IT’S been a great year for cone sales. I don’t mean the type you get ice cream and a flake in, although it has been a good year for all things heat related, but more the annoying orange pointy ones which seem to be on every road surface. It’s also been a great year for bulldozers and diggers as many projects swing into action.

It's great to see (well, maybe not the cones) and the Tees Valley and Darlington in particular have some major employers knocking on the door, not least Amazon which if rumour is correct, will need a workforce in the thousands. In days gone by, one major selling point for anyone investing in the region was the ready availability of a workforce; a high unemployment rate meant employers could be assured recruitment would not be an issue. That is changing.

Whilst we still have an unemployment rate of about 4.5 per cent it is falling faster than anywhere in the country and nearing functional full employment which means employers now need to compete for their workforce.

There is nothing wrong with healthy competition driving progressive workplace practices and quality of opportunity. It also brings challenges to authorities as workers will be drawn from a wider area and the infrastructure has to cope.

Thinking therefore has to be on a much larger scale than simply a few tweaks to local road junctions.

If we are to move people easily about the wider area to take up job opportunities, say from Middlesbrough to Darlington, then we must have a transport system capable of doing that which is able to cope with variable shift patterns and 24 hour working.

Similarly, it is now likely the North-East will become an importer of a workforce from other parts of the country, rather than an exporter as the quality of life/cost of living ratio and career opportunities are perceived to be much better in this region so we need to have a serious look at our housing stock.

Many authorities are already well into this process but are perhaps not making the case adequately for the larger scale level of developments required. For anyone who has worked in the North-East over the past 20 years and has seen it transform from a struggling region to a prosperous one this is a good position to be in. We need to adapt now to solving a whole new set of problems which are going to require a lot more cones.

*Rachel Anderson is assistant director of the North East England Chamber of Commerce