East Midlands is best region I’ve ever lived in, says Mayor Claire Ward
It’s been nearly 18 months since East Midlands Mayor Claire Ward took her post at the head of the newly-formed East Midlands Combined County Authority.
She and her team built the organisation from scratch – there was but a brick in place when she was elected in May 2024.
Now, she lives in Ollerton, Newark, and spends much of her time travelling around the region – from her office in Chesterfield, to meetings in Derby and Nottingham and to sites of generation and regeneration further afield.
Ms Ward was born in North Shields, on Tyneside, and grew up in Hertfordshire.
But she says the East Midlands is the best region she’s ever lived in or worked in.
“It’s the best connected,” she told the Local Democracy Reporting Service. “That’s part of the reason I moved here.
“You’ve got trains to London and the north, both on the west coast and the east coast. You’ve got the A1 and the M1 both heading north. You’ve got cross-sector links, ease to get to other big cities, and more than ninety per cent of the UK is within four hours of travel.
“And we’ve got an airport. I think that all makes it a really connected region.”
Labour politician Ms Ward was brought up in Borehamwood, on the outskirts of London.
She became MP for Watford at the 1997 general election at the age of just 24 and remained in that role until 2010.
It’s the East Midlands, though, that she now calls home.
And it wasn’t just the region’s connectivity that she praised when asked.
“It’s a highly skilled region when you think about engineering – look at Derby with Rolls-Royce, with Toyota, with Alstom,” she said.
“We’ve got the highest levels of pay outside of London and the South East because of that level of skill in engineering.
“It’s also a beautiful region. Look at the Peak District, look at Chatsworth House. It’s got so many castles and stately homes, beautiful places to get around, as well as wonderful vibrant cities with everything you can do in Derby and Nottingham.”
On Monday, October 13, the Mayor announced the East Midlands Growth Plan, which sets targets for housebuilding, employment and qualifications over the next ten years and hopes to add £13 billion to the regional economy in a variety of ways.
As part of the plan, promoting tourism will be a priority.
“I think the visitor economy is a really significant sector for this region,” said the Mayor. “We’re undersold. Not enough people know what we have here.
“We don’t connect it well enough that if you come into Nottingham, you can not just see Nottingham Castle, but go out to do the Robin Hood Trail and Sherwood Forest too, or go across to Derby and go to the Peak District.”
As an ambassador for the region, the Mayor was in Japan as part of a trade mission with universities in the Midlands.
“When I was out there, I was telling some of the tourism companies and associations: When you come to the UK, don’t just go to London and the Cotswolds and the Lake District and Edinburgh. You’ve been doing that for 30 years.
“We’ve got global brands in our region but we don’t make enough of them. We need to create that front door for people so that in due course, if you look at coming to the East Midlands, you get to see all the places you might want to visit.”
She referenced the new MGM+ series, “Robin Hood”, which will debut on American television at the beginning of December, as one of the types of opportunities which need to be capitalised on by the region.
“That series will be global. But we haven’t done enough to be able, in this country or region, to really get on the back of it and promote it.
“I think that’s the sort of opportunity that I want in the future to be able to say you know, everyone globally will see this, we want them to come and visit just in the same way as you think about the Harry Potter tour or Game of Thrones.
“People come from all over the world to go and visit those locations where filming has taken place.”
She touted the idea of a “tourism journey” which could incorporate a route for visitors to Nottingham Castle, the Robin Hood experience and St Mary’s Church in Edwinstowe where Robin Hood and Maid Marian allegedly got married.
“I think there’s lots of opportunities to really create more of that trail and then to promote it internationally as well as regionally,” said the Mayor.