In profile: Kate Willard OBE, Estuary Envoy, Thames Estuary

It is billed as the UK’s number one growth opportunity and, in post-Brexit Britain, the UK’s growth gateway to the world.

The person entrusted with spearheading this growth is Kate Willard OBE, who was appointed Estuary Envoy in 2019. Originally trained as an actress, Willard can claim to have had an unusual start to her career in infrastructure, but her creative background stood her in good stead during more than a decade spent with Esken, formerly Stobart Group.

“I spent a long time with them looking at infrastructure projects of different kinds really,” Willard said, “particularly around aviation but also road and rail connectivity as well. A great group to work with and a really interesting opportunity to get involved in infrastructure projects.”

It was at Esken that Willard also got involved in managing relationships with government, with local enterprise partnerships and other bodies in different parts of the UK. “I was seeing it, I suppose, from both sides of the coin,” she said, “from the government and local government policy objectives as well as from the corporate side so it was a really good grounding in terms of understanding how transport and infrastructure needs to work.”

VISION FOR GROWTH

The work to redevelop and grow the Thames Estuary region was started by Lord Heseltine, when the government established the Thames Estuary 2050 Commission, and concluded by Sir John Armitt. This report found that relying on organic growth creeping along the Estuary from the City of London was highly unlikely to deliver the strategic growth and opportunity that the region needed, despite its unrivalled connectivity to the rest of the world.

“Those trade links, those river links to the rest of the world are already established,” Willard said. “There is extraordinary opportunity there both in terms of natural habitat, in terms of places to live, places to visit, but also places to do business. We’ve got sites available and we’ve got some great businesses. And importantly, government’s conclusion was this is a coherent economic geography. This isn’t a construct, just because the Estuary happens to be in one place, actually it has a critical mass of opportunity, and a critical mass of economy, which means that it is credible, effectively. So you’ve got a credible economic geography, with existing international reach.”

ENVOY APPOINTMENT

To drive this potential growth, government decided to establish a public-private board, with both a chairperson and a Thames Estuary Envoy. Appointed to both positions in 2019, Willard initially thought the dual role was essentially one and the same thing. However, as Envoy she can go far beyond her usual chairing responsibility and exercise considerably more latitude.

“As the Envoy I’m responsible to nobody and accountable to nobody,” she explained, “not the board, not the government. I am, however, responsible and accountable to the Estuary. Now what that means is that if I need to be quite fleet of foot, if I need to be agile, if I need to say something which might be politically a bit sensitive, or if for whatever reason I want to go out on a limb because I see a risk that I think’s worth taking, I can do that.”

This means that not only does Willard chair the Growth Board, she can also act as a spokesperson for the Estuary, championing it at every opportunity.

“We’re a very sleeves rolled up board,” Willard said, “we’re all about getting things done. Our board is super focused on growth, and it’s super focused on green growth.”

CAPITAL CONNECTIVITY

The Thames Estuary is backed by government as the UK’s number one growth opportunity, owing largely to its proximity to London.

“This isn’t a London-centric policy, but you can’t ignore the fact that we are close to London and that it is an internationally-iconic city,” Willard said. “We’re in a post-transitional economy, and with the best will in the world if we want some quick wins in terms of new international trade partnerships, we are credible on that international stage, and that’s not to say that places in other parts of the UK are not credible, but put simply investors in China, investors in Australia, investors in the States they know London, they know the Thames Estuary. So I think we’ve got a bit of a front foot advantage there, in terms of international credibility.”

The other factor in the region’s favour is the unswerving support of the government, even during the pandemic period. “We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of the government backing for the estuary at the moment,” Willard said. “We have just had some really good news around further, ongoing support for the Thames Estuary Growth Board, and that further investment for us was not money that was found accidentally down the back of the Chancellor’s sofa. That is investment that the government has proactively decided to put into the Thames Estuary, because it believes there is real opportunity there.”

THE GREEN BLUE

2020 was spent recruiting the private sector members to the board and developing its strategy: ‘The Green Blue’.

As part of its Green Blue plan, the Growth Board often chooses to back existing projects like the Lower Thames Crossing and the London Resort, but sometimes it decides it needs to innovate.

“A really good example of that is hydrogen,” said Willard. “We are commissioning a hydrogen investment strategy to look at both supply and demand, the full commercial lifecycle of a hydrogen operation, including everything from production, transportation, storage and fuelling for hydrogen, and looking at that across a number of applications, obviously as a vehicle fuel but also potentially as domestic and other applications.”

At other times the board finds its place in existing national issues, like housing. While it is not its job to build houses, the board has identified a role to play in the relationship between houses and infrastructure. “What we’re doing in that housing arena,” Willard said,” is helping local authorities with the infrastructure requirements to enable them to get their housing sites away.“

PANDEMIC CHALLENGE

While the last 12 months have been a torrid time for many sectors of the economy to varying degrees, the Thames Estuary growth board has managed to keep its plans on course by maintaining its focus on growth, rather than concerning itself with survival or recovery.

“The government and prime minister are looking for growth propositions,” Willard said. “We’ve already commissioned our investment strategies, and because we weren’t asked to do anything differently that means we’re very well placed to deliver growth, because we haven’t had that very complicated job that our local authority colleagues had, for example.

“Psychologically it was a lovely place for us to be because it means that right the way through the pandemic, we’ve been working on that very bright and positive agenda, which is all about growth.”

LEVERAGING LONDON’S MAJOR PORTS

The Thames Estuary contains the capital’s two largest ports: Tilbury and London Gateway, as well as Purfleet, an enormous European ro-ro port in Thurrock. Leading on water freight for the Thames Estuary Growth Board is Perry Glading, Willard’s Deputy Chair, who spent 18 years as Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer at the Port of Tilbury.

Glading has been actively supporting the joint submission for freeport status from a partnership between Tilbury and London Gateway, along with Ford at Dagenham and the Thames Enterprise Park.

“Now that in itself is a significant message,” Glading said, “where you get two, three major companies working together for the area. When I was at Tilbury, one of the things that struck me was that we have 20 million people within 100 miles of our port. That opportunity is significant.”

If successful, freeport status for the area will mean that it can import goods and re-export them without having to pay UK tariffs. Taxes only become payable when the goods leave a freeport and are transported somewhere else in the UK.

So why does Glading believe that the Thames Estuary region deserves freeport status? Part of it stems from the levelling up agenda. Although this usually refers to the perception that economic opportunities are concentrated in London and the South East, Glading argues that there are significant areas of underdevelopment and deprivation in the Thames Estuary region, including the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, which is ranked as one of the top five local authorities for deprivation by some measures.

“There are some significant areas of underdevelopmentand serious deprivation in and around the Thames,” he said, “so part of our focus to be a freeport is to level up and bring in this unparalleled link that the Thames has around the world.”

The global reach and reputation of London as a trading hub is also likely to attract investment, and Glading argues that the area has the right catchment area in terms of people and skills. “The number of people is there, the skills are there, what logistics needs to do is bind that together, but it also has to look at how we can mature and improve the infrastructure to allow the seamless movement of cargo and people around the river.”

THE JOURNEY AHEAD

Looking ahead to how the Thames Estuary will grow and develop over the coming decade, Willard believes that the logistics will be greener, more seamlessly joined up and have increased international reach. She also envisages that the area will attract not just business investors, but people who wish to move to live and work there too.

“We anticipate it will be the investment location of choice internationally,” she said, “so it will become a magnet for investment, but secondly and touching on Perry’s point about levelling up, we are being very very careful when we look across all of our growth plans that individuals and communities are not left behind, that there is an inclusivity in our programme and our plans and therefore we would also like the Estuary to be a place of choice for people to live.

“So a place of choice for investors and a place of choice for people to live. And I think if you have both of those things you’ve effectively done your job.”

The Thames Estuary Growth Board is always looking to work collaboratively with interested partners, for example on hydrogen or river freight. If there is an area or project where you think you could work with the board, please do not hesitate to contact them via their website.

*www.thamesestuary.org.uk/
 

Published On: 04/03/2021 17:00:06

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