Sheffield City Region Chambers of Commerce Directory 2018


Working together to create a stronger and bigger private sector that can compete in national and global markets


‘Our Strategic Economic Plan is the roadmap which guides our work, and this year we have undertaken an in-depth review of it to ensure it will lead us through the future’


local labour and local steel. In Barnsley, the exciting town centre improvements have simultaneously trained a new generation of construction workers at a dedicated ‘skills village’ sitting alongside the site work. I could go on with many more examples, but space will not allow!


As the LEP, we have underpinned this activity with our Infrastructure Fund. The Fund, as the name suggests, invests in the work that helps major projects get to the construction stage faster. Just a few of these projects are the Rotherham University Centre; Waterside, the development of the former Trebor factory site in Chesterfield; and Peak Resort, the national leisure and visitor centre in Dronfield.


We don’t just fund development sites. We want to ensure that people can get to those sites and around the region more easily. So we have backed the important work to improve the road system at Junction 36 of the M1; the A618 Growth Corridor in the Rother Valley; and a series of improvements around Worksop. The 12km Bus Rapid Transit link road from Sheffield to Rotherham opened this year, easing commuter traffic considerably.


We’re also keen to ensure business can find the right accommodation, and we have for example helped the Retford Enterprise Centre open ten new units. We have also launched Superfast South Yorkshire to provide improved connectivity for both businesses and homes.


Through our £52million Business Investment Fund we have helped unlock capital investment in new equipment to help businesses grow. In the last year we’ve supported major employers such as Forgemasters, and a host of smaller businesses in our supply chains.


Another very important use of the funding we receive is to provide skills and training, which every business I meet tells me they need. Our Skills Bank has since it launched registered 1200 employers and 5,400 employees to access training they themselves pick to fit with their specific needs. Not surprisingly, much of the training has been in construction and engineering, and management and leadership.


However, there have been some more exotic requests – helicopter and drone training; yoga teacher training; aerial rescue and tree climbing; and even brewing. Another area of our work which has been supremely successful is our Growth Hub, the arm of the Sheffield City Region which works closely with local businesses. The Growth Hub set itself a target of working with 500 businesses in its first year – and has dramatically smashed that by reaching more than 4,000.


I am sure that some of you reading this will have worked with the Growth Hub – or may see its potential for you. It can advise on a comprehensive range of business needs including training and funding.


Our Trade and Investment team similarly did us proud: it saw a massive 73 per cent increase in foreign investment into the region in the year to the end of March, the result of painstaking hard work by the specialists in the local authorities, the central SCR team, and our partners working closely together. That means jobs – 2,308 new jobs and more than another 200 safeguarded!


During the year the Trade and Investment team travelled to a series of important national international events to showcase the strengths of the region, ranging from the Paris Air Show where we talk to the aeronautical sector, and the important


Multimodal Show which attracts many visitors from the logistics and transport manufacturing worlds. When we showcased the region at the MIPIM Cannes property conference in March, we took an ‘offer’ featuring investment opportunities totalling over £1billion.


A key plank of our work is to ensure a good supply of housing; as we see jobs created we need homes for people to live in. This year we launched the ‘SCR Housing Fund’, an imaginative £8million pilot project designed to speed up projects which are struggling to find funding.


The pilot closed at the end of November with an impressive range of innovative proposals to consider. Our Strategic Economic Plan is the


roadmap which guides our work, and this year we have undertaken an in-depth review of it to ensure it will lead us through the future. Underpinning it are important documents such as our Transport Strategy and our Labour Market Information Report. These and many other useful documents are on our website www.sheffieldcityregion.org.uk. So that is a lightning tour of 2017. A great year.


Now I look forward to a great 2018, when this region continues to more than punch its weight in the Northern Powerhouse and in the Whitehall corridors of power. I am confident it will be a year when the amazing businesses of our region – all 68,000 of them – will continue to be innovative and inspiring, creating jobs and economic growth.


We will be backing you all the way! Sir Nigel Knowles, Chair of the Sheffield City Region’s business arm, the Local Economic Partnership (LEP) and Chairman of global legal business DWF.


Sir Nigel Knowles Chair of the Sheffield City Region’s business arm, the Local Economic Partnership (LEP) and Chairman of global legal business DWF.


Sheffield City Region Chambers of Commerce Directory 2018 7


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