Regional development agency One NorthEast chief executive Alan Clarke has called on business leaders to pull together for the good of the region.

Mr Clarke said it was too easy for people to become distracted by focusing on what other areas were achieving, rather than concentrating on their own projects.

He told The Northern Echo: "There sometimes can be a tendency for people to be looking over their shoulders a bit, looking at what someone else is doing in the region rather than getting on with their own initiative.

"Equally, that energy could be channelled into something more positive.

"We need to do a lot less of that in the future. As a region we are peripheral - we can only begin to really close the gap in terms of the more prosperous regions if we are all pulling together in the same direction."

The North-East has historically been divided by internal rivalry, particularly between Teesside, Tyneside and Wearside - a split that Mr Clarke is keen to mend.

A team of directors has been assembled at the regional development agency which it is hoped will propel the North-East up the economic league tables.

Tyneside has experienced phenomenal growth on the back of the Newcastle-Gateshead Initiative and the Capital of Culture bid.

Other parts of the region are keen to emulate that growth and will look to the agency for financial and strategic assistance similar to that invested in the regeneration of Gateshead and Newcastle.

Mr Clarke's comments were backed by Steve Rankin, regional director of the CBI, who said: "That is very sound thinking. We should be thinking more as a region than as a number of separate and perhaps competing sub regions."

But he warned considerable efforts were needed to channel businesses, politicians and the public sector in the same direction.

"In practical terms, it can sometimes be rather difficult to get everybody pulling in the same direction or, if they are pulling in the same direction, pulling with the same degree of enthusiasm."

George Cowcher, chief executive of the North East Chamber of Commerce, said: "There is too much parochialism in the North-East. We are still a long way behind other more fortunate regions.

"However, there needs to be a degree of regional sensitivity. It is not appropriate to have the same things in Berwick as you do in the centre of Middlesbrough.

"It is most important that not everything is launched in Newcastle or that one particular area is consistently getting money over the others."