Last updated at 11:50, Saturday, 28 April 2012

One hundred new jobs at Stead McAlpin, 450 posts at Sainsbury’s, 30 new positions at the Turf pub.

For an economy that is supposed to be in recession, Carlisle is doing pretty well.

No-one is hanging out the bunting just yet, but the city does seem to be weathering the economic crisis better than most.

And with more jobs expected to be created at the city’s Pirelli tyre plant, after a Government cash injection last year, 2012 could offer yet more good news.

The optimism is in stark contrast with the national picture.

Figures released on Wednesday suggested the UK economy shrank by 0.2 per cent in the first quarter of the year, after contracting by 0.3 per cent in the final three months of 2011.

That technically puts us in recession.

Spending cuts, the Eurozone and the mild winter have all been blamed by an increasingly worried-looking David Cameron and George Osborne.

But rather than turning to the export markets for the solution, maybe the Prime Minister and the Chancellor should take a look at what’s going right in Carlisle.

Mike Simmonds, commercial manager of Carlisle recruitment firm System People, said demand for workers among city firms is actually growing stronger.

“Hand on heart, I think March was the best figures we’ve had for months,” he said.

“Looking at the national picture and then talking to businesses in Carlisle, it’s difficult to tally up the two.

“I talk to a lot of businesses and I’m hearing none of the gloom and doom here.

“Actually, businesses are talking about growing and increasing staff numbers, no-one is saying: ‘It’s a disaster’.

“Clearly, times are tough, but I’m only hearing positives.

“We do a lot of work with a small, local food production company who’ve just won a contract in Scandinavia and have now been picked up by Morrisons.

“They’ve trebled their workforce – all temporary agency workers.

“That’s what’s happening now, companies are winning new work and are taking on temporary staff to fulfil a contract and then letting them go when the contract finishes.

“People are working harder now though and companies are getting by on fewer staff.

“In the good old days, someone would go on holiday in an office or factory and they would take a temporary worker to cover.

“That just doesn’t happen now; Mrs Jones goes off to Tenerife for two weeks and when she gets back she finds 60 per cent of her work is still waiting there for her to do.

“A very encouraging sign is the number of people starting their own businesses.

“I go to a lot of networking events and I’m regularly talking to people who have started a printing business or whatever.

“They aren’t waiting for the jobs market to pick up again they are going out and making things happen themselves.”

Viv Dodd, of Carlisle-based business lobby group Cumbria Business 4 Business agrees.

“I feel confident about the Carlisle economy,” he said.

“It’s tough out there, there’s no getting away from that, but we are doing okay.

“I was down in Liverpool in Wednesday and I was shocked by the situation down there – it’s very serious.

“The number of empty shops going into the city centre is pretty shocking.

“If you think we’ve got problems with empty shops, it’s nothing compared with down there.

“Part of the problem nationally is there are certain elements in the media who paint a very bleak picture.

“If you’re not careful, you can talk yourself into recession.

“As long as we keep our nerve, I think we’ll be fine here in Carlisle.

“What happens on Thursday [at the Carlisle City Council elections] will be important – we need political leadership.”

George Beveridge, chairman of Cumbria’s Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), believes the outlook for the whole of Cumbria is more uncertain.

“It’s quite variable and it depends who you speak to, but overall we are faring better than some other places,” he said.

“There are some grounds for optimism and if you look at the number of business failures, Cumbria has fared slightly better than average.

“One advantage is that we have two huge businesses in Cumbria – BAE Systems and Sellafield, which are private sector-operated but public sector funded.

“They have long-term programmes and fared reasonably well in the Government’s spending review.

“They offer the engine that has sustained economic activity, particularly in the energy and manufacturing sectors, which are doing reasonably okay.

“Tourism is still struggling. Bookings are down this year compared to last year, which is a worry.

“Agriculture, with the exception of horticulture, is doing well.

“The appreciation in food prices means farmers are getting more for crops and animals.

“Where we don’t do so well is in the number of start-ups.

“The level of entrepreneurship is lower than average and although we’ve weathered the downturn better, we need entrepreneurs to help drive us out of the recession.”

Nationally, a slide in construction output and a stagnant services sector were blamed for the slide into technical recession.

Mr Osborne admitted the recovery was taking longer than hoped but he would not change course on his austerity drive.

The current downturn is expected to be nothing like as severe as the previous recession of 2008/09, which spanned more than a year. Mr Osborne said: “It’s a very tough economic situation.

“ It’s taking longer than anyone hoped to recover from the biggest debt crisis of our lifetime – even after the recent fall in unemployment.

“But over many years this country built up massive debts, which we are having to pay off.”

He added that the recession in much of the rest of Europe was hampering the recovery, but pledged not to abandon his “credible plan” to cut the budget deficit.

The ONS’s first estimate is compiled before more than half of the data has been gathered and some economists are hopeful that today’s figure will be revised higher in coming months.

The services sector, which accounts for some three-quarters of the economy, saw growth of 0.1 per cent in the quarter, after a decline of 0.1 per cent in the final quarter of 2011.

Retail sales were boosted last month by panic-buying of petrol amid fears of a tanker drivers’ strike and a heatwave encouraged people to buy summer clothes.

But the industrial production sector declined 0.4 per cent, with manufacturing down 0.1 per cent after a 0.7 per cent decline in the previous quarter. The continued fall in manufacturing will come as a blow to the Government, which is hoping the sector will lead the recovery.

The construction sector saw a three per cent decline in the quarter, its biggest contraction since the first quarter of 2009, although the findings contradict recent industry surveys for both the manufacturing and construction sectors.

First published at 08:59, Saturday, 28 April 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk