Recommendation 5

HM Government Accepted

The Government notes this recommendation. Regional maritime clusters are in a prime position to help us drive growth in a way that embraces clean maritime, provides skills and training to help our coastal communities, and retain talent, experience and ideas in the UK. Whilst the sector has the enthusiasm, skills and experience to build clusters itself, Government support will accelerate the development of maritime clusters. This will enable us to ensure that clusters focus on delivering Maritime 2050 as well as our wider aims to drive growth within our coastal communities (which are some of the most deprived in the country), our regions and across the UK. Since 2019, Government has provided Maritime UK and Mersey Maritime with £350,000 to support the development of maritime clusters. This funding provided resource to enable Mersey Maritime to use their use their long-standing expertise as a maritime cluster to bring together a network of 10 maritime clusters (with early-stage plans for two more) and develop and provide a secretariat for a formal governance structure (including the Regional Council). They have been able to facilitate and guide the development of new clusters and the promotion of maritime clusters at a national and international level, which is particularly important as it has amplified the impact that clusters have on a national and international basis. The existing and emerging maritime clusters are: • Mersey Maritime • Maritime UK South-West • Cornwall Marine Network • Belfast Maritime Consortium • Maritime UK Solent • Scottish Maritime Cluster • East Anglia • South-East • Humber Marine and Renewables • North-East. Government is clear in its commitment to continue supporting the development of regional maritime clusters across the UK. The department is working closely with Maritime UK and the cluster network on a joint Regional Maritime Cluster Development Programme which we plan on launching later this year. This will set out a joint Government / industry programme of work to boost the effectiveness of maritime clusters, strengthen their capabilities, and ensure there is effective governance in place. It will also include development plans for each cluster. Alongside the development programme we are considering other ways that Government can support the development of regional clusters both individually and as a network. This could include the provision of funding to developing and emerging clusters as well as continuing to support the development of the networks governance system (including the Regional Council). Any funding will focus on enabling maritime clusters to reach their potential as self-financing centres of excellence for the maritime sector and enable the medium and long-term benefits of the cluster network (including their impact on regional and national growth supporting the department’s strategic priorities to grow and level up the UK) to be realised sooner.