Plans to boost job prospects and transform struggling Oldham's economy unveiled

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Leaders in Oldham must play ‘the long game’ when planning how to rejuvenate and drive forward its local economy, a review has concluded.

An independent team led by the principal of Oldham College Alun Francis has made a series of recommendations about how the borough can improve its prospects for jobs and opportunities in the years to 2030.

It seeks to develop a vision for the future of Oldham; once a cotton powerhouse during the 19th and 20th centuries which has struggled to establish a new identity away from its industrial past. READ MORE: The quest to define Oldham’s future This includes breaking the ‘dependence’ on the ‘foundational economy’ of basic services and public sector jobs, which employs around 70pc of the borough’s residents, and attracting more private sector wealth. “What we can’t promise is that magic solution,” Mr Francis said as the review’s recommendations were unveiled at an event at George Street Chapel. “What we can promise is that we can find a way of working together, which is going to be hard, which is going to be about sweat and blood, and patience and persistence. “But a key theme of this review is that’s what we need to be doing with a clear sense of the end game if we want to collectively make a difference and be bigger than the sum of our parts.” The findings of the the Oldham Economic Review, which was commissioned by the council last autumn, have been revealed to tie in with the strategies announced within the government’s Levelling Up White Paper earlier this year. “The single most important challenge is for Oldham to have a clear and sustained view of the ‘long game’,” it states. “The importance of this is precisely because so many factors will arise which potentially detract,