By Ben Houchen, Tees Valley Mayor

Across Teesside we’ve spent the last few years proving that growth comes when you remove barriers to investment, back businesses and move quickly to turn opportunity into jobs.

The clearest example of this is at Teesworks, now the largest industrial regeneration project in the UK. On the land where the Redcar steelworks once stood, 2,000 acres of former industrial site are being brought back into productive use for new industry. What had become a symbol of industrial decline here in Teesside is now being transformed to welcome industries that will shape the next generation of British manufacturing.

Investment is already arriving at scale. SeAH Wind has built Europe’s largest offshore wind monopile factory on the site, employing thousands of people to manufacture the foundations for offshore wind turbines. Alongside it, construction is underway on the UK’s first carbon capture and storage facility, and new opportunities are emerging in AI, logistics and advanced manufacturing.

But our ambitions for Teesside’s go well beyond one site or sector. We are also home to the UK’s only Investment Zone dedicated to digital, creative and tech sectors, centred in Hartlepool and Middlesbrough. At the same time, Darlington is rapidly becoming a growing centre for civil service jobs in the north, while plans for a major care and health innovation zone in Stockton aim to position our region at the forefront of health and life science innovation.

What matters most is what these investments means for local people. These are skilled, well-paid jobs in industries with a long-term future.

Regeneration on this scale works when regional leadership and business pull in the same direction, and that’s what we’re seeing across Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool.

If we want businesses to bring investment, jobs and growth, it’s crucial that local leaders create the conditions that allow those investments to happen. When that partnership works, it creates real momentum.

That’s exactly the conversation I’ll be having with Rain Newton-Smith, Chief Executive of the Confederation of British Industry.

Our discussion will explore how regional leadership and business should work together to unlock the growth people across the UK deserve to see, and how stronger partnership between industry, local leaders and national Government can deliver the infrastructure Britain needs to compete.

Teesside’s story shows what’s possible when ambition is matched with delivery and we allow business to get on and invest. If we want to see more growth across the UK, we need more partnerships exactly like this.

Sign up to the Mayor’s session with CBI Chief Executive Rain Newton-Smith here