roundtable: investment 63 Heathrow – A help or


hindrance? Lewis added that the biggest regional issue remained the decision on resolving the future of the UK hub airport – Heathrow. “It’s been the driver of the Thames Valley for as long as any of us can remember.”


Devall: “In brand terms, the word ‘Heathrow’ must be better known worldwide than ‘Thames Valley’. But, when we say we are ‘near Heathrow’ do inward investors still get a good vibe from it?”


Lewis: “They have done, but I think the name is now teetering on the edge.”


Warwick: “Using ‘close to Heathrow’ as a tagline nowadays can be risky.”


Britton: "Heathrow is well-known internationally and Oxford, Windsor, Henley and Ascot have a positive resonance abroad for Thames Valley marketing. That’s why we are looking to be as Thames Valley inclusive as we can, and involving multiple LEP and authority areas and also key clusters within the Thames Valley region.”


Reading rail upgrade – A


help or hindrance? Murray suggested Reading Station’s major development was an obvious bonus to the town in retaining its large employers and attracting small businesses to the area.


Warwick questioned that, mentioning the difficulties in accessing Reading by rail locally, particularly from the south. “Companies tell me that they don’t enjoy the main arterial links to Reading because they live or work just outside. It’s actually a pain in the neck for them to get into Reading to get the train to where they want to go.”


“The problem with the new station is that it will attract cars as well. People don’t make enough use of the local rail network into Reading from surrounding areas. Why don’t we have some good Park & Ride facilities at places like Mortimer or north of Reading, allowing people to get into Reading easily without adding to the traffic problem? I often drive into Reading and take a train, and I wish I didn’t have to.


“There is very woolly thinking about Park & Ride. We could actually get a lot more value out of using the rail network into Reading, rather than the main lines out of it.”


A patent advantage?


Britton mentioned the positive effect for the UK of the Government’s stance on taxation with respect to R&D and IP patent protection, and wondered if the Thames Valley could leverage this advantage.


Peddie agreed there was an opportunity, but one currently being missed by many, both resident businesses and inbound companies. “You would think that any smallish or even medium-sized accountancy practice would be right on top of this subject, but apparently not. A firm of a certain scale and skillset is required to be able to advise and deal with the complexity of the topic.”


David Murray


Warwick: “Even the specialist patent firms have not done enough to promote it,”


Peddie: “I had assumed everyone in the accountancy sector would be talking to their clients on this topic, but I was staggered when I met businessmen recently who knew nothing about it. R&D and Patent Box are important developments in the attractiveness of the UK generally and they definitely play to the strengths of Thames Valley professional services sector, with its many excellent firms, in supporting the retention and investment of companies in this region, but it shows that you need advisers of the right level of expertise.”


Access to good quality


employees Brattesani: “Our customers say the biggest problem currently is recruiting quality staff in the Thames Valley. I wonder if that is going to be a future problem – increasing competition for staff – that might deter companies from coming in?”


Wilson spoke about the importance of new Thames Valley infrastructure – Western Rail Access to Heathrow now approved and Crossrail coming to Maidenhead. “When I spoke to several large corporates recently, the major attraction of Crossrail was the ability to attract more talent to come into this area not the links it provided for people to go outside the area.”


Warwick: “What we don’t do well enough is co-ordinating the offering to university undergraduates of Thames Valley opportunities of internships, sponsored post-graduate work and so on. That will help keep talent in the area.”


Tony Warwick THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – MAY 2013


Murray noted that universities should not be the only focus. Further education in institutions such as Reading College, and


vocational training courses also part of the picture.


Peddie felt there was evidence of UK rebalancing of the employment pool with the provision of suitable skillsets to assist future business needs, but “I don’t have any sense of how good this region is as a whole compared to others, in its standards of higher education for technology or engineering and training for those sectors the region is strong in.”


Warwick believed that some manufacturing was now moving back to the UK as offshore production and supply chain costs rose. But, talent was obviously concentrating on areas and centres of excellence, such as the motorsport cluster around Oxford. He also pointed out that the British university system is not geographic. “Students will come and go.


“Centres of excellence are not always a friend. So what, if Oxford and Cambridge are perceived as the best? In the Thames Valley we probably don’t need such speciality. If you look at Foreign Direct Investment deal-flow into this area, the top three are ICT, life sciences, and advanced engineering. That’s a very wide range of things and over-specialisation in the Thames Valley would probably not best serve us.”


Britton: “The focus is all around centres of excellence at the moment, but the benefit that the Thames Valley has is its breadth of talent. Although we do have technology hot-spots, it is the convergence of our technologies that will create the most opportunities for this area in future.”


Have you viewed the Thames Valley online, lately?


Positive marketing of our region has been boosted recently with the creation of the Thames Valley Inward Investment Portal website www.thamesvalley.co.uk – “an online guide to a world-class business location and established support network for international companies.”


www.businessmag.co.uk


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