monmouthshire
forge more productive working relationships between the public, private and third sectors. There will be a special emphasis on promoting social entrepreneurship, for example encouraging communities to become involved in green energy generation. The partnership will also help local enterprises gain better access to commercial finance for growth, and aid the development of local and regional supply chains that create new business opportunities for dynamic firms in the county.
Was there any cost/saving to the residents with the Venture Wales link up and were any jobs created or lost at the council as a result? It’s hard to answer this question as we are not comparing like with like. This is something new. The partnership with Venture Wales offers a far greater level of support for business in Monmouthshire than before. It raises the possibility of ad hoc projects and also of activity that could generate an income for the council. We have also brought some functions that weren’t part of the
28 THEbusiness QUARTER
council’s original Economic Development service into this arrangement and removed others. So there is no way to do a meaningful comparison.
Will Venture Wales now focus mainly on promoting the Monmouthshire area or will they also be promoting the rest of Wales? The new Enterprise Partnership between the Council and Venture Wales, which includes promoting the area to inward investors, is a ground breaking initiative that is specific to Monmouthshire. Venture Wales is involved in supporting the creation and growth of businesses in other parts of Wales but doesn’t have a specific remit to promote those areas to external investors.
How do you go about promoting the area to prospective inward investors? We and Venture Wales would use our existing networks of contacts in industry and the investment community nationwide to spread the word and build interest in what Monmouthshire has to offer. We would also host targeted events that enabled us to put
the attractions of Monmouthshire in front of investment decision-makers and those who influence them. Most of all we would persuade decision-makers and influencers to visit the area themselves because we believe that, once they have seen it first hand, they will want to do business here.
What are the benefits in setting up/ relocating your business to Monmouthshire and what sort of premises does the area have to offer? Monmouthshire is in a very strategic location with excellent links to other parts of the UK, especially the South East and the Midlands, it has a highly-skilled workforce with one of the UK’s highest concentrations of NVQ 4 qualified people, it is a very attractive physical environment with a high quality of life, it contains growing clusters of key industries such as creative, IT, renewable energy, and it is home to Britain’s biggest resident population of high-level private sector decision-makers.
How would the county council like to see the future regeneration of the area pan out
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