What we want from new leaders of the North East

It’s been a month since the General Election, and Labour’s landslide victory after 14 years in opposition. This period has seen a flurry of Cabinet and ministerial appointments, and the need for fostering new relationships to ensure key priorities don’t fall off the agenda.

As the dust begins to settle on Keir Starmer’s arrival into Number 10 and parliament rises for summer recess this week, our Policy and Public Affairs Officer, Tara, shares this update on how we’re approaching our work in the North East in the context of a new government.

The North East of England has been an area of focus for Agenda Alliance since our work on Transforming Services for Women’s Futures, a project which produced ‘Dismantling Disadvantage’, a major report on how regional inequality is impacting women with multiple unmet needs across Northumberland, and Tyne and Wear. This work led to Transforming Together, a project bringing together women with lived experience of multiple disadvantage, local authority, health, criminal justice, voluntary and community partners to work together to implement real change for the most marginalised women in the region.

The case for change in the North East is clear. Women are at greater risk of death in the North East when compared to the rest of the country. In 2021, 1.7 times more women died as a result of suicide, drug and alcohol misuse, and domestic homicide in the North East, when compared to England and Wales as a whole. Our research also found that between 2021-22 in Northumberland and Tyne and Wear 81% (over 145,000) women who needed mental health support did not get it.

2024 has seen significant amounts of political change across Northumbria and County Durham, with Kim McGuinness elected as the first NEMCA Mayor, Police Crime Commissioner elections, and 8 MPs voted in for the first time across 20 now entirely Labour constistuencies.

Earlier this year we sent the NEMCA Mayoral candidates and PCC candidates in Northumbria and County Durham a list of pledges to sign up to - available to read here. These pledges were developed in partnership with women with lived experience and practitioners with an understanding of regional disparity and local need, and provide opportunity to deliver targeted local change.

They centered around how both the Mayor and PCCs could best support women facing multiple unmet needs, including commitments to radically reduce the number of women dying in the North East as a result of their unmet needs, and to work with the Transforming Together network to review which current interventions are offered to women facing multiple unmet needs. Both Kim McGuinness, Mayor of the North East Mayoral Combined Authority, and Susan Dungworth, PCC for Northumbria, agreed to these pledges.

To reassert the need for urgent change, the Transforming Together Network has sent all 20 MPs in the Northumbria and County Durham seats welcome letters, inviting them to attend a joint meeting with other MPs in the area, the NEMCA Mayor, and local PCCs to discuss how they can best support women and girls at the sharpest edge of inequality in their area. To take these commitments forward we must see MPs, and senior leaders in the area, work together to affect real change for these women.