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TOO POSH FOR BUSINESS?

A very pertinent article appeared on BBC business on Monday which questioned the sectoral approach that many regional development agencies have undertaken to attract high technology jobs to a region.

As a result, expanding businesses in other sectors were being excluded from support.

Interestingly, the article also referred to the situation in Wales and suggested that the Welsh Assembly Government is using both domestic and European Union funding to build new business parks, even when existing developments are at best half-full, and at worst, completely empty.

It quoted the example of the Bryn Cegin business park on the outskirts of Bangor that has received £9.5m of public subsidy and yet remains empty.

According to a local chartered surveyor, "local businesses think it's a waste of money because it's empty ever since it was built and they think it's a waste of money because it's not for them".

The article also refers to the situation 20 miles away in Holyhead where new roads, roundabouts and a high speed broadband internet network have been put in place at another new site - Parc Cybi. This time, more than £17m has been spent and, according to the article, neither park has a single company signed up wanting to move in.

As the surveyor notes,

"It's perfectly understandable that there should be a political aim to bring high-grade employment to a university town like Bangor. The problem is that's been the aim for the last 50 years and it's never worked. Can we just look at what the local market is, instead of dreaming of a large spaceship coming here from Japan and giving us some hi-tech employment."

Whilst the last point is made more in jest, there is a serious side to it. WAG has decided that it needs to compete in a few key sectors, like every other RDA in the UK, and yet as any businessperson will tell you, opportunities can arise in any industry.

Tomorrow night, we will have proof of this during the annual Wales Fast Growth 50 dinner, where 50 of the fastest growing firms from all parts of Wales and, more importantly, from all sectors of the economy, will have generated over half a billion of sales during the last two years.

The simple lesson from eleven years of the Fast Growth 50 is that Government should be backing winners, not picking them.

Comments

Anonymous said…
"Government should be backing winners, not picking them"

The same applies to pouring money into the regeneration of towns whose raison d'etre have long since disappeared, or who have shown over many years that they are incapable of attracting the private enterprise which will enable them to stand on their own two feet.

For a start, I give you Rhyl, Blaenau Ffestiniog and Caernarfon.

The flip side is that one could reel off a list of Welsh towns which have prospered in spite of (or maybe because of) a lack of government intervention.
November 08, 2009 8:08 am
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