SEMLEP has been tasked with analysing local business views as part of the government’s Industrial Strategy to support, strengthen and champion British business innovation and growth.
As part of the Local Industrial Strategy, SEMLEP want to hear from businesses across the area to help in their task to look at the successes, strengths and opportunities of businesses in the South East Midlands.
It’s aim is to identify the specific investments and actions the public sector -government, local government and SEMLEP, in partnership with business, should take to drive productivity in the South East Midlands area and enable those businesses in industrial and emerging sectors where we have local specialisms, to grow and compete on the world stage.
This is not a strategy document that will be left sitting on the proverbial shelf. This is about real, long-term focus and investment in the areas that businesses tell us they need public intervention and support.
SEMLEP’s purpose is to enable and amplify the private sector voice in local economic policy, strategy and investment decisions. This is crucial to developing the Local Industrial Strategy and work has already begun on this.
SEMLEP is hosting a series of roundtable discussions over the coming months with businesses engaged in local sector groups and other business representative organisations and, will be conducting an online consultation in the Autumn. We’re also doing a lot more analysis of the latest economic and business trends data which extends the work done undertaken for the Strategic Economic Plan. We are very much at the start of this process but emerging priorities identified by the businesses we’ve spoken to, backed up by the evidence, include a specific focus on actions that:
- Tackle the shortage of good quality employment premises and space, particularly for smaller, expanding businesses critical to our supply chain and sector strengths
- Position our area as the central place to commercialise new technology, bringing in and generating more of the innovation, R and D strengths of the universities and businesses within the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge growth corridor.
- Maximise and promote high-tech development and high-value specialisms we have in next generation vehicles and logistics
- Provide specialist business support to those businesses who have potential for rapid growth
- Tackle issues that growing businesses have with access to energy and core utilities.
We’re keen to hear from businesses and will, over the next few months encourage businesses to engage with us to feed into this work.
An immediate opportunity is on the 11 July, at the Transport Systems Catapult, Milton Keynes. I will be there, with my team, asking you for your views on this agenda. Come along. If you want further information, want to be involved and give us your views, please email: GrowingBusiness@semlep.com or visit www.semlep.com.