With more than two million residents, 90,000 businesses and a £72bn economy, Hampshire and the Solent has the scale, strengths and assets to play a much bigger role in the UK's future growth. Yet the region has lost ground to many competing economies, with business and employment growth falling behind national averages.
Against this backdrop, Prior + Partners launched its new thought piece, Hampshire and the Solent: A New Regional Ambition, at the South Coast CPS Conference in Southampton yesterday, Wednesday 11 November. The report was also the focus of our panel discussion, A Big Vision for Hampshire and the Solent, chaired by Prior + Partners Director Tom Venables, with fellow Director Polly Barker joining Cllr Lorna Fielker, Labour Candidate for Mayor; Jonathon Clarke, Chief Operating Officer at Southampton Football Club; Helen Curel of the Isle of Wight Chamber of Commerce; and Eleanor Young of Blackstock Partnership, adviser to the Oxford Growth Commission, to discuss the region’s economic potential and what needs to change to translate ambition into investment and delivery.
A new regional ambition
Drawing on its experience across Hampshire and the Solent, the UK and internationally, Prior + Partners has developed the report using economic research and spatial analysis, brought together through Place+, its digital placemaking platform. It explores how a more ambitious and joined-up approach to planning, investment and development could unlock the region’s potential.
The research highlights the region’s considerable strengths in defence, aerospace and maritime, advanced manufacturing, and digital and technologies. However, employment has been falling across several of these established industries. Southampton and Portsmouth have also grown more slowly than many comparable cities, while challenges around graduate retention, skills, housing and transport continue to hold back wider growth.
The report argues that the opportunity now is to think and act at the scale of the region. The creation of the Hampshire and the Solent Combined County Authority, alongside the emerging Spatial Development Strategy and Local Growth Plan, provides a chance to bring greater focus to investment and establish a shared direction for the decades ahead.
At the heart of the report are three spatial ideas for how the region could evolve. Greater Solent brings together Southampton, Portsmouth, the towns between them and the Isle of Wight as one connected coastal economy, with the scale and assets to become one of the UK’s top five city regions. North Hampshire Super Cluster proposes strengthening the economic corridor from Andover to Farnborough, building on its established strengths in advanced manufacturing, aerospace, defence and technology. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Cultural Landscape recognises the region’s distinctive natural, cultural and heritage assets as a major part of its economic strength and appeal.
To turn this ambition into action, Prior + Partners identifies six priorities: establishing a shared regional vision; targeting investment in the region’s economic engines; protecting and investing in its cultural landscape; taking a more ambitious approach to regional transport; connecting skills, talent and innovation; and strengthening regional governance and embracing new delivery models.
“Where and how the region grows matters just as much as how much it builds. We have an opportunity to better connect homes, jobs and infrastructure, while building on the distinctive qualities that make Hampshire and the Solent such a special place to live, work and invest.”
Polly Barker, Director, Prior + Partners
The South Coast CPS Conference, now in its seventh year, brought together developers, investors, housebuilders, local authorities, consultants and business leaders from across the region for two days of discussion around property, development, investment and the future of the South Coast.
