About North Staffordshire
Home to 600,000 people, North Staffordshire is a diverse rural and urban area at the north of the West Midlands region. The sub-region has suffered persistent job losses from traditional industries over a long period with a significant increase in 1999 that led to the Secretary of State’s intervention and the development of a positive and proactive partnership response from the area.

Hen Cloud - the beginning of the Pennines

North Staffordshire is a distinct economic unit, although the economic sub-region is less sharply defined and broader than the Local Authority administrative areas. Rural areas surround the urban core of the city of Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle under Lyme and other urban districts including the market towns of Stafford and Leek. There are many interactions between the rural and urban areas, including people travelling from rural homes to work in urban areas and urban based businesses trading with customers in rural areas. Advantage West Midlands’s Regional Economic Strategy recognises the importance of this interaction and encourages a deliberate strengthening of the process.

The partnership works to strengthen the reciprocal links between our strategy and actions and the regional approach of Advantage West Midlands and Government. Indeed, as government encourages regeneration down to neighbourhood level we must develop a close relationship between renewal policies, programmes and partnerships at every level - from the local to the international - to learn from the best, inform all parts of the process and co-ordinate actions.