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Solent businesses – growing in size and sector
The first Solent SME Growth Index was the backdrop when dozens of business figures gathered at Hilton at the Ageas Bowl to hear from two of the area’s most important leaders.
David Lees, managing director of Southampton Airport, and Dawn Baxendale, chief executive of Southampton City Council, gave candid accounts of their plans for growth to growing firms which have similar ambitions, at the SME Business Breakfast on September 30.
Lees, a director of Solent LEP, explained how the highly populous area where people had a high propensity to fly, highlighted the importance of the airport’s connectivity.
Germany, France and the Netherlands are markets businesses wanted to reach and new and future routes to major German cities have been established along with new services to Milan and future plans to serve Cork.
But the dominant news was fast- progressing plans for a 50-acre development on adjacent land which has Enterprise Zone status and will be home to 500 new businesses. He called it a key employment opportunity. Units on the site would be for SMEs from incubator space upwards.
The airport will know the outcome of its bid this year. Lees said: “Things are happening incredibly quickly in terms of interactions with the Government.”
An alternative if the bid didn’t succeed was offered by private jet operators to make, service and repair planes.
However, amid many infrastructure improvements in the region, Lees said one aspect needed urgent attention – east to west rail services. He said: “It can take longer to get from Southampton to Portsmouth on a train journey than going from Southampton to London. That’s absolutely absurd.”
www.businessmag.co.uk
From left: Jeremy Over of Moore Blatch; Alex Nicholson of James Cowper Kreston; Dawn Baxendale of Southampton City Council; Mark Aston of Santander; David Lees of Southampton Airport and David Murray of The Business Magazine
Baxendale reported the remarkable growth of the region, both in infrastructure and commercial and residential developments. She said: “Anybody who walked around Southampton over the past two years will be absolutely assaulted by cranes in the sky.”
The city she said, was the cruise capital of Western Europe and the continent’s most productive and efficient port. There is world-leading research, two universities and seven million visitors a day which she wants increased to 10 million.
She highlighted the diversification among businesses adding: “We have got every shape, size and sector in Southampton and they are growing. The economic base is broad. We are not dependent on one or two.”
Driving the regeneration is the £3 billion City Centre Masterplan. Already £1.6b has been committed to the scheme which will create 7,000 jobs by 2026 along with helping 24,000 improve their careers and bring about 5,000 homes.
There will be 110,000 sq m of offices and other workspace with 30,000 sq m of leisure/food and drink provision and up to 650 hotel bed spaces.
Baxendale said: “For shopping we are 14th in the country. We now
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – NOVEMBER 2015
expect to get into the top 10. But food is weak. Over the next few years 51 new restaurants will broaden the offer as well as the retail and leisure.”
Yet the radical plans are going forward while the council has a £90 million funding gap and with demand for adults’ and children’s services ‘going through the roof’.
The key, she said, lay in developing mutually beneficial relationships with investors and businesses.
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Businesses gathered to hear the remarkable stories of growth on the South Coast under the theme: ‘Growing companies and Southampton’s future: the perfect match?’ Alan Bunce reports
SOLENT SME GROWTH
TM
“The challenges we face are exactly the same challenges you face. How do we generate relationships that help us work together for the benefit of all of us?”
She described it as a one team approach, adding: “We really should be the engine room of the UK economy if we get this right.”
Audience questions suggested there was apathy in the Solent area and Baxendale agreed but said that had changed. “Now,” she said, “my biggest ambassadors are sat in this room.”
The question of devolution was raised prompting Baxendale who must remain non-political, to reveal there had been pre-General Election talks with the council’s leader to prepare for whether the Government was Labour or Conservative. Now that question is answered and subsequently devolution looms, Solent, she said, must be at the heart of it.
Baxendale concluded with a plea which she promised to return to with help from The Business Magazine publisher David Murray. She said there were 670 children in care needing homes and help could come from the business community.
“If I could get 300 businesses in a room and said ‘I want access to your employees’, if one from each was interested in fostering and adoption, I could change 300 lives overnight.”
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