Northumberland Conservatives are working to make sure that the county's economy has a plan in place to continue to grow, despite competing pressures. Our plan is driven by the ideas of prosperity, growth and opportunity.

By prioritising six key areas of the county's economy, the Plan will help businesses to make the most of the county's natural assets and it will drive growth in the industries in which we already specialise. These are:

• Energy, offshore, wind and sub-sea
• Agri-tech
• Tourism and culture
• Rural scale-up
• Health care and life sciences
• Advanced manufacturing

There are 11,000 active businesses operating in these sectors, employing over 100,000 people. This council will create more jobs, by creating an environment in which those businesses can thrive. We have scrapped the council's former development company which wasted millions of pounds a year of taxpayers' money. In its place, Advance Northumberland will now get to work on aiding meaningful growth across the whole county.

Our plan will make sure the county's economy is resilient to the challenges posed by Brexit, and make sure it is well placed to make the most of the upcoming opportunities from North of Tyne devolution, the Borderlands Growth Deal and other changes which have come about since the last plan was prepared.

The new plan can be viewed in full here and is now in place following cabinet approval last week. The plan will create more and better jobs be they in our town centres, industrial sites and in more rural areas through our rural scale up programme.

Our economic plan goes hand in hand with the new and emerging Local Plan which replaces Labour’s plan to build 26,000 new houses in the county, including 2000 on greenbelt land. Our Local Plan will focus less on housing development, instead placing the emphasis on job creation and economic growth. Working in partnership with the Port of Blyth we have already demonstrated how the council can help aid growth in key industries.

It is now our plan, and we see it as our duty, to make sure that the whole county benefits from the same access to the conditions which create jobs and aid economic growth.