Our cash flow crisis

PLUS: BoJo mixes up Teesside and Tyneside AND: Why are we producing too many hairdressers but not enough digital workers? Read in browser   By ROB PARSONS   🔶 May 3 2022  It's a trend that seems irreversible. As more and more of us sort out our financial affairs online, col

PLUS: BoJo mixes up Teesside and Tyneside AND: Why are we producing too many hairdressers but not enough digital workers? Read in browser

By ROB PARSONS   🔶 May 3 2022  It's a trend that seems irreversible. As more and more of us sort out our financial affairs online, cold hard cash is in decline and there are ever fewer places to get hold of it. And the latest analysis by the House of Commons Library shows it's two parts of Northern England which are at the sharp end of bank branch and cash machine closures.  One part of Greater Manchester, the constituency of Cheadle in Stockport, has seen a steeper drop in the number of cash machines than anywhere else in the UK, from 69 in July 2018 to 37 this February. And a few miles away in South Yorkshire, the constituency of Sheffield Hallam has just 26 ATMs, with its rate of 2.8 per 10,000 residents the second-lowest across England and Wales. Its total is down 16% from 31 in July 2018. The constituencies of Cheadle and Sheffield Hallam are among the hardest hit. Graphic: Lisa Walsh Consumer group Which? says millions of people who don't use digital banking – especially the elderly and vulnerable – could be "cut adrift" by ATM and bank branch closures. And its estimate of ATMs in Sheffield Hallam is even lower, counting just 25 of which 18 are free to use. Other constituencies identified as struggling include Wirral West, Penistone and Stocksbridge and Hazel Grove. Sheffield Hallam Labour MP Olivia Blake told this newsletter: "I know many of my constituents agree that more must be done to protect people who don't have access to a bank account or bank card or simply aren't ready to move to digital payments. We cannot leave these groups behind." As Tommy Lumby of Reach's Data Unit writes, across the UK there were 52,969 cash machines in February, down by 12,968 (20%) from 65,937 in July 2018 and equivalent to 7.9 per 10,000 residents. This was almost completely driven by a decline in free-to-use machines. Which? is calling for the Government to deliver on its promise from 2020 by including legislation to protect cash in this month's Queen's Speech. For its part, the Treasury is aware that "cash remains vital for millions of people and we are committed to protecting access to cash across the UK. A spokesman said: "That's why we have consulted on plans for new laws to make sure people only need to travel a reasonable distance to pay in or take out cash, and have already legislated to enable shops to offer cashback to customers without them having to make a purchase." PM's compass lets him down as he mixes up Teesside and Tyneside Boris Johnson was mobbed by locals as he visited Whitley Bay It's the time of year when the smallest slip-up by a politician is seized upon with relish by their opponents. And Boris Johnson gifted Labour an open goal last night during his visit to the North East after mixing up Tyneside and Teesside in a now-deleted tweet. As ChronicleLive reports, the PM took a trip to Whitley Bay to speak to locals during a pre-election visit and went into the Whitley Whaler chippy where he ordered a "small chips" before strolling along the promenade.  He (or more likely a member of his team) tweeted a picture of himself in Whitley Bay, but said he was in Teesside. The PM was on Teesside earlier in the day, having been to Hartlepool, and took a tour of the town's power station along with Hartlepool MP Jill Mortimer. North of Tyne Mayor, Jamie Driscoll said: "Hardly surprising that Boris Johnson tweeted he was in Teesside when he was in Whitley Bay - he has no moral compass." While in Hartlepool, the PM said it was "highly likely" one of the Government's eight planned nuclear plants to meet electricity demand would be heading to Teesside, as Sue Kirby reports for TeessideLive. Also on the campaign trail was Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who visited East Ardsley in West Yorkshire. As Sebastian McCormick reports for LeedsLive, the Leeds-educated Minister insists "people are voting on local issues" rather than national ones and care more about road improvements than Westminster. A message from BVCA: When a business backed by private capital succeeds, so does the community in which it's based. Yet for years, the private capital sector has been under scrutiny. Until now, there hasn't been a conversation about the economic contribution of private equity and venture capital-backed businesses. But a new independent report found these businesses employed 2 million workers last year. That represents 6% of the total jobs in the UK. Find out more in EY's latest report. Starmer's 'mud-slinging' claim as 'beer-gate' pressure continues Keir Starmer talks to Labour councillor Beccy Cooper during a campaign visit to Worthing this weekend Meanwhile despite his party's efforts to focus attention on the cost-of-living crisis, Sir Keir Starmer is unable to shake off questions about whether he broke lockdown rules by drinking a beer during a visit to Durham last year The Labour leader says there is a "stark contrast" between the gathering in the constituency office of local MP Mary Foy last year and the rule-breaking in Downing Street that has seen Boris Johnson fined by police. And as Conservative MPs continue to pressurise Durham Police to look again at the event, he accused the Tories of "mud-slinging" while on BBC Radio 4's Today show this morning. Asked if there has been any contact from Durham Police in recent weeks, he said: "The police looked at this months ago and came to a clear conclusion that was 'no rules were broken', and that's because no rules were broken." At the time of the gathering relating to Sir Keir, non-essential retail and outdoor venues were open but social distancing rules, which included a ban on indoor mixing between households, remained in place. Animosity from the row saw rival MPs from County Durham clash at Parliament's terrace bar, as Westminster Editor Dan O'Donoghue reports. North West Durham Tory MP Richard Holden accused Ms Foy of "berating and grabbing" him at the exclusive Stranger's bar for MPs in Westminster on Tuesday. 'Hand control of post-16 education to North's metro mayors' Professor Helen Marshall of the University of Salford and Southport MP Damien Moore are on our podcast this week The UK turns out way more hairdressers than it actually needs, former government Minister Lord David Sainsbury told an audience at Manchester's Science and Industry Museum last week. Not just a few more - but something like 50% more hairdressers than our economy requires. And at the same time, a lack of skilled workers in the technical areas prized by industry is putting off big companies from investing in cities like Manchester's. There are some 11,500 job vacancies in digital jobs across Greater Manchester and 54% of employers across the region cannot fill their job vacancies. Clearly something is going wrong in the way the city's education system provides young people with the skills they need for the world of work, with many further education colleges equipping them with qualifications that employers don't need and that don't serve the city's wider interests. The question is what to do about it. And at the Science and Industry Museum event there were growing calls for central government to hand control of the whole system of post-16 education over to local leaders like Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham. Professor Helen Marshall, Vice Chancellor of the University of Salford, told our podcast that the drop was down to the fact that since Tony Blair's premiership in the 1990s teenagers have been pushed towards university rather than more vocational qualifications. She backed Andy Burnham's call for greater powers and said the Government should "be more confident in districts like Greater Manchester" as the needs of its job market were different to those in Birmingham or Bristol. Readers of The Northern Agenda will be all too familiar with the regional inequalities holding our region back. And as investigative journalist Sam Bright writes for this newsletter today, such divides are borne of long-term decline but "are also a distinctly modern phenomenon". The author of the new book 'Fortress London: Why we need to save the country from its capital' says politicians of all colours need to better appreciate how these inequalities have sharpened over the past decade. Scroll down to the bottom of this email for the full article. Could bus reforms help tackle climate and cost-of-living crises? South Yorkshire bus services have been slated by passengers and politicians Last summer a report by United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston set out how bus services in South Yorkshire and other areas of the country have been "scaled back dramatically or made unaffordable" since they were privatised in 1986. And with the county poised to elect a new metro mayor this week, the leading expert on extreme poverty and human rights has added his voice to an open letter calling on all candidates to take serious action around bus services. The letter by the Our Better Buses for South Yorkshire Campaign, also signed by figures such as the Bishop of Doncaster and Oxfam's Head of Inequality Policy, says all candidates should make a 'better bus pledge'. They say this should include a commitment to take a final decision within two years of election on whether to follow Greater Manchester's example and take buses under public control.   The letter says the next mayor "will face two emergencies: the cost of living and the climate crisis". And it adds: "We believe that a single policy could start addressing both issues: bringing buses into public control." Meanwhile the Trades Union Congress has written to all candidates saying it expects the mayor to begin the statutory investigation into franchising within 100 days of taking office, complete the franchising assessment within 24 months of taking office. Find out whether they will or not at 6pm tonight as South Yorkshire Live holds an online mayoral hustings. Meanwhile Liverpool City Region mayor Steve Rotheram - one of those planning to go down the franchising route - has written to local bus operators demanding they take down "inexcusable" adverts promoting a controversial American evangelist. Mr Rotheram has written to Stagecoach and Arriva demanding they remove adverts promoting Franklin Graham from their fleets. The son of US preacher Billy Graham and a close friend of former president Donald Trump has previously described same-sex marriage as a sin.  The mayor said: "To say that I'm angry that the views of a known hate preacher – who has an appalling track record of homophobic and Islamophobic views – are being displayed anywhere in our city region would be an understatement." Lease of life for Rochdale's neo-gothic masterpiece  A carving of an angel inside Rochdale Town, which opened in 1871 Often described as a 'neo-gothic masterpiece', Rochdale's Grade-I listed town hall is considered one of the finest municipal buildings in the country. Designed by William Crossland, it opened in 1871 as a symbol of the town's industrial might – its ornate stylings rivalled only by the Palace of Westminster according to Historic England. While its imposing, quasi-medieval magnificence marks it out as one of the most impressive buildings in the North, the ravages of time have inevitably taken their toll, writes Local Democracy Reporter Nick Statham. Problems blighting the building over recent years include a crumbling drainage system and a leaking roof, while a digital scan by Salford University revealed a treasure trove of forgotten rooms and obscured features. But now a £16m restoration of the Victorian gem –  part funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund – is well under way. Around two thirds of the town haul is being revamped under the first two phases of the project – with a third possibly in the pipeline. Scheduled to reopen in 2023, the revamp will restore many period features within the building and create a new permanent exhibition as well as boasting a heritage skills studio where people can train in conservation skills. Nearly 200 children a year kicked out of primary schools in the North Anne Longfield appears at the Northern Agenda Live conference in Newcastle  Exclusions from primary school should be banned by 2026 - that's the view of former children's commissioner Anne Longfield in a new report. And the publication by the Commission on Young Lives also argues schools should not be able to receive a "good" or "outstanding" grade from Ofsted without hitting new targets on including vulnerable pupils. But just how many children are being excluded from primary schools? The latest analysis by Claire Miller of Reach's Data Unit shows there were 190 permanent exclusions of primary pupils in the North during the 2019/20 school year (the most recent figures available). Across England, there were 739 permanent exclusions of primary-age pupils in 2019/20. That was down from 1,067 in 2018/19, although the pandemic, and restrictions on the number of pupils who could be in schools, is likely to have had an impact. Ms Longfield, who grew up in West Yorkshire, said: "Look behind the headlines of the tragic deaths, acts of serious violence and criminal exploitation of our young people over recent years and so often you see a pattern of children disengaging and falling out of school and into harm." Sign up to The Northern Agenda Has a friend forwarded you this edition of The Northern Agenda? You can sign up to receive the latest email newsletter direct to your inbox every weekday by clicking on this link.

Northern Stories Hundreds attended Ewood Park yesterday morning A football fan from Sudan who recently moved to the UK said "now I'm feeling like a part of the community" after Blackburn Rovers hosted Eid prayers on their pitch. Hundreds attended Ewood Park on Monday morning – Blackburn say this is the first time in the country a football club has hosted Eid prayers on the pitch. Sudan-born Ahmed Khalifa, 37, who moved to Blackburn from the UAE around four months ago, said he was "so happy" to see so many people at the Sky Bet Championship club's ground. As Covid-19 restrictions were eased, a bumper 1.8 million people returned to a Yorkshire landmark building, helping kickstart local economic recovery after one of the toughest of years. An annual review says after the pandemic hit, securing grant funding of £2.6 million allowed Halifax' Grade I listed Piece Hall to stay open and resulting support given to business tenants in the form of rent holidays helped put it in a strong position to attract visitors with a wide range of experiences when it re-opened. Bin strikes which were set to start today affecting 220,000 homes across Manchester have been called off as workers won a pay rise worth up to 22%. Staff at Biffa, the company which collects waste for Manchester council, voted to take industrial action after the company offered some staff a pay rise of just 17p an hour. But Biffa has now offered a two-year pay deal worth 22% for drivers, 11% for loaders and between 8 to 11% for street scene workers, according to unions. The leader of Lancaster City Council believes she may have been targeted by far-right political activists after vandalism at her home. The Green Party's Caroline Jackson was left shaken and disturbed after the front of her home was vandalised. The incident comes as police are investigating 'inflammatory' leaflets distributed in Lancaster on Sunday, which were described as racist and divisive.  A much-loved former councillor from Salford has died in hospital after a short illness at the age of 70. Described as kind, generous and a popular community figure, Janice Heywood died after suffering from a heart attack while at Royal Lancaster Infirmary. Mrs Heywood served as a Liberal Democrat councillor for Weaste and Seedley from 2004 until 2011 after being encouraged by her community to do so following the car parking issue at the hospital in the early 2000s. Opinion  By investigative journalist and author Sam Bright  Why we need to save the country from its capital  Sam Bright is originally from Huddersfield and now lives in London The popular history of regional inequality is one of long-term decline: the economic lifeblood extracted from former industrial areas during the 1980s, steadily replaced with low-paid, insecure labour. But Britain's regional divides are also a distinctly modern phenomenon – exacerbated over the last decade, even though these new wounds have been imprinted on the grooves forged by earlier battles. In 2010, venerated public health expert Sir Michael Marmot called on the Government to address the social causes of poor health – including poverty, homelessness and insecure work – and to distribute resources equitably. But Marmot found in 2020 that the exact opposite had occurred. Government spending on the key social determinants of health had fallen, and the funding was allocated in a less equitable way. Thus, from 2012-14 to 2016-18, almost half of local authorities in the North experienced a fall in life expectancy among men, women or both, according to the Northern Health Science Alliance. Byline Times has further calculated that healthy life expectancy fell in 80% of 'Red Wall' areas for either men or women from 2009-11 to 2017-19. So, while men in some parts of Blackpool are expected to live for 68.3 years, the life expectancy for men in the wealthiest areas of Kensington and Chelsea is 95.3 years. Indeed, this is the pivotal regional divide in modern Britain: between London and the rest. The capital and the broader south east are the only UK regions to exceed the nation's productivity average. For every minute on the train from London to Yorkshire, incomes fall by £102. Property prices in London are roughly double the England-wide average, incubating vast inequalities between the benefactors of that wealth and everyone else – both inside and outside the capital. "When I sold my house and when my mother-in-law sold her house recently, everyone who came to look around was from London," Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips tells me. "What's more – they come and they live mortgage free. A friend of mine is a midwife, she's not a wealthy woman but she happened to buy a house in London in the early 1990s. She managed to buy a seven-bedroom house in the poshest part of Birmingham without a mortgage." Kids on free school meals in London are also twice as likely to go to university as their socioeconomic peers in the North, while – overall – 49% of students in London go to university, compared with roughly 35% in every other English region. In the realm of education at least, this divergence has not been a long-standing trend. Back in the early 2000s, London's schools were at the back of the pack – the runt of the litter. Now, the capital's schools lead on almost every metric. In the most deprived areas of London, 35% of secondary schools are classified as outstanding and close to 90% are either good or outstanding. In the most deprived areas of the north, less than 10% are rated as outstanding and less than 50% are either good or outstanding. As the Northern Agenda has exposed, there are eight Parliamentary constituencies in England where there are no schools or sixth form colleges – either independent or state-run – offering A-Levels. Six of these constituencies are in the north. A 2016 report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that 10 of the 12 cities that are suffering the worst levels of relative decline are in the north of England, namely: Rochdale, Burnley, Bolton, Blackburn, Hull, Grimsby, Middlesbrough, Bradford, Blackpool, and Wigan. All of these areas voted for Brexit. In contrast, the south of England didn't feature among the top-25 most declining cities. Journalists and politicians are infatuated with historical allegories – presumably believing that the weight of the past buttresses their arguments in the present day. However, while the politically inclined have cast their minds back to Thatcher, and the New Labour years, to explain Britain's regional divides – and the fall of the Red Wall – they have missed seismic shifts that have been occurring under their noses. There needs to be a better appreciation of how these inequalities have intensified over the past decade – further swelling our capital, London, that has already well exceeded its capacity – while more peripheral areas have suffered from stagnating wealth and poorer health. This matters both to the Conservative Party – which has ostensibly promised to rebalance Britain – and Labour, which has to contend with the uncomfortable truth that, even in the face of Tory-imposed austerity, left-behind voters have dropped their longstanding loyalty to progressive politics. Fortress London: Why we need to save the country from its capital by Sam Bright is published by HarperNorth on May 10. Thank you for reading - If you have been forwarded this email and would like to sign up, you can do that right here. Contact us:  You can get in touch via email - rob.parsons@reachplc.com - or via our Twitter page.

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