SMALL businesses across the region have given their backing to a new economic blueprint for the South East Midlands.
The South East Midlands Local Industrial Strategy was unveiled by the region’s Local Enterprise Partnership last week. It sets out plans to make the area the ‘Connected Core’ of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc, linking innovators and markets across the area as well as into London.
A key focus of the strategy is harnessing the huge local potential to develop innovative technology locally and transform the best ideas into high-growth businesses, creating new jobs and opportunities in the area.
Alan Todd, policy lead for FSB for the East of England said: “It is good that small businesses have not been forgotten in the South East Midlands Local Industrial Strategy.
“In Bedfordshire, there is an ambition to provide an exemplary business environment, with high-quality commercial premises and support for incubator, scale-up, innovation, trade and investment activity. This will encourage local partners and businesses within the Oxford-Cambridge Arc to work together to harness their collective strength.”
Developed in collaboration with local authorities, government, and businesses, including members of the Federation of Small Businesses, the Local Industrial Strategy sets out how the area will deliver the national Industrial Strategy’s aim to raise productivity levels and to create high-quality, well paid jobs.
Commitments in the South East Midlands Local Industrial Strategy include:
- To become the ‘Connected Core’ of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc: the place with the space, and connectedness between key innovators and markets, to enable ideas and inventions to be tested, enhanced, commercialised and spun out into high growth ventures;
- To put employers at the heart of innovative skills provision and to become the Oxford-Cambridge Arc’s core provider of digital skills, attracting and training the next generation to lead the global digital revolution;
- To provide an exemplary business environment, with high-quality commercial premises and support for incubator, scale-up, innovation, trade and investment activity within the Arc.
