Request for help from hyperlocals

I’m on secondment with Big Lottery Fund’s West Midlands team at the moment, helping them with their BIG Local work. If you know of any hyperlocal blogs or social media surgeries serving the following areas, please could you leave me a comment below, tweet to @thewmro or email me oliver.nicholls [at] wmro.org

• Bromford & Firs Estate (Birmingham)
• East Coseley (Dudley)
• Horsefair, Broadwaters, Greenhill (Kidderminster)
• Tividale  – Grace Mary to Lion Farm (Sandwell)
• Gobowen, St. Martins, Chell Heath (Shropshire)
• Chell Heath & Fegg Hays (Stoke on Trent)

Thank you

Local Enterprise Partnerships need to act to reinvigorate the private sector

Weaknesses in the structure of the West Midlands economy mean that it was hit particularly hard by the recent recession and is likely to see further job losses over the next five years.

Our latest briefing paper (pdf, 408kb), produced as part of our West Midlands Skills Assessment 2010, reveals that the West Midlands has a weaker private sector than other parts of the country. The West Midlands has poorer representation of higher value added activities and high growth firms with the potential to create new, skilled jobs.

As a result the West Midlands has seen its share of jobs in the public sector rise more rapidly than anywhere else in the country. It is particularly vulnerable to job losses from the spending cuts announced by the government.

We forecast that West Midlands Gross Value Added (GVA) will grow by only 8% (£8.8 billion) between 2010 and 2015 and there will be a net fall in employment of more than 38,000 people.

Local enterprise partnership proposals announced

56 proposals for local enterprise partnerships across the country have been submitted, the government has confirmed, following the closing day for submissions.

There are seven proposals from the West Midlands:

• Birmingham and Solihull with East Staffordshire, Lichfield and Tamworth: two page summary (pdf, 17kb) and  the full proposal (doc, 243kb)
• Coventry and Warwickshire (doc, 3.5mb)
• Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire (pdf, 1.3mb)
• The Black Country (pdf, 2.74mb)
• The Marches Enterprise Partnership (pdf, 1mb) – Herefordshire, Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin
• West Midlands (an overarching proposal from Business Voice West Midlands)
• Worcestershire (pdf, 603kb)

Three distinct responses in respect to cross boundary working arrangements have also been received from Peak District, South East England and West Leicestershire and Northern Warwickshire.

Here’s the full list of proposals.

Inward investment into the West Midlands 2009/10 – a local analysis

In 2009/10 there were 84 inward investment successes in the West Midlands and another four knowledge-based investments. These investments created over 1,500 new jobs and safeguarded another 4,300.

Although these 88 investments represented the lowest number of jobs created or safeguarded since 1992/93, they also represented the 7th highest total number of projects since 1991.

Inward investment is usually spread reasonably evenly between the West Midlands metropolitan areas and the shire counties. In 2009/10 the shire counties attracted the majority of inward investment projects (55%). See left.

However, the metropolitan areas of Birmingham, Coventry, Solihull, Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton have attracted perhaps just over half of the projects over the years – see below. The number of jobs created and safeguarded also generally follows a similar pattern.

West Midlands innovation fund delivers eleven-fold return on investment and brings jobs to region

An independent evaluation of the Technology Transfer Fund (TTF2) (pdf, 431kb) has underlined the value that the SME support fund has played in regional economic growth.

The fund was launched by Advantage West Midlands in 2005 to assist development of small and medium sized science and technology businesses within the Central Technology Belt, the high technology corridor that follows the A38 from Birmingham, through Worcester, to Malvern. TTF2 offered grants of up to £25,000 to more than 150 local companies.

The report (pdf, 431kb) produced by ekosgen on behalf of Advantage West Midlands found that the TTF2 realised more than £25 million of additional net turnover for the businesses it supported, and also created an additional 47 jobs during the two year project lifespan.

Unemployment rates in Worcestershire: August 2009

Worcestershire County Council’s research and intelligence unit publish a monthly round-up of employment fact and figures.

These statistics are broken down by wards and districts, and also show the picture for the whole of Worcestershire in comparison to the West Midlands.

Highlights from the August 2009 summary (PDF, 713kb) include:

Worcestershire awarded grant to promote intergenerational volunteering

Worcestershire has been awarded part of a £5.5 million grant as part of a cross-government scheme to promote intergenerational volunteering. The Generations Together campaign aims to encourage meaningful interaction between young and old generations across the region.

Over the next two years £386,800 will be available for Worcestershire’s transferable skills project. This project aims to provide more than 700 community project volunteers, both young and old, with additional skills to encourage greater understanding between generations, challenge negative stereotypes and increase interaction between different age groups.

Inward investment: record high for West Midlands

In the period 2008 to 2009 the West Midlands region received 117 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, a record high since records began in 1991 (shown by the blue line in the graph below).

Latest gross disposable household income estimates indicate metropolitan West Midlands is UK’s poorest sub-region

The 2007 Regional Gross Disposable Household Income (GDHI) (Word, 411KB) estimates are released today by the Office for National Statistics.

Indexed GDHI per head (where UK=100) for the West Midlands in 2007 was 90, stable in comparison to the revised 2006 index value of 90.

GDHI per head in the West Midlands rose from £12,700 in 2006 to £12,900 in 2007, an increase of 1.9%, in line with the increase seen in England and the UK.

Gross Disposable Household Income (GDHI) per head is preferred to Gross Value Added (GVA) per head as a measure of economic welfare.

West Midlands rural areas hit particularly hard by recession

The Observatory’s Skills Team are working on an assessment of skills and labour market issues in the rural areas of the West Midlands on behalf of the Regional Skills Partnership and the Rural Affairs Forum.

While we expect to publish in April 2009, we can report now on emerging findings relating to the impact of the recession.

Rural areas of the West Midlands have out-performed the rest of the region in recent years in terms of business growth, new business formation and employment growth.

However, there remains a significant dependence on lower value added sectors and industries such as agriculture, manufacturing industries such as food and drink, construction, hotels and catering, and transport.

Migrant workers mini scenarios in Wychavon

Wychavon District Council have produced a set of mini scenarios looking at the possible impact on the economy and local communities of changes in the numbers of migrant workers coming to Wychavon.

The new report suggests that:

…the public and private sector will have to work to attract migrants to the area in the face of stiff competition from other parts of the UK, in particular Kent and the South East. In order in particular for our farming and food production to prosper, conditions have to be attractive to potential employees.

The full report, executive summary and data appendix are available:

• Mini scenarios executive summary (PDF, 61KB)
• Mini scenarios full report (PDF, 536KB)
• Mini scenarios data appendix (PDF, 974KB)

These new scenarios build on Wychavon’s 2004 study on the extent, size and characteristics of the migrant workforce in the Vale of Evesham (pdf, 364kb).

There is also an interview with Councillor Audrey Steel where she discusses the report’s findings, the changes in Wychavon since 2004 and how new evidence presented in the mini scenarios is helping decision making.

Making information more accessible

InstantAtlas maps

How to make complex information available to a wider audience and how to make it more easily understand? Those were questions being considered in Coventry this week.

On Tuesday 20th January, Coventry City Council hosted a meeting designed to share ideas on how regional partners were using software to make their information more readily available.

The main focus of the event was Geowise’s InstantAtlas tool, which is used by many public sector organisations to provide a nice clear visual interpretation of the data they hold.

West Midlands local development annual monitoring reports

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires local planning authorities to regularly monitor planning policies that affect the planning and development of their areas.

Each council is required to produce an Annual Monitoring Report which is published in December to assess the effectiveness of policy in the Local Development Framework.

These show whether the progress towards targets and milestones in the Local Development Framework are being met and whether council planning policies are being successfully implemented. If policies are not working as intended – or are not achieving sustainable objectives – the Annual Monitoring Report includes suggested actions.

West Midlands produced 3rd strongest regional growth in England, according to latest GVA per head figures

The 2007 Regional and 2006 Sub-Regional Gross Value Added (GVA) data are released today by the Office for National Statistics. Indexed GVA per head (where UK=100) for the West Midlands in 2007 was 86.0, a marginal decrease from the revised 2006 index value of 86.1. GVA per head in the West Midlands rose from £16,300 in 2006 to £17,200 in 2007, an increase of 5.3% compared to a 5.3% increase in GVA per head across the UK, and a 5.4% increase in England.

In the latest data for 2007 the West Midlands in regards to GVA per head is ranked seventh amongst the nine English regions, where London is the strongest performer at £30,400 and the North East is the least strong at £15,700. In total, regional GVA for the West Midlands in 2007 was £92.4bn, an increase of £4.9bn on the revised figures for 2006.

Questionnaire on benefits of local information systems

This questionnaire is part of a research project, commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government, to investigate the way users of local information systems benefit from the data and statistics the systems provide. The aim of the questionnaire is to obtain information about how you use the system and the way it helps you.