Where are we now?

The 600 job losses at the Royal Bank of Scotland have forced many to look at the reality of what keeps our local economy going. A decision taken 400 miles away has affected our town dramatically and we have had no say in it whatsoever.

We have many residents who commute to London every day and much of the money they earn returns to Southend, is spent in our shops - and we are delighted about this. However, it is mainly through the retail sector that their money creates new jobs and many of the shops they use are multinationals which do not use local lawyers, accountants, suppliers, IT specialists and many other service providers. Like RBS they too do not take local business into account in making their major decisions over employment and closures but we are delighted that they are employing local people whose money is spent in the local economy.

What Southend needs are more local businesses run by local people who are part of the community creating jobs for other local people. You will probably say at this point “What is local about a huge firm like Stobart? They are a massive multinational run by people who don’t live here and with no particular interest in Southend!”

The answer to this lies in the nature of the business which they are running and their wish and ability to expand. There are very few if any opportunities elsewhere in the airport industry in the south-east and they know that if they invest sufficient money they will gain a reasonable return on their investment, Their investment is calculated to create about 7,000 jobs (many of them highly paid) across the area and they will not be able to move to somewhere else at the drop of a hat. However, they will need to make a profit or feel the wrath of their shareholders.

Those 7,000 jobs are not the number they would employ at the airport but would include all the extra jobs in the area that their expansion would create. Many people in Southend already rely for work on the airport as it is at present, and unless we have an economically viable airport, those jobs will go the same way as those at RBS.

The other side of the coin!

At this point I would like to look at the situation that would take place if Stobart, because of local opposition, did not invest in the airport to make it viable. They might pack their bags and put it on the market where it might not be sold at all and continue its present decline. Under this scenario they might continue to have old noisy aircraft flying an unlimited number of flights which would scratch along until the airport fell into disuse. When it ultimately fails under them or a successor, the land would have to be used for something else. The Council is bound under what are known as “best value” directives from central government to get the most they can for the site.

Southend Council owns most of the land in that area and government would not allow a “brownfield” area such as the airport to simply stagnate. It would demand that “best value” be gained from the asset. What we would get would in effect be a new town and we know from previous experience elsewhere that whilst governments are happy to allow massive housing projects they are less than enthusiastic about building roads, hospitals and schools until an area grinds to a halt and suffers galloping economic decline through lack of public investment.

Some people such as those in large national construction companies would do well from this but Southend and the southern part of the Rochford would have become an overpopulated nightmare in an already grossly overcrowded corner of Essex. Is that what all those people making such a noise about the airport expansion want because that is what we are going to get if they have their way? If we think we will have traffic problems with the airport expansion, those issues will shrink into insignificance if the site is given over to housing with at least an extra 12,000 people going to work in their cars to Basildon and beyond because there will be no work locally.

Present government guidelines insist upon 30 or more buildings to the acre. This equates to just under 13,000 homes with at least 25,000 people. If you believe the hospital can cope with this or that the access roads to the north and west are adequate for the traffic this would create, you may well believe that we can afford to let the airport go. I do not.

What will happen now that the airport proposals have been accepted by the Minister

The details of the agreement are attached and if we assume that the airport becomes commercially successful, jobs will be created at the airport itself. Many of these will be skilled and high tech with high earnings. Local students will be awarded engineering apprenticeships at the new specialist college which will be needed to train young people in the expertise required for aircraft work. These high earners will not all live in Southend or Rochford but most will spend their money locally boosting other businesses locally.

There will be lower earners who will have secure jobs. For the less skilled earners in a community, security is extremely important and security is what they will have at the airport for the foreseeable future. Prior to that, many who are currently unemployed will be given opportunities of which they could only have dreamt previously.

Most of these local employed people will spend their money in Southend because they will live and work here. There will be more money going into the local economy and local service industries will flourish as they put money into each others’ businesses. There is likely to be an expansion of small manufacturing industry to support the associated airport companies already there. Economically there could be a virtuous cycle of investment and re-investment which would mean living in a town not held together by ever reducing government hand outs which will never match government promises.

This is not pie in the sky but simple uncomplicated micro-economics of which any A level economics student will be well aware. I believe we should look at our town as it is, stop thinking that we have some God given right to ever increasing wealth without earning it and ignore the double speak of Liberal Democrats and others who tell us that we can "have it all and have it now”. We can’t.