April 2012 - Monthly update from Chris Pomfret

It is almost 12 months since I became Chairperson of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership and in that time, I have had the pleasure of meeting many people from a wide range of organisations and have been struck by the range of inspirational and successful businesses that are based in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.  Despite many economic challenges, we have many advantages to help us prosper, a passion and belief in Cornwall as a great place to do business, superfast broadband, the creative and other skills emerging from our university and colleges and the embryonic businesses growing and flourishing in Pool Innovation Centre to name but a few.

Communication has and always will remain very important to me and to my fellow Board members hence we are updating this website regularly and this monthly news update will become a regular feature in the future.

So onto our current news - following your feedback and further to discussions with transport colleagues in both Cornwall Council and the Isles of Scilly Council, we have responded to the Government's consultation on the Great Western Rail Franchise and the Devolution of Major Transport Schemes.  We have also signed up to a joint South West response in relation to the Rail Franchise by working with our counterparts in Devon, something we are happy to do where it is appropriate and of mutual benefit.  The transport agenda is hugely important for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly and we will always seek to influence the maintenance and improvement of our infrastructure given the importance of this to our economy.

Staying with the theme of consultations, we have met with officers in the Cornwall Council planning department to discuss the document, "Planning Future Cornwall - Our Preferred Approach to a Core Strategy".  In the coming weeks, we will be formulating our official response, however, I think you could describe our initial response as somewhat challenging, particularly with regard to job creation.

In terms of recent successes, we have received 97k from the Enterprise Zone Skills Fund for an Aerohub Enterprise Skills Plan focusing on the aviation and aerospace sectors.   We have set up the governance organisation for the Enterprise Zone and have a good number of expressions of interest.  We have also secured 25,600 of capacity funding each year for three years from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS).  The first year's allocation will be spent on a web based tool to enable businesses to navigate their way through more than 200 local and national business support services and to identify gaps in business support, something that we were told was an issue at our recent LEP road shows.

Unfortunately, you cannot win them all - Cornwall was not selected as the location for the Green Investment Bank and were unsuccessful with our application to become a Rural Growth Network.  Whilst this was disappointing news, one of the major benefits of becoming a Rural Growth Network was to assist rural businesses to grow, something that due to our status as a convergence area and ongoing delivery of the Rural Development Programme (RDPE), we are well placed to achieve.

You may have seen the announcements about the South West Marine Energy Park based in Bristol, Cornwall and Plymouth.  I chaired the first exploratory meeting and it is clear that there is strong agreement about working together on this important initiative.  Funding may be an issue but I do think that from Cornwall's perspective we are quite well placed with both government and EU funding that could help.  We also have the wave hub of course which has now signed its first contracts.

In February this year, we established the LEP as a not for profit company limited by guarantee with all 11 Board members becoming Directors.  We have adopted Companies's House model articles and have drawn up our constitution which has been agreed by the board, click here for more information.

I would like to thank everyone who participated in our LEP road shows held between November and January at 15 venues across our LEP areas from St Mary's to Bude.  Almost 300 people attended and gave us some really useful feedback to help inform the strategic direction the LEP takes over the next 5 years.  During May, we will be publishing our draft LEP Strategy for consultation and would be interested to receive your feedback.

It is clear that skills and employment, like transport, is a key issue for our LEP and therefore, we are in the process of establishing an Employment and Skills Board which will be demand led rather than provider led and will include representation from a wide range of stakeholders including businesses.  More information on this will be provided soon.

Coming soon will also be the launch of our Regional Growth Fund and Growing Places Fund. Application for these will be encouraged from across the LEP area.  We are also working with the Council's to see if the processes for applying for funds could be simplified without losing the essential rigour needed particularly when public funding is involved - it is our money after all!!

Finally we appreciate that it is a very difficult economic climate but the resources to operate the LEP are also very modest.  The Board are all part time and have other challenging commitments.  Whilst we are grateful for the support of funds and staff time from Cornwall Council and the Isles of Scilly Council, where possible we are looking to other organisations to lend us support where this is practical.  If you feel able to do this, there is a form which enables organisation to register their interest in helping the LEP on a pro bono basis.

We will also be inviting imminently all organisations who represent people employed in the private sector (this can include organisations that also involve the public sector but are not exclusively in that sector) to join the Business Consultative Group.  If you such an organisation and you don't hear from us then may be have not got you on our database.  Please contact Mel Richardson to get yourselves on the database.  This does, of course, include organisations in the social enterprise and not for profit sectors which are very important in Cornwall.

As I said at the start of this message, communication is paramount to us and we hope to keep a regular dialogue with you.  If you would like to be on our email databse to be alerted of LEP news, then please email us.

Chris Pomfret

Chair Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Enterprise Partnership