| There was a new national record set on December 30 last year, with nearly 21 gigawatts of power coming from offshore and onshore wind turbines, the most that's ever been produced in one day by wind generation. It's clear Boris Johnson was full of hot air when he described them back in 2013 as not being able to pull the skin off a rice pudding. But the question of where - and how many - wind turbines are built on our green and pleasant land has generated fierce debate in recent weeks.  Some 85% of local people in the North East support the building of onshore wind in their community, according to a new poll
Under pressure from its own Conservative MPs who were threatening to rebel, Michael Gove's Levelling Up department said last month that the restrictive rule requiring new turbines to be built on pre-designated land will be rewritten. And now a new poll reveals that people living in the North East are overwhelmingly supportive of more clean energy schemes in their communities but feel the region is currently being short-changed on investment from Westminster. Commissioned by pro-growth campaign group Britain Remade, it shows 85% of local people in the North East support the building of onshore wind in their community. Support for lifting the Government's effective ban on onshore wind farms is higher in the North East than any other region, the polling suggests. Sam Richards, Founder of Britain Remade, said the North East had the potential to reinvigorate its proud industrial heritage to attract and grow new clean industries such as onshore wind, but this potential was being held back by an "unresponsive and outdated planning and regulatory system" 
Teesside MP tells nurses using food banks to budget better  Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland Tory MP Simon Clarke and striking nurses (Image: Teesside Live)
The plight of hard-pressed nurses has come to the fore during the recent strikes, with some revealing they've been forced to accept charity offerings from food banks. But there was a tough message to them from Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland Tory MP Simon Clarke, who said yesterday told nurses earning the national average of £35,000 "something is wrong with your budgeting" if they are relying on handouts. The Liz Truss supporter, who was Levelling Up Secretary under her brief premiership, told BBC Radio Tees the debate over nurses' pay is now "way out of hand". He said: "I'm afraid if you are using a food bank and you are earning the average nurse's salary of £35,000 a year then something is wrong with your budgeting, because £35,000 a year is not a salary on which you ought to be relying on a food bank." RCN general secretary Pat Cullen said: "To criticise anybody using a food bank is disgusting, heartless and dangerously out of touch. Sky-high inflation means some nursing staff are living on a financial knife edge and even their own employer, NHS trusts across the country, are being forced to open food banks to feed their staff."
As nurses went on strike, Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak clashed over the "lethal chaos" in the NHS yesterday during Prime Minister's Questions. The Labour leader highlighted the case of a 26-year-old woman with cancer who collapsed at home in Plymouth and died while waiting for an ambulance. The Prime Minister did not offer an apology in response to Sir Keir's demand but pressed Labour to support anti-strike legislation. And in the aftermath of the clash, Labour were pushing new NHS ambulance response figures for so-called 'Category 2 ambulance calls' showing the incident is far from an isolated case. Some 3,760 patients across Yorkshire with conditions like heart attacks and strokes waited more than three hours for an ambulance in December, say Labour, while the figure was 4,919 for the North West and 1,911 in the North East.
It's perhaps not surprising given the events of the last few years that business confidence has been shaken across the North. But as Andrew Finlayson, North West lead of professional services company Accenture, argues in The Northern Agenda today, part of the answer is getting the region's businesses to work together more to encourage innovation, "ensuring we unlock the North's great potential and fully utilise our regional talent". Read more at the bottom of this email.
'Pay our local councillors more so they'll fully represent their areas' In the current climate Northern town halls are unlikely to win the favour of locals by handing out pay rises to councillors. But in North Yorkshire the council is being warned it faces becoming unrepresentative of the county's population unless it ups the basic allowance for elected politicians. Opposition parties have claimed elected members of the incoming North Yorkshire Council face being paid less than the minimum wage and only those with significant income streams will be able to be councillors after a plan to limit their basic annual allowances to £15,500 was revealed.  North Yorkshire councillors currently get one of the lowest basic allowances of politicians in comparable areas. Graphic by Carly Holds
This is a £5,184 increase on allowances paid for 2022/23 to members of North Yorkshire County Council, set to be replaced by the new authority this year. And nationally, among comparative councils, only councillors serving Leeds would be paid more than those in North Yorkshire, writes Local Democracy Reporter Stuart Minting. The creation of the unitary council will mean the end of allowances paid to hundreds of district and borough councillors, meaning a net saving to the public purse in North Yorkshire of £707,633. But with the number of councillors in the county falling from 319 to 90, those that remain would face a significant increase in workload. Stuart Parsons, leader of the Independents group on the authority, said many elected members were already coming to the conclusion it was not worth taking a day off work to attend council meetings held during the day. He said: "They are certainly not going out of their way to encourage people from diverse backgrounds to participate. What they are hoping for is more grey-haired, retired Tories who use this as a plus on their pensions."
Call to ban dogs from footpaths after man trampled to death by cows  Family handout photo of Michael and Teresa Holmes. Mr Holmes died after being trampled by cows in West Yorkshire
A walk in the countryside ended in tragedy for Michael and Teresa Holmes, who had two whippet dogs on leads when they were charged at by a herd of between 25 to 30 cows and their calves. Father-of-two Mr Holmes, 57, was trampled to death while his wife suffered serious injuries and is in a wheelchair following the incident in Netherton, West Yorkshire, on September 29, 2020. Now the coroner presiding over the inquest has said that farmers should be able to ban dogs from public footpaths on their land during months when there are cows with young calves grazing. Senior coroner Kevin McLoughlin said he would be making a prevention of future deaths report after hearing the "alarming" statistics on cow trampling fatalities. The inquest heard that an average of six people a year are killed by cattle in the UK, including farm workers and members of the public. He said he would not want to see the rights of dog walkers restricted unnecessarily, but that "unacceptably high incidents of cattle trampling fatalities indicate to me a need to identify and tackle the problem". 
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Northern Stories  King Charles III will be joined by the Queen Consort for the visit. (Image: Getty Images)
- King Charles III is to visit Bolton later tomorrow to celebrate 150 years of the town hall. It will be the first time the reigning monarch has been to Bolton since Queen Elizabeth II came for the town's 150th birthday celebrations in 1988. The King and Queen Consort, Camilla, will be greeted at the town hall – officially opened in 1873 by the then Prince of Wales – by a civic line up including Mayor Coun Akhtar Zaman, leading councillors and local MPs. They will first enjoy watching a performance from the Polonez folk dance group, before entering the town hall – the borough's long standing municipal headquarters.
- Sir Jim Ratcliffe has entered the bidding for Manchester United as one of the UK's richest men looks to buy the club he supported as a boy. The 70-year-old has reported net worth of £12.5billion thanks to the success of global chemical company INEOS, which has enjoyed exponential growth since he founded it in 1998. Ratcliffe has been chairman throughout and seen the company go from 400 employees to 26,000 and annual revenues of around £52.5bn.
- The Mayors of South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire are making a joint call for calling for devolution of cultural spending to move it away from Whitehall controls. Following the recent launch of Labour's Gordon Brown Commission on devolution, Oliver Coppard and Tracy Brabin are backing the call to stop pitting regions against each other on bidding for vital funding, instead giving regional leaders the powers and resources to invest in local assets. Mr Coppard said: "The devolution of powers and spending for arts, culture and heritage will allow us to bring power closer to our communities and to the people who know our region best; it will enable us to collaborate cross-border, rather than competing with one another."
- A tenant has been waiting for a council house in Wigan for 44 years. The mystery resident has been on the list for a home in the Greater Manchester borough since 1979, it has been revealed. Wigan Council's Housing Advisory Panel were left baffled by the huge wait and approved a review into how applications are submitted for social housing. It includes changing the points system for people to move up the waiting list. Members were puzzled as to how the mystery resident had been on the list for so long, but chair Susan Gambles revealed they had never submitted a bid for a social housing allocation.
Why we need more 'shepherds for innovation' in the North In 2023 we are going to face more economic challenges here in the North. To combat the challenging year ahead, we must continue to innovate in the way we work and collaborate more as a business community, ensuring we unlock the North's great potential and fully utilise our regional talent. Collaboration isn't a new idea, a recent report by the NP11 group of eleven northern local enterprise partnerships suggested collaboration between the arts, culture, heritage, nature and environment sectors could provide an extra £2.7bn to the Northern economy. Now imagine expanding this to include the business community. This is something we have been working towards at Accenture. Last year, in Manchester, we held one of the first Net Zero Sprints to take place in the UK. This collaborative process saw organisations from the private, public and voluntary sectors all come together to identify common problems we face in relation to carbon pollution, before outlining solutions with action plans to implement them. This demonstrates how a simple process, in theory, can have a huge impact; getting people together in a room, whether physical or virtual, for discussions and workshops can not only bring about solutions to problems – it can also lead to innovation. In my own work practices, I encourage collaboration on a daily basis. When I begin a new project, or address a new issue, either for Accenture or a client, I ask the question; who knows this space?  The likes of San Francisco (pictured) and Boston are described as 'start-up-encouraging open communities'. Shutterstock image
In my experience, this involves me ensuring I am getting the most capable people available together for a conversation. I look to get the greatest number of stakeholders involved, each of whom provides unique insight. I am ultimately looking for talent that can aid our development. In this sense, I see my role as a 'shepherd for innovation'. This is the role I believe larger businesses in the North need to adopt. As a community, we need to work together to address the common problems causing low business confidence. So how can we aid innovation in 2023? I would argue we need to make a more concerted effort to reach a greater number of SMEs and startups through connected organisations such as MIDAS, Innovate Manchester, CBI and the North West Business Leadership Team. Through these organisations, and so many more that we are fortunate to have here in the North, there is real opportunity for productive partnerships to be established. They all provide opportunities to bring together organisations from all sectors, backgrounds and sizes to develop innovative solutions to key challenges. If you're a small business owner or a startup founder in the North, you need to ask whether you're collaborating with these partners or building your own networks and unlocking the talent within them that can help your business grow. Fundamentally, I believe that innovation and collaboration go hand-in-hand with each other. When we look to collaborate we naturally become more innovative and when we are innovative we naturally look to collaborate with others to further this.  Recent research by Statista and Startup Blink showed that Manchester ranked only behind London as a leading city for start-ups in the UK. Shutterstock image
If we are to embrace the positive possibilities that 2023 has in store for us, then boosting regional growth through innovation and collaboration and utilising the wealth of talent we have in the North, will be key. In the North, we tend to downplay our ideas and achievements. We don't sell ourselves as much as other parts of the country, which is something that needs addressing. It feels awkward for us to do this, but the only way to evolve an idea is to get in a room with others and discuss it, because the idea will be better for it. As a region we should learn from the likes of San Francisco and Boston, which are start-up- encouraging open communities, because we may be surprised at just how much we can achieve. We are getting there, recent research by Statista and Startup Blink showed that Manchester ranked only behind London as a leading city for start-ups in the UK, with Newcastle in 10th position - but we can be bolder. With a defined focus, an innovative spirit and a collaborative approach, we can set our own path as a region and make 2023 a strong year where we not only see progress, but where we sow the seeds for sustained prosperity.
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