"A report released today warned that a combination of Covid-19, globalisation, technological and climate change is creating a “slow-motion traffic accident” for jobs and living standards with social and economic disaster imminent in industrial towns across the United Kingdom without government intervention. It also laid out a series of previous failures made in these towns such as following the closure of a steelworks in 2015 that left 4,000 workers unemployed.

The report – entitled ‘A Just Transition? Managing the challenges of technology, trade, climate change and COVID-19' – explored how these transitions in industrial towns can be managed. The report looked at how industrial change has been handled in two sectors – coal fired electricity generation and steel making.

The report studied the closure of SSI steelworks in Redcar in 2015. It highlighted that Government response to steelwork closures that left thousands made redundant “showed limited preparedness” and demonstrated an “absence of learning from earlier experiences”. Most troublingly, it showed that the impact of steel plant closures on local communities “did not inspire a wider discussion” at either national or local government level. More than four in"

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