PEOPLE living in Cambridgeshire have fewer reasons to worry about the short-term downturn in the UK economy than those in London – according to former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers. Mr Gowers, now a senior manager with investment bankers Lehman Bro

PEOPLE living in Cambridgeshire have fewer reasons to worry about the short-term downturn in the UK economy than those in London - according to former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers.

Mr Gowers, now a senior manager with investment bankers Lehman Brothers, spoke at the annual conference of the Greater Cambridgeshire Partnership last Thursday.

The GCP has responsibility for finding jobs for the occupants of the 50,000 new homes to be built in the county by 2021.

It believes jobs will be created by high-tech research and development organisations being attracted to Cambridge and a 25-mile radius of the city, including East Cambridgeshire.

Mr Gowers, a Cambridge graduate, compared this optimism with the view from London, where he said life was currently, "different in international investment bank, where it is all doom and gloom.

"Here you can sense that investment is going into everything except infrastructure.

"Whatever your growth pains, I get a unique sense of people working together in partnership.

"If there are problems here, they are ones we have to look to Whitehall to solve."

Mr Gowers said the outlook for the national economy over the next five to 10 years looked good, "but it's gloomy for London over the short term."

Yet he repeated there would be no repeat of 1991/92, with high interest rates, negative equity and a high rate of home repossessions.

"Even if there are no reasons to be cheerful, there are no grounds for despair and it's all massively overblown," he said.

"You will emerge from the current economic slowdown in a stronger position," he concluded.