Bright new world

Dec 8 2006 By Ross Smith, The Journal

The Newcastle Science City project has lofty aims for the city and region. Ross Smith talks to the woman with the task of making them happen.

Sarah Stewart ponders over the last year and admits: "I obviously started to ask too many questions."

It is the explanation she puts forward for why, after 12 months in an advisory role for Newcastle Science City, she has now been appointed as its first chief executive.

Her task is a daunting one. The ambitions she has to start converting into reality include the creation of 5,000 jobs by 2010, a further 15,000 by 2015, and 250 new technology businesses.

But Mrs Stewart, who was appointed by the chairman of Science City and her former boss at software firm Sage, is determined to make it work. She said: "It's not plucking numbers out of the sky - that's the sort of scale we're after and yes, at the end of the day, that's going to be the sort of measure that we're going to be judged against.

"There's no point really in doing this just for the sake of it. The rationale for this is the impact it can have on the economic life of the region, both in terms of job creation and regeneration."

The Science City concept was announced by Chancellor Gordon Brown in 2004, but initially left people in the region scratching their heads.

There was no huge cash injection linked to the announcement, but Mr Brown's challenge was for cities which already had a significant research base to produce plans for turning that into economic success. Newcastle was a natural choice, as the city had already created the pioneering Centre for Life in a prime location.

The city council, Newcastle University and regional development agency One NorthEast formed a partnership to make the most out of the project.

However, it first began to grab the public's imagination when the partnership announced that it had bought a slice of the former Tyne Brewery site to use as its headquarters.

Mrs Stewart said: "I don't think those three organisations have come together in that way before.

"That has really made a huge difference because they've been able to pull together people, pull together programmes and get commitment to plans that would have been rather difficult to do if it had been just one of those bodies doing it on its own.

"The very fact they've agreed to come together with a degree of ambition has started to capture Whitehall's attention.

"Key people within the Treasury and the Department for Trade and Industry have been here really quite frequently to see what we're doing and to be brought up to speed."

She described the availability of the brewery site at precisely the right time as "fortuitous", but stressed: "It took an awful lot of guts for the three partners to come together to take that decision. I think that's a sign of the degree of commitment they had. It was a true test that they would come together in that way, but their commitment and work has gone way beyond the purchase and development of the brewery site."

A group that has previously worked on designs for the London Olympics site has been appointed to masterplan the development, and while Mrs Stewart says people can be optimistic about its future, she also pleaded for patience.

"That's the biggest tranche of land that's likely to come up or is going to come up within the city for the foreseeable future," she said.

"I can't imagine where else another site of that nature and that sort of strategic location is going to be and we want to make sure that what goes on that site lives up to the ambitions that we've set for it."

However, she is keen to stress that the site is not the be-all and end-all of the project - particularly given some sniping that it is more about property development than science.

For that reason, she dislikes the site's working title of Science Central, believing it adds to the confusion that the project and the development are exactly the same thing.

But no flash marketing team will be invited in to re-brand it - local schools and community groups are instead being invited to enter a naming competition.

Schools will also benefit from the education element of the project. Science teachers will get extra career development, children will be given an entitlement to science-based trips, and colleges and universities will be challenged to look again at the courses they provide.

It is a plan that is being watched closely across the country. "This is a national issue and people are almost saying thank goodness somebody is coming up with an approach and a solution to this," Mrs Stewart said.

She sees her job as time-limited and says she would not be surprised if someone with different skills was needed within a year.

By that time, she hopes to be watching the North-East transform. "This is a fundamental change to the economic base of the region," she promised.