Lucy Winskell is, by any standards, one of the best connected people in the North East.
For the last 12 years – and a few more weeks – she has been pro vice chancellor of Northumbria University, one of the few non-academics in senior positions at the institution and very much its main link to the business community.
She is also chair of the North East LEP – the body tasked with developing the region’s economy – and was, until 2020, chair of the North East England Chamber of Commerce, the region’s largest business organisation. She is chair of trustees as well at Newcastle’s Live Theatre and a trustee at both the International Centre for Life and the Community Foundation, Tyne and Wear and Northumberland. Among many other roles, she was High Sheriff of Tyne and Wear in 2015-2016.
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Now a new title has been added – Lord Lieutenant of Tyne and Wear, the Queen’s official representative in the area – meaning she has opted to step down from her ‘day job’ at Northumbria, having just seen another cohort of students graduate from the university.
“It’s been the most exhilarating and exciting 12 years of my career,” she said. (She had been a lawyer before working at Northumbria). “I feel enormously proud to have been a small part of the transformation at Northumbria under Andrew Wathey’s leadership, and I’m very sad to leave. I’m really excited for Northumbria’s future – very sad to leave and obviously wanting to maintain great links with university.
“I’ve worked on things like employability – and we’ve got really strong story to tell about our students going into graduate level jobs – I’ve overseen the growth of our London campus, one of the most successful satellite campuses in the country. We’ve launched, boldly, our Amsterdam campus, which has been up and running for four years now despite the challenges of Brexit.
“We’ve set up the Business Clinic and other clinics, building on the experience from the Law Clinic, which is a great experience for students and makes a contribution to the communities and businesses that use that. We’ve seen enormous strides in student startups. And I’ve worked with wonderful colleagues on all of these things.”
Ms Winskell’s ‘second’ job – as chair of the North East LEP – could also be on borrowed time, depending on events in the political sphere. This year’s Levelling Up White Paper outlined plans for a wider devolution deal for the North East that would see the LEP subsumed into a mayoral authority.
Despite the prospect of losing her role, she says she is “hugely supportive of bigger devolution deal if the money flows into the region”, though adds that the LEP’s combination of elected and business voices should be maintained (“The White Paper could not have made it more clear that the business voice must be involved in the strategic economic planning for the future,” she said.)
Whatever happens to the LEP, Ms Winskell is unlikely to be twiddling her thumbs any time soon. In May, she was appointed Lord Lieutenant for Tyne and Wear, a post whose duties including arranging visits for members of the royal family, presenting military medals and representing the Monarch at civic events. The role also includes co-ordinating nominations for the Queen’s Award for Enterprise and the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, allowing her to use long-established connections in both sectors.
“I was excited by what the role will bring, and I felt she’s not going to ask me again,” Ms Winskell said. “And if you believe in and want to support the Monarchy, you probably want to work for this Queen. Taking the role on in the Platinum Jubilee Year is quite special as well.”
Early duties have included meeting local winners of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise and arranging royal visits. She was also present at the Platinum Jubilee service at St Paul’s Cathedral at the start of June.
“It’s a role where you can convene people things,” she said, “you can encourage and support, celebrate. If you’re fascinated with people and organisations – I think that’s code for being nosy – it’s a rule well suited to me. I love finding out new things and working with new people and so on. There’s much to celebrate and support in the region and that will be my key role.
“It’s very important to me to feel connected, to feel that I in some way am adding value to the organisations I work with. But also, as ever, you get more back than you ever put into these things in terms of what you learn and the relationships you make, the things you understand about the region and the people who drive it. That’s small community groups up to chief execs and chairs of large organisations.”
Having taken over from a long-serving previous Lord Lieutenant, Sue Winfield, Ms Winskell is promising “evolution, not revolution” in the job. But, as someone who is rarely uninvolved in the main business of North East life, we can expect her to be busy in the role.
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