, will extend far beyond cash investments, with broader alliances fostered through regular conversations.

She says: “As mayor, I will be a leader, but I don’t think politicians should know all the answers.

“I’ve always got out there and talked to people, and that will continue.

“I need to work with businesses to understand the support they need.”

Similarly valuable, says Kim, will be her direct link to Sir Keir Starmer and his front bench, which she says will channel commercial sector wants to key departments while highlighting the region’s prowess in sectors such as renewable energy, technology and life sciences to a wider audience.

She says: “Having a single point of contact in the region, a link to the Government who is at the end of a phone and who can go into bat for national infrastructure projects, has the potential to make such a difference.

“For example, I recently met a delegation of 60 Indian tech businesses that are thinking about investing in the North East, and spoke at a space conference about the region’s potential in that sector too.

“And I’m talking to businesses along the banks of the river about opportunities in green energy, and transferring that information back to Westminster to show how we’re leading the way in that sector.”

Kim adds: “That will all help build on the increased opportunities afforded by a Labour Government.

“As a Labour mayor, there is a clear set of shared values between the party and I, and an understanding too that my unrelenting focus is to make this region better.

“And the party’s commitment to devolving more power is music to my ears.

“We need more devolution, to give people greater choice closer to home; as a region, we are furthest away from Westminster and still rely on too many decisions being made there.

“But bringing more powers to the North East, and having more of a say about our economic future and the social issues that wrap around that, will help us grow.”

A ruling Labour Party, though, doesn’t mean Kim will operate in a red rose silo.

On the contrary, she has already stepped across the region’s political and geographical divide to forge links with Tees Valley Conservative counterpart Ben Houchen, who secured a third term as the area’s regeneration boss in May.

She says: “I’ve always said regional mayors are about place before party; we have to work together.

“I reached out to Ben very early on, to discuss the public transport that cuts across our respective boundaries.

“And we have sat down to talk about how we can better join up our approach.

“We have different views on how we might do that, but we need to find solutions so people can access opportunity across our entire region.

“And there will be more things we can work on together.

“Furthermore, I want to look at how we can build stronger links with Scotland and do similar things with North Yorkshire and Cumbria too.”

She adds: “I want to see child poverty reduced, I want people to feel the improvement in public transport, I want us to build more social housing and I want us to be known as the place where opportunity thrives.

“This region is the best place in the world, and it’s my absolute privilege to have the chance to make it even better.”

 

Photography by Mike Sreenan

http://www.northeast-ca.gov.uk

LinkedIn: Kim McGuinness