‘I cried for Hull during the financial crash but now there’s a buzz about the city’
‘BUZZ’: Mark Jones believes Hull has an exciting future. Tom Arran Commercial Photography
Mark Jones, Hull City Council’s Director of Regeneration, has received a Long Service Award in recognition of 25 years working for the local authority. He sat down with The Hull Story’s Rick Lyon to discuss his career and what he thinks the future holds for the city he loves
During his long and distinguished career in local government, Mark Jones has seen most things.
Hull City Council’s Director of Regeneration has witnessed the painful collapse of major industry. He’s seen an alarming increase in unemployment as a result of recession. And he has witnessed first-hand the tragic consequences of people struggling to cope with life’s challenges.
But he’s also watched Hull rise from the depths of despair. He’s seen the city unite under the City of Culture banner and rebuild with significant investment from big business.
Mr Jones, who was awarded an MBE in 2016 for services to investment and regeneration in Hull, would rather look forward than back though.
“There is a lot to do,” he says enthusiastically, “and I think we are going to have a positive year.
“We are going to start working on Queens Gardens, we’ve just got the go-ahead for the development of Albion Square, and the Maritime development is a really big one. I think they are all really important.
“People will see visible change again over the next two years with new developments, which is brilliant.”
There has, he says, been a change in attitude from within the city, as well as from the outside looking in.
“The Hull culture always used to be to never get too big for yourself,” says Mr Jones. “I think that leads to self-deprecation and us not shouting about ourselves, but I’ve always found when speaking to anyone from Hull when they are living or working somewhere else that they are intensely proud of coming from here.
“I think we have had a reasonable run over the last few years, and people are starting to believe.
“Over the last 20 or 30 years people here have taken a lot of knocks – the fishing industry, the docks, two or three recessions – and people talk about the north, never mind Hull, as if we were in somebody’s instep.
“The City of Culture helped us shine. But the City of Culture coming along with the likes of Siemens made us absolute diamonds, I think, especially in terms of that quiet confidence.”
It has, says Mr Jones, been a remarkable turnaround since the dark days of the financial crash and other significant setbacks, although he accepts the council – and the city in general – still face major challenges.
“I was fortunate when I started working to see Hull with full employment,” he says. “There was still poverty, but there was full employment because the fishing industry was still there and the docks were still there. It was one of the reasons we had so many department stores, because of the amount of money floating around, and it got spent very quickly.
“Since then I’ve seen Hull take a few kicks. When the financial crisis hit, I think 2008/2009 was probably my low point when I cried for Hull because of the amount of jobs we were haemorrhaging – 1,000 a month in manufacturing alone. Our employment rate went up to nearly 19% in a year and you think ‘how the hell are we going to get out of this one?’
LONG SERVICE: Mark Jones has worked for Hull City Council for 25 years.
“The getting out of it was pulling together and creating the City Plan, which everybody from the public and private sector locked on to, and we rolled our sleeves up.
“Hats off to the administration here because the city council was starting to get hit by big austerity cuts and they made the investment decisions to prepare for the City of Culture and then we started getting a sense of ‘actually, we can do this’.
“There is still a lot to do. We have benefitted over the last five years from inward investment from the likes of Siemens, RB, Smith and Nephew and Croda, which has created jobs, along with some of the big family companies like Arco and Rix.
“Some of the investment from the likes of Siemens was about the right time and the right place. RB was about leveraging the knowledge base that was already here and being able to compete with the other locations – we had to compete with Europe, the US and Asia Pacific. But again, it was that knowledge base, along with other factors, that acted as an incentive.
“One of the things we have been very keen to do is attach R&D (research and development) to the production side of things in Hull, as much as possible. If you have R&D you can define your own destiny to an extent.
“Now we have RB, Smith & Nephew, Croda, Group Atlantic – all of them have an R&D facility attached to their production. I think that stabilises the production side of things.
“They are working on the current product but then they are working on the one after the next.”
“The area of business we are missing at the moment is enough micro business formations and SMEs but that is starting to change and I think there is a buzz about Hull at the moment.”
So, looking forward again, how does he see Hull in the next five our 10 years?
“I think it will be a brighter picture, especially for the younger generation,” he says.
“Currently, we still have a lot of people with long-term, challenging conditions who are on unemployment support allowance. They have been further hit by things like Bedroom Tax and Universal Credit, so they aren’t getting the benefit that perhaps others are.
“That is a major challenge but there are things we are working on to improve that.
“We are hoping that the A63 Castle Street scheme will be approved soon. There is a five-year programme there worth over £400million – so how many people can we get off the long-term unemployment to work on that scheme? A five-year programme allows you to have two generations of apprentices, for example.
“So, we are going to try and lock that in. We cut our teeth on that with Siemens because when they came here they wanted 1,000 people. We assisted Siemens with their recruitment exercise and offered individual, bespoke training to people.
“The council do it because, despite getting a lot of criticism in other areas, people realise we are accountable and we do act with integrity and with people’s best interests at heart.”
He also thinks there will be more housing developments in the city, although he accepts space will be at a premium, and he wants other areas of Hull to replicate the example of the Fruit Market area – which is characterised by an eclectic mixture of independent businesses.
‘DISTINCTIVE’: Mark Jones believes Hull is a city unlike any other
“It helps define Hull as distinctive,” he says. “There is a lot of wealth in Beverley but it is like brand alley. You don’t see many independents. We want to offer something different.”
Mr Jones’ in tray is significant. As Director of Regeneration – a position he has held for three years – his responsibilities include, but are not exhaustive of: lead officer with responsibility and accountability for planning; economic development; highways and transportation; flooding and major projects.
With such a wide remit, priorities are always likely to fluctuate. However, there is one issue that stands out for Mr Jones.
“Care leavers,” he says, without hesitation. “That is such an important issue.
“It is about getting them in training and employment, into housing, and quite often it may involve mental health support because of past traumas.
“We normally have just over 200 care leavers a year. About 70 absolutely fly – they go off to university and get a grant from us and they really blossom. About 70 of them, you never see – they might go into the criminal justice system on that unfortunate trajectory. Then there are about 70 we are engaged with who kind of hover in-between.
“We were engaged with about 100 of that group last year and we had three deaths through suicide. That was tough and it was hard to pick the team up as well. But there are others who need our help and we’ve got to do it for them.”
It is, he insists, a collective effort required to provide young people leaving care with the support they need to secure employment. The council works with other public sector organisations, along with private business, to try and provide these opportunities and it is this, says Mr Jones, which is fundamental to his regeneration portfolio.
“Some of the services we have for young people are absolutely fantastic<” he says. “We engage with companies and organisations like the fire service and the university and basically say ‘we are corporate parents to these young people and you are our partners, can you give them some introductions to life in your institutions?’
“It might be work experience and things like this are important.
“It’s about trust. We obviously have procurement rules but we try as much as possible to work with local companies and we will say to them, ‘we know what is important to you and that is running a successful and expanding business, but what is important to us as well is our care leavers’. So we try to help get them into employment that way.
“We don’t do economic development to build nice shopping centres. Yes, that’s part and parcel of it, but personally I get greater fulfilment when someone walks through the door and they’ve got a job. That’s important to me.”
At 62-years-old, Mr Jones doesn’t intend slowing down any time soon.
“I’m relatively late in my career, so when I don’t want to get out of bed in a morning any more, I won’t, he says. “But I’ve never had that feeling. There’s plenty to do and there’s never a day the same. It’s not without challenges but I’ve got a great team.”
He can’t stay in bed. When he looks forward, there’s too much to do.
Editor’s note: interview conducted pre-coronavirus lockdown
