Former Redcar MP Jacob Young starts a new role at Agilia

The loss of an MP at a General Election is often a brief matter. It is the new MP who gets the long-term coverage as the defeated former member thanks his team and moves out of the spotlight.

The following day is a challenge as the reality of losing a job and a wage and having to also take those away from a loyal staff start to take their toll.

For Jacob Young, it took almost 100 days to take care of the people and the paperwork – and himself – and find a new direction.

He is now based at the Wilton Centre as director of corporate affairs for Agilia – a specialist consultancy with extensive experience delivering major infrastructure projects – just the sort of thing he was trying to secure as an MP.

He readily admits that a good many of those 100 days were spent ‘having the freedom of being just Jacob’ and starting to build himself back up again after his ‘involuntary career break’.

So my first question when we meet again at the Wilton Centre is a simple one: How are you?

‘I’m doing all right,’ he tells me.

‘In fact, I’m doing better than all right. Obviously, I went through a difficult time at first, as anyone would going through an election loss, but I’ve landed on my feet working with Agilia and I’m in a really good place.

‘I think as an MP, the job is 24/7. It’s all-consuming. And until you do that sort of work, you don’t realise how much of yourself you’re giving up in that – time with family and with friends – you’re sacrificing that. Now working in a job where I have weekends again and being able to spend time with my family and also for them not having the stresses of seeing everything that I’m going through and the pressures that I’m under feels like a new chapter and I feel really good about it.’ Perhaps, having had time to reflect, not being an MP might be better than being an MP?

‘Don’t get me wrong – I wanted to win,’ he says firmly.

‘I wanted to stay as the MP because I absolutely loved being the MP for my home area – the first MP for Redcar constituency who was actually from Teesside. That was always really special to me.

‘But even in 2019, I didn’t expect to win at that point and I don’t think The Echo would have expected me to win either because Redcar had never had a Conservative MP in its history and all of the polling ahead of that said that we were going to take Bishop Auckland, but Redcar was too far a shot.

‘So when I won in 2019 I knew I was there on borrowed time to some extent. I was there because people had lent their vote to the Conservatives for the first time and so you live with a level of uncertainty that at some point this might all go from me.

‘So I definitely feel relieved now that I have certainty in my life again and that I’m not living with this concern that I might not have a job in a few months.

‘When I reflect on it, it’s a strange way of doing things. In a normal situation, if you’re not doing brilliantly at your job you might be put on a performance review and you’ll go through a process of change with some extra training here or there. But it’s very finite as a Member of Parliament, so when you’re made redundant at the end of that four years, you are made redundant in the most public way possible in a sports hall in the middle of Redcar. It’s right that we do it, of course, because that’s how democracy works, but comprehending that from a perspective of I’ve got a life and I’ve got commitments, I’ve got a mortgage and I’ve got family puts an unusual pressure on you.’ So after the loss came the return. The rediscovery phase of Jacob Young could only begin once he could close the door on one phase and open it to another.

‘Obviously, I still live here and own my house here. I’m not moving anywhere, so I still bump into people who will talk about my time as an MP but I guess, for me, I found myself really restless once I’d finished what I was doing.

‘I thought I wanted to get back involved in politics because it’s like a beast that you wanted to feed. But equally, I was like, no, I need to shut that part of myself down and focus on something different. But it was quite difficult to make that move and say “stop doing that and do this instead”.

‘I’d say I took a couple of months where I literally went away.

‘I got to reconnect with my family. I’ve got my brother in Canada, so I got to go and visit him. He moved out there a year and a half ago, and with my previous job, I just didn’t have the time where I could dedicate to go and see him, so that was really nice and I ticked off a bucket list item when we went to Niagara Falls.

‘Then I’ve got family who live in Spain as well, so I went to see them and really just took some time out, including going to a remote Scottish island which was really nice because it was just me for five days to take some time for myself and turn off from everything.

Nominate your business heroes – JUST CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE (Image: Newsquest)

‘When you’re an MP, you’re going at 100 miles an hour – and then there was nothing. So you still have that urge to comment on this or respond to that and there is definitely something which was trying to draw it back into me. It’s an internal battle where you have to shut that part of you off and start focusing on the future.’ He’s a nice guy, good company over a Wilton cappuccino. Very polite and so happy to be back in the mix for his region. I’m sure he could have chosen roles that kept him more out of the spotlight, but here he is as a senior member of a team that wants to make headlines in the North East in the same way as it is doing elsewhere in the UK.

Agilia is still an SME, established in 2016 by the team responsible for developing the model for the Thames Tideway Tunnel. It is now an Employee-Owned Trust where the staff collectively benefit from their own success.

Jacob’s colleagues are made up of specialists in financing, project management, procurement, policy implementation, sustainability and social impact, working alongside an extensive pool of associates. Jacob already has a new boss, with former Deloitte partner Tim Jones appointed as managing director in the same announcement as his own role, and close behind the appointment of three new directors, Rebecca Pynt, Henry Sutcliffe, and Chris Wright.

A new team is being assembled for some big plans.

When he was deciding on his own plans post-Parliament, one thing was top of his list – staying local.

‘I really wanted to stay here,’ he tells me.

‘I recognise that my skillset, having been an MP for five years and a minister for two, would draw me to London and people would like me to develop that, but this is where I’ve lived my whole life and I didn’t want to have to uproot my family permanently. So I wanted to stay here, but although it was my ideal I didn’t know if it was possible.

‘I had some great conversations with other organisations, but values, delivery, the people and the whole company experience had to be right for me because I knew I would have lots to learn.

‘I was from a background in the chemical process sector, then was a member of parliament, then found myself as a minister in the government – so all of a sudden operating at a much more senior level to what I was used to. And my old role was an implementation one looking at how we do things safely on the ground but then I’m drawn to having to look strategically and think about long term decisions for the country in my role as a minister.

Jacob Young talks to Mike Hughes at the Wilton Centre (Image: Sarah Caldecott)

‘So then coming to this job, being able to combine that deep knowledge of industrial process and, and how that works, but also the strategic direction and experience that I had while I was in government was a perfect combination.

‘When Agilia reached out and said they would like to chat to me about what my future looks like and whether or not I’d be interested in joining the team here things just lined up perfectly, because the sort of projects they are working on are exactly the sorts of things that I’ve spent my time in Parliament being passionate about and wanting to see come about.

‘So the two things of wanting to stay local and wanting to be part of building something for the future, aligned for us both.

‘The way I see it, infrastructure is about legacy. When the guys who set up ICI and Wilton designed this site, they probably weren’t thinking about who was going to be running the Cracker in 40 years. What they were thinking about was how we build an integrated chemical site that stands the test of time. That is where I am now working with Agilia looking at these huge projects and thinking about not just how we deliver it for tomorrow, but how we deliver it for the decades to come.’ Among its key projects, it has a team embedded into the Sizewell C team, advising on commercial structuring, supply chain management, negotiations and project management at the nuclear power station site. It is also helping secure sustainable water for generations to come through the first reservoir to be built in the UK for decades, at Havant Thicket Reservoir in the South East and at the Thames Tideway Tunnel project, a new innovative approach to addressing London’s Victorian sewerage system, Agilia occupied various senior positions within the client team.

‘No one has built a reservoir in this country since the 1970s and that is a challenge I’m passionate about, that legacy building and thinking about the future and building a system that stands the test of time,’ says Jacob.

‘Agilia deals with all aspects of infrastructure delivery whether that’s capital raising, commercial management, procurement or supply for some of the biggest infrastructure projects that the country is delivering right now.

‘They’re at the very forefront of these huge projects which will have a lasting impact on the UK’s long-term resilience but they’re also looking at a lot of the new technologies like Small Modular Reactors and tidal power and they’re involved in helping to shape some of the financing and the frameworks around that.

‘The future has to be greener – I think that’s what every business is going through now – and with Agilia we’re really talking about massive infrastructure projects where at every stage someone is going to examine what can be done differently. How is the concrete made, where does the wood come from, all those basic questions?

‘But it’s also about how we pay for some of this stuff as well. One of the things that Mike and Amar did at the Thames Tideway Tunnel is they established this new financing model known as RAB (Regulated Asset Base), which is now being rolled out on Sizewell C and is around how you structure the financing for a project so that you can offer certainty to the investors, certainty that the project will happen and that it will be cheaper in the long run.

‘This is a really exciting company to be a part of – they are specialists, so they don’t do everything but the things that they do, they’re really good at. That’s why they have such respect in the industry.’ He’s obviously impressed – enough to invest in this as his next big move – and confident that he can do the job for them. Amar Qureshi, cofounder and Joint CEO, has high expectations of the former Levelling Up Minister on board, saying: ‘Jacob’s experience in government will be crucial as we continue to build and maintain strong partnerships. His background in policy and tackling regional inequality aligns perfectly with Agilia’s mission to deliver projects that benefit communities and drive sustainable economic growth.’ As well as all the right connections and a wealth of experience, the other key advantage Jacob brings to the role is his local knowledge. Teesside is growing all the time and many of the foundations for that at sites like Teesworks were laid by him.

‘Who wouldn’t want to be working in Teesside at the moment?’ he says.

‘Agilia was established by Mike Pugsley and Amar Qureshi – and Mike is from Redcar so has a passion for this area which is part of the reason why they are based here and now have a number of the team from the local area. That’s one of the things that’s quite special for me working here, because it’s a company with its roots in Teesside, with people who are from this area, who are working in it and helping to shape the future of infrastructure in the UK.

‘Whether that’s in our history, in our present or in our future we talk about leading the world in the Industrial revolution and how we helped shape the world through steel and innovation. But today there are amazing things happening on Teesside, and many of them in this building where we are talking today. We’ve got the Centre for Process Innovation here, Fujifilm who were working on the Covid vaccines and a whole host of different organisations that I was really privileged to visit while I was the MP.

‘Then we can look to the future and the huge opportunities that Teesworks and the Freeport present over the road from here, and the fact that we’ve got such opportunities in terms of carbon capture and storage – a chance to lead the world in all of these different fields, and in a green and sustainable way. So I look at Teesside and I think why wouldn’t you invest here? Why wouldn’t you base your business here? Why wouldn’t you want to build the next best thing here?

‘Certainly, one of the key reasons Agilia are here is that there are great people on Teesside who can help shape infrastructure delivery going forward and we have already tapped into a lot of that talent locally. Having our roots here demonstrates our direction going forward.

‘Agilia are still not very well known, which is where I see myself stepping in to help raise their profile, and the work we’re undertaking and help shape the conversation around how we do infrastructure in a better way in this country. If I can help amplify that through my role I think that can only be a good thing.’