Hull City Council is developing an Economic Strategy for the city and asking businesses and residents for their views.
The aim is to boost employment, make the city more attractive to visitors and both existing and new businesses and to increase productivity and wages.
The strategy will build on the city’s achievements over the past decade. It will respond to the immediate effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on local businesses and industries.
It will also help make sure the council is able to secure investment from Government and attract new businesses into the city to help to create jobs and improve skills.
The results will help the council to make sure that the strategy is focused on the right priorities, industries and areas of the city.
Councillor Daren Hale, portfolio holder for Economic Investment, Regeneration, Planning, Land and Property for Hull City Council, said: “In the past few years, Hull has seen billions of pounds in public and private sector investment and celebrated a year as City of Culture 2017.
“Last year, before Covid, Hull was seeing its highest levels of employment and highest numbers of new businesses starting up in the city, while also exceeding housing completion targets.
“But now we find ourselves in an economically challenging environment as we recover from and learn to deal with the longer term effects of the Covid 19 pandemic. The economic impacts of the pandemic on already disadvantaged people is a primary focus, alongside the opportunities of devolution and closer working with our neighbours to deliver economic growth.
“In order to respond to these challenges and take advantage of Hull’s significant strengths and opportunities, we have developed the Economic Strategy for consultation. This will provide a framework to ensure the city benefits from opportunities ahead, linking in to Hull’s Health and Wellbeing and Place Based Strategies and contributing to the new Hull and East Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership.
“This strategy does not attempt to do everything. That is just not possible. But we intend to provide confidence to investors about this city’s positive direction of travel and provide a focus for the medium term as we recover from an unprecedented period of economic challenge and move forward to embrace new opportunities.”
The strategy is broken down into three key themes:
- People – what can we do to make sure that everyone in Hull is able to take advantage of opportunities and benefit from its successes?
- Place – what can we do to build on the best of Hull’s business, leisure, and cultural offer?
- Productivity – what can we do to improve prosperity by creating high skills, high paid jobs?
The closing date for this survey is Friday 11th June. All completed surveys will be entered into a prize draw to win £250 of high street shopping vouchers. You can take part in the survey here.