Professor Mark Shucksmith OBE
Professor Mark Shucksmith is the Director of NISR. Mark writes this blog on the potential of combined authorities following his attendance at the OECD conference in Bologna, Italy 23rd-25th October 2013.
As the North-East prepares to establish a new Combined Authority, covering the seven council areas of Northumberland, Durham, Newcastle, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland from April 2014, what lessons might be learned from experience elsewhere? Last week I attended the OECD’s conference on Rural-Urban Partnerships, which presented lessons learned from case studies in 11 countries around the world. Most interesting were the experiences of Nuremberg in Germany (which I studied as one of OECD’s experts), Geelong in Australia, and Rennes in France.