Agenda item

The Cabinet Member with Responsibility for Economy, Infrastructure and Skills introduced the report. The Open for Business programme had been operating for a number of years; this report was asking Cabinet to support three projects:

A.    Visit Worcestershire – As the County’s Destination Marketing Organisation, Visit Worcestershire played an important part in promoting and supporting the tourism economy in the County and encouraging people to stay and spend money in Worcestershire. The funding requested was £1,459,500 for the next three years.

B.    Workforce Resilience – To help with worker education and engaging with employers to help with apprenticeships and training. Certain groups such as Care Leavers would be targeted. The funding requested was £1,297,079.

C.    Business Worcestershire – To provide support to local businesses as EU funding comes to an end. The project would involve working with the District Councils who would be receiving funding. The funding requested was £3,364,071.

The commitment to Open for Business had been emphasised in the refresh of the Corporate Plan and the three key projects would help the Worcestershire economy to grow and highlight that the county was a brilliant place to live and work.

Other Cabinet Members supported the recommendations and were delighted to support apprenticeships and business start- ups, especially those focussing on innovation and technology. There was also appreciation that care leavers would be targeted for help.

In response to a query about whether there was some risk involved in the Business Worcestershire programme as it would be the Districts who were receiving a lot of the money for the programme; the Cabinet Member responded that the County Council had good relationships with the Districts and all agreed that the project would be most successful if they worked collectively.

It was recognised that by helping the economy and supporting people with training and into work, residents’ aspirations and outcomes would improve, which would have a major impact on wellbeing. It was understood that the four Corporate Plan themes interlinked.

A Member from outside the Cabinet supported help for tourism but queried if increasing the amount of tourism would increase congestion in the County. He felt that there should be support for businesses but that needed to go hand in hand with projects moving towards net zero. It was pointed out that accessibility into the County was improving, with projects which were helping sustainable transport such as new or improved railway stations. Moving towards net zero was important to the Council. The Government had announced support packages to businesses around their energy costs, but in the long term more work should be done to help businesses become as energy efficient as possible.

RESOLVED that Cabinet:

(a)  Delegated responsibility to the Cabinet Member with Responsibility for Economy, Infrastructure and Skills to oversee the implementation of the Open for Business programme and approve future business cases for such investment, from the Open for Business Reserve and/or the Open for Business Capital Programme, up to £0.5 million per project;

(b)  approved the Governance Structure of the Open for Business Board as set out in this report; and

(c)  noted the schemes already completed and underway as part of the Open for Business Programme and its successes to date and approved relevant reserve and capital programme allocations to be spent on the proposed projects as listed in this report, namely Business Worcestershire, Visit Worcestershire, and Workforce Resilience.