By Richard Brine, Chair of Redcar and Cleveland Chamber of Commerce.

The North-East has a lot it can be proud of and I feel particularly energised about how the region is currently being perceived, both locally and further a field.

The recent One NorthEast regional image campaign, which certainly struck a cord with my colleagues and I, has helped more people than ever to recognise the passionate people and passionate places that make the North East unique and such a worthwhile base for business.

In fact, our individualistic style of selling North-East products and services, combined with a fair amount of banter about the inconsistency of our football teams (mine’s Boro by the way), tends to be one of the many things our associates from the UK and further a field, find so appealing about our region.

The North East’s consistent positive outlook and ‘can do’ attitude, is also undoubtedly serving to bring continued success and development into the area, with the business community now adopting more of a forward thinking role, that will lead to a sustainable future in the longer-term. Even now, clear plans and strategies are being drawn up that will help sustain and grow the economy, as well as the region’s gross added value (GVA).

I think that if this is going to continue, then the North-East community must continue to shout about its successes, telling the world what we can do and using avenues like the recent NERD campaign, to make our aspiring young people more aware of the opportunities that exist in this area.

While we are perhaps not as straight talking as our Yorkshire cousins, a fact which I think was blatantly obvious in the Artic Monkeys’ Mercury Music prize speech, we do have the ability to be frank if the need arises and we shouldn’t be afraid to show this attitude.

Public and private sector alike must grasp issues of greater enterprise, social inclusion and make better use of empowered human resource to benefit us all. If we are as passionate a people as we make out, local business men and women should be involved in the community, beyond the key performance indicators of their individual firm.

We should work together as closely as possible for the greater benefit of the region, whether it be through official bodies as such as the North East Chamber of Commerce, the Tees Valley Engineering Partnership or the North East Process Industry Cluster and show the world that we are united in being champions of our patch.

With a bit more guile and opportunity, we can encourage more high calibre people from the region’s five universities to set up business right here, and continue to be positively passionate, straight into the next highly skilled workforce.