If the authors of a report by David Cameron’s once favourite think-tank are to be believed, anyone planning to visit Sunderland should do so soon because the city is destined for extinction.

The Policy Exchange published Cities Unlimited on the day that the Conservative leader embarked on a tour of target seats in the North. It said that regeneration policies had failed to narrow the widening economic chasm between London and the North. The solution? Build three million homes in London, Oxford and Cambridge and encourage northerners to move south. Mr Cameron spent the day soothing ruffled feathers. The “barmy” report, he promised, would not become Conservative policy.

The Times went to see whether, as the report claimed, it was “time to stop pretending there is a bright future for Sunderland”.

It was cold and raining, setting a damp and depressing mood for a city that apparently “sits in Newcastle’s shadow”, “has a severe problem with its skills base” and is “a long way from most places”. On the Pennywell estate, a man with a prize-winning stomach stood by his gate, nursing a pint glass and gazing at a child kicking aimlessly at an abandoned bicycle.

Four teenagers in hoodies, beer cans in hand, crossed the road clutching bulging off-licence carrier bags. More evidence for the prosecution?

The city suffered savage job losses in the 1980s and 1990s through the decline of its shipbuilding industry, the death of the Durham coalfield, the end of glass-making and the closure of the local Vaux brewery.

On the plus side, a £2 billion investment over two decades has created Europe’s most productive car plant, the Nissan complex, employing 5,000 people and providing a further 7,000 associated jobs. “And yet for all this, Sunderland remains poor,” the report says. It suffers from “very poor economic geography”, has weak transport links and “isn’t somewhere outsiders consider a desirable place to live”.

Yet staff at Sunderland Arc, the city’s urban-regeneration company, were in confident mood. Their optimism became clearer during a tour that revealed a transformation was under way. They produced independent statistics to support their belief that the study’s authors might have benefited from visiting Sunderland.

The city’s employment growth of 9.4 per cent over the past five years has outpaced that for both the North East (6.7 per cent) and the country (3.3 per cent). In the same period Sunderland has attracted £1.5 billion investment and 7,500 new jobs. Its number of households is predicted to have increased by 11 per cent by 2022.

Restoration work is turning the Georgian and Victorian properties of Sunniside into a thriving business and artistic quarter. A £20 million Aquatic Centre, next to the Stadium of Light, is an early sign of the new sports village that is rising on the north bank of the Wear. On the south bank new residential, business and shopping quarters are helping to reconnect residents with some wonderful parkland.

There is a long way to go. Progress has been slow but Roy Keane is not the only reason why the people of Sunderland are proud of their city. Joe Painter, director of Durham University’s Centre for the Studies of Regions and Cities, attacked the assumption that cities should be treated purely as economic units. “[They] are so much more than that. They’re social entities, they’re cultural units, they’re places that have meaning for people.”

Professor Painter said it was wrong to assume that northern cities were not viable if they could not close the economic gap with a dynamic capital city. “You’re asking everybody to run faster, but you’re asking those who are farther back to run faster still.” No one was running fast on the Pennywell estate, but even here the shoots of progress were visible. Homes are undergoing a £70 million regeneration programme. It will soon be home to a new £25 million academy school. Even the rain stopped eventually. Reports of Sunderland’s death have been, it seems, greatly exaggerated. Whether the same can be said for Tory prospects in the city remains to be seen.

Reasons to be cheerful

— Unemployment in the city has fallen at almost three times the national rate over the past five years

— It has highest broadband uptake (66 per cent of households) in the country

— Average annual per capita earnings growth of 5.4 per cent between 2002 and 2006 was the third best of any city in Britain

— In 2006 Sunderland University was named “best English university for student experience” (The Times) and since 2001 has held the title of “best new university in England for research”

— 280,000 population bigger than that of any city between Leeds and Edinburgh

— Sixty businesses from 12 countries employ a total of 17,500 people in the city

Source: Times database

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