It’s not only the Scots who want to review their constitutional arrangements with the UK after the EU referendum. The day after it had helped to make UK political history, Hartlepool, perhaps emboldened by its role in the referendum, was also seeking more autonomy.

In the early hours of Friday it was revealed that Hartlepool residents had cast 32,071 ballots in favour of leaving the EU while only 14,029 voted to remain, a majority of 69.6% to 30.4%. As such, Hartlepool became Brexit’s poster boy in the north-east, recording the biggest margin of victory in the region for the Leave campaign.

Local business chiefs are now seeking to make progress with a devolution deal which is part of the creation of the new Tees Valley Combined Authority. Dave Budd, its chairman, told the Hartlepool Mail that this was now a major priority. “We now need to move forward with regional devolution and give Tees Valley control over its own destiny.” Perhaps he’ll be extending an invitation to Nicola Sturgeon to exchange notes.

In the Jacksons Arms pub in Hartlepool late on Friday night, some local people were picking over the bones of the campaign. “The main reason I voted to leave the EU was immigration,” said Tommy Docherty. “And that doesn’t make me a racist. There needs to be a cap on immigrants coming to this country because, as things stand, this country just can’t cope.” Docherty’s skills as a joiner take him all over the country in the gas and shipping industries and he is well aware of the divisions throughout the UK. “I’m originally from the east end of Glasgow and I was astonished that every Scottish region voted to stay in.” His friend and colleague Brian Trotter also voted to leave the EU and, similarly, had no regrets in doing so. “I didn’t think the Leave side would win, to be honest. But I’m delighted that it did. Immigration is also a big issue for me; not the principle but the sheer volume.”

As the extent of the Leave side’s victory in Hartlepool became evident, the local business community urged caution, but this was laced with an anxiety that could barely be concealed. This region, like many others across the UK, has been the recipient of hundreds of millions of pounds of EU investment.

Now they all must just wait and hope that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were telling the truth about £350m leaving the UK for Europe every week, and how it will now be reinvested in regions like this.

The area relies on every penny it can get. Like other communities up and down this stretch of England’s east coast, it has suffered grievously at the hands of the forces of de-industrialisation and an absence of anything approaching a viable economic plan to fill the void. In the Thatcher era thousands of steel jobs disappeared, just a couple of decades or so after the last ship to be built in Hartlepool sailed in 1961.

There was a regeneration of sorts in the 1990s, with a swanky-looking marina emerging from what had been a noisy and dynamic dockland area. What new jobs have been created are not the robust, transferable and hard-wrought ones that were properly paid and could be passed down through generations.

Back in the Jacksons Arms, Liam Gallagher is belting out Roll With It on the jukebox and June Robson and Sharon Railton are expressing the same sentiments about the outcome of the referendum. Both women voted Leave and would do so all over again. Like Doherty and Trotter, they were concerned about the volume of immigration.

They were angrier, though, about the industrial heart being ripped out of the region. Robson, who works in export packaging, said: “We have lost so many industrial jobs in this area over the years and lots of old skills. Who’s to say that we can’t revive these skills and those industries by making our own trade deals and deciding what our own priorities will be?”

Her friend Railton said: “My daughter and her friends recently successfully completed an access course through the dole office. She was told she needed to do this to apply for the jobs she had in mind. But the first time she applied for one she was told not to bother, as they had all now been filled by Romanian people who were probably doing them for less.”

Hartlepool was at the apex of those north-eastern and Midlands Labour strongholds that ignored the party’s advice and opted to leave. The town’s health and social indicators show that it is encountering fierce challenges.

A survey in 2012 listed Hartlepool as being in the top 2% of England’s most deprived areas. The numbers were based on levels of income, unemployment, health, education and crime. The pattern of despair is one that, by degrees, could be found in many other of those working-class communities that decided to turn their backs on Europe.

Of 326 local authorities, Hartlepool was placed fourth highest in terms of being at overall risk of poverty. By every indicator of physical and social health and wellbeing, it is below the national average. In the 71 years since the end of the second world war it has always returned a Labour MP to parliament, apart from five years at the start of the 1960s. Local Ukip activists’ claims that Hartlepool is now under their control are fanciful. Doherty, Trotter, Robson and Railton are all Labour voters and will all continue to be. “Who else is there?” asked Trotter.

As he prepared to finish his last lagers of the night – “I’ve got an early shift tomorrow” – Docherty said: “I’ll tell you what happened in places like this yesterday; we sent a message to the people who are in charge of this country that they need to listen to us. If they had been listening before now, then what happened on Thursday wouldn’t have come as a surprise to them.”