The West Midlands could step away from its reputation as a manufacturing hub to become a global leader in driverless cars, the creative industries and artificial intelligence.

That is according to a new industrial strategy published by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA).

Launched ahead of a five-week long consultation with businesses throughout the region, mayor Andy Street said that the new West Midlands Industrial Strategy was "about what places people will be working at in the future, and where the areas of opportunity are".

And he has urged businesses across the region to "share their views on how to secure a prosperous future”.

Launched on Friday by the mayor and Cllr Ian Ward, WMCA portfolio holder for economic growth, the document makes ten 'commitments' that they hope will help drive the economy in the West Midlands in the foreseeable future.

These include:

  • A focus on a high quality and responsive regional skills system.
  • Being a region known for improvements to the natural environment, as well as for its choice of high quality housing.
  • Creating a top location for the creative sector with world leaders in gaming and innovative content producers for new platforms.
  • Becoming the UK centre for innovation in new forms of transport such as electric vehicles, driverless vehicles (CAV) and battery manufacture.
  • Becoming the UK’s leading exporting region, where businesses and people come to develop and build new products, processes and services.
  • Becoming the UK centre for health diagnostics, devices and testing and translational medicine, driven by artificial intelligence (AI).
  • The West Midlands becoming a globally renowned advanced manufacturing and engineering centre.
  • A focus on sustainable energy generation and 'clean' growth.
Fifty miles of roads will be developed across the West Midlands for the driverless cars project.

The result of months of research and work by the WMCA and the region's three LEPs, the Local Industrial Strategy hopes to make the most of future investment in the region.

Cllr Ward believes that now is the perfect time to set out a vision for the future of the region, highlighting it as an exciting time for 'cutting edge' industries.

"The West Midlands has always been a hotbed of creativity and our challenge now is to nurture the cutting edge companies and advanced manufacturers that play an increasingly vital role in our regional economy," he said.

"But growth alone will not be enough. The Local Industrial Strategy must be about creating inclusive economic growth across the West Midlands and we must ensure that people have the skills needed to fill the new jobs being created.

"This strategy is about driving up productivity and growing our regional economy in a way that can bring greater prosperity to all our communities. We must give people a real stake in our future success."

A five-week long consultation period will now take place over the strategy, with local businesses being encouraged to share their views with the WMCA.

Mr Street says there are several areas of the strategy document that excite him.

"Of course advanced manufacturing, where we’ve probably got the best cluster by international standards of anything," he said.

"If you did a heat map of the UK you'd see it’s bright red in the Midlands, and actually there's economic research which shows that. So that’s the first sector but that’s probably not that surprising. But it’s not just about automotive in there. We've got a strong section on aerospace too, which is particularly concentrated in the Black Country.

"Then there's the whole question of medical devices in life sciences. So it’s not all elements of life sciences, but there are some parts of life sciences where we combine our brilliant engineering background with the whole sort of story of drug trials and precision medicine, so it’s a really good growing sector, particularly in South Birmingham.

"And then the third one, if you made me choose three I’d want more than three, but I’d probably talk about creative actually. So that’s also a rapidly growing sector, faster than any other area of the economy I think, and we’ve got a really well developed cluster."

The West Midlands Local Industrial Strategy Consultation document and the consultation survey, which ends on November 15 can be found at: www.wmca.org.uk/what-we-do/industrial-strategy/