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In the UK regions that are structurally more vulnerable are less able to respond to economic shocks (McCann, 2017). An economic downturn for a poorer region like the North East of England (Jenkins, Pike, & Tomaney, 2019) will mean it enters recession earlier and emerges from recession later than significantly wealthier regions like London and South East region in England or Amsterdam City region in the Netherlands. We ask, what can be done to improve the impact of policy interventions that support and develop weaker regional economies? Behind this chapter sit two elements of research study: a question, which asks, what if you develop a “great” policy, that is well researched and designed; however, it fails because the people who deliver it don’t have the right culture, values, or knowledge? The second element is that the authors are interested in a range of factors that affect not only policy implementation including entrepreneurship but also economic culture and social capital, looking at the problem from different disciplinary viewpoints (Baker & Welter, 2018). This chapter makes a comparative study between the North East of England and the Amsterdam City region to explore how policy implementation might be improved as other factors of place cannot be easily altered, these factors include major infrastructure, political systems, and budgetary control as well as overall economic wealth. What this means is that practical research and studies have to find factors that can be improved in order to achieve change and a greater economic impact on Places in this context, the North East of England.

There is little tradition of regional studies in the field of industrial relations. Most of the existing work with a regional flavour is on comparative labour markets. The reason for the absence of structural or institutional studies is because of the obvious methodological problem of disaggregating purely regional influences from broader national factors—economic, political, social or legislative.

This paper provides remarkable insight into the structural components of a firm's core competence and its development via research and development (R&D) activities for innovation and exporting activities.

The authors have used a positivist design and a deductive methodology. The authors have examined the extant literature developing a theoretical framework to empirically investigate the relationships between a firm's core competence, organisational learning (OL), tacitness, dynamic capability and R&D activities. To carry out this investigation, the authors have collected stratified sample data from 330 firms operating in North East England, a peripheral region of England.

The authors have found that there are indeed significant statistical relationships between these structural components, R&D activities and a firm's core competence, and this nexus is pertinent to innovation and exporting. Furthermore, it is found that North East England is significantly constrained by the lack of finance, technological capability, experts and brain drain. Based on these findings, the authors propose a cooperative R&D framework to narrow down these constraints to assist firms in developing core competencies for innovation and exporting in peripheral regions.

There is an urgent need to investigate the incidence of knowledge-driven activities, R&D, the extent of innovation and exporting activities of firms operating in North East England, a peripheral region of the United Kingdom (UK).

This study provides an original and systematic investigation of the firm's core competence and its formation via key structural components for innovation and exporting within an empirical framework.

The North East has five universities: Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Teesside and Sunderland as well as over 20 colleges. The five universities in the region employ over 14,000 staff and generate another 15,000 jobs through their activities (Universities UK, 2014). In total their activities generate gross value added (GVA) of nearly £1.6 billion, equivalent to 3.8% of the total 2011 North East GVA (Universities UK, 2014). This is higher than in any other region of England meaning that any post-Brexit funding threat to the UK university sector represents a disproportionately greater threat to the North East economy.

This chapter looks specifically at the opportunities and threats for teaching and research of public administration and public services within the North East as a consequence of Brexit. Potential threats include the impact of any reduction in European funding (particularly research funding); reduction in the number of European students and reduction in the number of European staff working at universities in the North East. This chapter concludes by making the case for greater collaboration in teaching and research across UK and European universities. Irrespective of the final result of Brexit, pan-European research and teaching of public administration seems needed now more than ever. Northumbria University has a unique place within the North East region as a centre of expertise in public administration and public leadership.

With the triggering of Article 50, the uncertainty around Brexit and the outcomes of the UK/EU negotiations process associated with the UK leaving the EU have catalysed British political debate. This situation has had and still has significant economic implications for thousands of businesses operating in the UK and in the region.

It is likely that impact of Brexit will be much larger for the North East of England compared to the other English regions, despite the Leave vote winning an overwhelming majority in the region. Many areas in the North East have heavily relied on public sector jobs and investments in the past and benefited from substantial European funding provided over the last few decades to support infrastructure, regeneration and training activities. Over 70,000 jobs were created in the region because of EU investments between 2007 and 2013, and thousands more jobs still depend on the investments being made under the 2014–2020 programming period.

This chapter analyses the economic implications that Brexit will generate for the North East of England. Focussing on data gathered from the post-crisis time, the author examines the most recent policies and findings in the literature, critically evaluating and presenting what a post-Brexit North East will be like from an economic and social perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the application of social policy in the North East of England is often characterised by tension and conflict. The agencies and professionals charged with implementation of Westminster driven policies constantly seek to deploy their knowledge of local conditions in order to make them both practical and palatable.

This paper examines the region via established literature from history, geography, sociology and social policy. The paper gives illustrations via empirical work which has evaluated initiatives to improve the health of long term health-related benefit recipients and to sustain individuals in employment in the region.

Central to the paper’s argument is the notion of “biographies of place”. The core of this idea is that places have biographies in the same way as individuals and possess specific identities. These biographies have been shaped by the intersections between environment, history, culture and economic and social policy. The paper identifies the region’s economic development, subsequent decline and the alliance of labour politics and industrial employers around a common consensus that sought economic prosperity and social progress via a vision of “modernisation” as a key component of this biography.

The paper argues that an appreciation of these spatial biographies can result in innovative and more effective social policy interventions with the potential to address issues that affect entire localities.

The long-term plan for the National Health Service (NHS, 2019) identifies a blueprint to make the NHS fit for the future with a greater focus on prevention, improving services for patients and the importance of integrating services to make them more effective and efficient. The challenge is in the delivery and who is responsible to implement changes. The key is to enable staff at local levels to have responsibility for ensuring that the health and social needs of their local population are met.

Established to oversee the implementation is the NHS Assembly with 50 individuals from across the health and care sector to advise NHS England and NHS Improvement on the implementation. This requires shared commitment and motivation to change; ensuring patient centred care is at the forefront of any changes to delivering care. At regional level, Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships and Integrated Care Systems are groups of local NHS organisations, local councils and other partners, who are working together in the region to develop and implement the NHS plan. There are many challenges ahead to ensure the plan delivers better regional health and social care, including the impending UK’s decision to leave the European Union. Brexit may present some opportunities but if freedom of movement and membership of the single market and customs union end as planned, NHS and social care face several significant threats in the region.

The North East of England has entered the global bazaar in which its landscape, once pock marked by the scars of industries like coalmining, shipbuilding and steelmaking, has been cleaned up, beautified, and it has now entered the global competition between post-industrial places for inward investment and the spoils of the ever-expanding UK tourism industry. With this, the North East’s visitor economy now generates around £3.6 billion of expenditure each year, supporting some 54,600 jobs in 2018. The visitor economy is not only important as a stand-alone sector in the North East, but is integral to the whole North East economy, and needs to be a major driver of social change and diversification within it. As the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative says: the twenty first century North East is a place of vibrancy, with a quality of life that makes it a great place to visit, live and work, study and invest – which is a strapline narrative that clearly signals how tourism is indeed both an essential and integrated part of North East life. Brexit may provide the North East tourism industry with a stronger global stage.

This chapter charts the logic of that development and asks: is it a good thing, who benefits and who loses from the sectors development. It asks whose North East are we talking about as we prepare to enter what is anticipated to be a difficult and an uncertain third decade of the twenty-first century?

The North/South divide is an image frequently used to depict the territorial structure and the economic dynamism of England, and thus to describe the social and economic geography of the country. This image distinguishes a post-industrial North, which still faces economic and social difficulties, from a tertiary, rich and powerful South. It separates a central space (the South) from a periphery (the North). However, the recent economic changes in Britain question the relevance of this image, which is perhaps too simplistic to describe accurately the economic and social geography and the spatial disparities in the country.

Since the Thatcher years, this debate on the North/South divide has been constantly renewed, regardless of the political colour of the majority at Westminster, and the local and regional policy of the government in power has been systematically criticised. On the one hand, this reflects the persistence of territorial and social disparities in the United Kingdom and more specifically in England. On the other hand, this shows that the North/South divide is not just a geoeconomic question, but it also includes identity, societal and geopolitical issues.

Based on a geographical, critical geopolitical and cartographic approach, the aim of this chapter is to question the relevance and the significance of the North/South divide in 2017, after the impact of the 2008 Great Recession, as the United Kingdom is on its way to Brexit and when its unity is being challenged by Scottish nationalism. How can territorial disparities be described, evaluated and measured in England? How are they perceived by citizens and political leaders? This chapter will also study the policies proposed to close this gap and to meet the aspirations of peripheral regions.