Marketing Humber’s new chair has pledged the business-backed organisation’s full support in ensuring the Energy Estuary doesn’t lose its footing in the race to Net Zero.
With concerns over the time it will take to deliver and bring up to speed new governance following the fracturing of the area’s local enterprise partnership in the devolution split, Bill Walker has pledged to be wherever required to ensure pole position leads to a podium place.
Having arrived in the region as sports editor of the Hull Daily Mail, he went on to pioneer business and education partnerships that became the envy of the world.
Going on to join the University of Hull to further foster knowledge exchange and strategic collaboration, he has now taken on the key figurehead role, and believes the bondholder organisation is perfectly placed to fill any void.
He said: “The Humber is at the forefront of the low carbon agenda. You cannot have Net Zero 海角视频 without Net Zero Humber - it is impossible - because of the make-up of what we have here.
“It is a really, really important place and the 10-point plan the government has come up with for the green recovery puts the Humber at the centre of that ambition.
“The big role that Marketing Humber can play is to market, in the broadest sense, what the agreed priorities are. So often we have seen - and I have been in the situation - where you have a very enthusiastic individual. You have to have the institutional and political backing for any follow up with any interest you are able to attract to ensure meaningful engagement.”
Mr Walker follows Andy Parkinson at the helm of the organisation, who in turn succeeded shipping boss Peter Aarosin as inaugural chair.
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“We have been a consistent business voice,” Mr Walker said. “A lot of what is coming is around industrial decarbonisation, the big stuff - green hydrogen, blue hydrogen, carbon capture and storage - hugely, hugely impressive and attracting international investment from the likes of Equinor, looking to build on the Humber, on what Siemens and Orsted have done and continue to do in offshore wind.
“The worry for me is that it is going to take an enormous amount of work to reorganise politically, and for them to get themselves set up to follow on from the Humber LEP and to work towards combined authority and mayoral elections. They are aiming for April 2022, even that - given what’s happening - is a bit of a push.
“While this part of the world, the Humber, gets sorted, the rest of the world isn’t going to stand still. It is ever so important the business community steps in and occupies that bit in the middle so opportunity isn’t lost in a political vacuum.”
The LEP’s annual meeting saw a Humber Leadership Board confirmed as taking on the big agenda, featuring the chairs of the emerging Hull and East Yorkshire LEP and the Greater Lincolnshire LEP, together with the leaders of the four unitary authorities.
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Concern about resources and time is front and centre for the huge ports, energy and decarbonisation remits that will remain.
“You have just got to look at Teesside, with an effective, well respected and listened to mayor, and how they are driving very similar messages to the Humber, and because they are further ahead in political structuring, then they seem to be getting a big backwind of support,” Mr Walker said. “We must make sure the Humber’s great opportunity isn’t lost while effort is put into that side of things.
“I would like Marketing Humber to play its role alongside the local authorities; to be able to provide a coherent business voice wherever we are - whether it is a meeting in Manchester, London or Antwerp - where there is an opportunity for the Humber there is some mandated voice that says this is what we care capable of, and this is how attractive and investment proposition the Humber is.
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“If Marketing Humber didn’t exist we would have to invent it. We are here, we have a track record, we now need to be able to deliver alongside local authorities and businesses what we need to deliver.”
Arriving in 1988, having previously covered Norwich City in his native Norfolk, he progressed from the sports desk - juggling the interests of Hull FC, Hull KR and the Tigers - to take on an assistant to the editor role. He immersed himself in a Newspapers in Education programme, a first exposure to public funding, building a classroom to welcome children into the newsroom to stimulate literacy interest.
With a golden thread of the acute awareness that if there was no interest in reading there would be no future readers, sports reports were a frequent way into young minds.
It won national awards and international interest; trips to New York, Washington, Stockholm and Argentina followed - helping the first business in education partnership launch with the CBI there.
He then became operations director for the Hull Daily Mail, looking after production processes, before joining the university, where he did some work alongside former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott, who had by then become a leading global force on UN climate change action.
“Before Covid and Brexit, the future of the planet was quite important, and the Humber can play a huge role in helping get this right.
“John Prescott said Al Gore spoke of it, how if we get it right in the Humber, we have a model that is transferable around the world - estuaries all around the world are facing similar issues, they have the most to lose and the most to gain.”
This was a strong theme his predecessor predicated during the Marketing Humber-hosted The Waterline Summit.
“The Waterline Summit was an amazing success, particularly switching it to online. It underlines the potential of Marketing Humber when you bring together the governor of the Bank of England and a prominent government minister, the chair of the Environment Agency and major industries, with representation from seven continents, talking about zero carbon and the climate, on the Humber - with 3,00 attendees. It was pretty remarkable, and there’s nothing else of that scale.
“I came here for the opportunity, and 30-odd years later I firmly believe this is where the opportunity is. It is a fabulous part of the world that doesn’t appreciate how much it has got and how good it is - it is not only people outside of it that underestimate how good it is.”