Growing Surrey: mapping Surrey's post-Covid growth strategy

The University of Surrey is a key stakeholder in the county of Surrey. On the basis of strong, cooperative partnerships in a host of areas, the Department of Politics was commissioned by the Future Economy Surrey Commission to carry out a thorough appraisal of the impact of Covid on Surrey’s business and knowledge sectors, aviation, healthcare. Commended for its uniquely detailed analysis, the report entitled Charting Surrey’s Post-Covid Rescue, Recovery and Growth (PDF), launched November 2020, produced key policy recommendations, the most vital of which are:

• Outlining a comprehensive growth-based strategy for the county, allowing it to recover. from the impact of Covid (and to a lesser extent, Brexit) in the short, medium and long-term;
• Clarifying and supporting Surrey’s “growth governance” key government, business and sectoral leaders (within aviation, healthcare and the knowledge economy) and particular modes of engagement, collaboration and innovation needed to implement this strategy.

The Department of Politics has since been asked to consider providing further project-based assistance to a variety of local stakeholders in providing a second report to facilitate these two policy recommendations.

Constituting new research activity that builds on existing research and collaboration, and working in partnership with key policy-makers to provide impactful analysis, this proposal therefore will unpack those policy recommendations

The key objective is to produce a clear, workable, growth-based strategy to directly assist businesses, sectoral leaders and policy-makers in helping Surrey to regain its former status as a uniquely high-value, high-growth economy, in the wake of Covid and Brexit’s damaging impact on the gross value-added levels (GVA), employment, productivity and outputs of the county. This includes two vital issues. First, identifying those areas of strength in Surrey that can help drive growth in the short-term (e.g. SMEs, Covid-research, health-tech, digital infrastructure, AI, high-end automotive and space-based tech, gaming), and those areas of weaknesses that require immediate intervention (aviation communities, attainment gap, collapsing High Streets), in order to produce growth in the medium and long-term.

Second, identifying local and regional public and private-sector actors capable of carrying out growth-based strategies in key areas, to kickstart specific projects (e.g. LEPs support of retraining key demographics in aviation communities, University of Surrey-Chamber of Commerce collaboration on enhanced placements.

The project ultimately engages with four key dimensions: sustainability, inward investment, localism and employability and skills.