Given that the Welsh Assembly Government has failed to post the results on its website, as it normally does with consultations, I had to unfortunately resort to asking the Government very nicely for copies of the submissions from various business organisations and, more importantly, from the various focus groups held with individual entrepreneurs and companies up and down the country.
You have to wonder why the mainstream press in Wales has not asked the same questions rather than quietly accepting the press line from the Assembly's myriad collection of "press officers".
Hopefully, I will get the opportunity to do some research over the weekend whilst fitting in a trip to the Ryder Cup with two of my best mates from Pwllheli. A cursory glance through the papers suggests that there will be some interesting findings.
For many, the real question is whether, as the Deputy First Minister pointed out after the launch of the ERP, the "new approach should be based on the feedback and concerns of businesses, communities, trades unions and other key organisations".
As he notes in the Western Mail today, "after an extensive process of engagement, we charted a new course ahead in Economic Renewal: a new direction". But did he and his civil servants take any heed of the consultation or, as Valleys Mam noted earlier this summer, had they already decided upon the way forward regardless of what businesses told him?
I am particularly interested to see whether business has called for "repayable grants" and the focusing of business support to six sectors which are, along with the £240 million broadband programme, the key planks of the ERP.
We all know by now what the CBI want for their members but what about the other businesses which attended the various focus groups up and down the country?
Was there an overwhelming desire to abolish grants for small firms and to scrap the FS4B programme of business advice?
If not, then there are some serious questions that need to be asked as to whether the senior civil service within the Department of Economy and Transport has, rather than responding to business needs, merely imposed its own agenda on the Minister and the Welsh business community.
Watch this space.
Comments
WAG asked to reveal plans for small firms
Sep 29 2010 by Sion Barry, Western Mail
SMALL business leaders in Wales are calling for the Assembly Government to outline its plans for supporting small firms.
The Federation of Small Businesses said the current business support brand, Flexible Support for Business (FS4B), was starting to embed itself within the small firms community so shouldn’t be scrapped.
The organisation is asking for details on the future of business support, which will be revamped as part of the Government’s Economic Renewal Programme (ERP), so that they can effectively input into it on behalf of their members in Wales.
They said this was vital so that businesses could plan for the future, particularly in light of anticipated severe public spending cuts which would have a knock-on effect to private sector suppliers.
FSB Welsh Policy chair Janet Jones said: “Wales ranks 11th out of 12 in the British league table of regional economies, placing it in the bottom third of EU regions. Wales is now suffering from a loss of competitive edge: for example, only 1.2% of business research and development expenditure across the UK occurs in Wales.
“Business support will be a vital tool in redressing this imbalance, but small firms really would like to know what they can expect from any new system of help for their growth and success.
“Small businesses in particular, as the true engine of economic growth, will need all the help they can get, so an early indication of the support they can expect from the Welsh Assembly Government would be extremely important,” she said.
The FSB said that any new business support service needed to be designed to tackle the problems experienced by businesses which were unsure how to access support and were confused by the range of products and services.
Spokesman for the FSB, Russell Lawson said: “Business support and advice in Wales has traditionally been provided by an array of local and regional agencies, which has included Enterprise Agencies, Training and Enterprise Councils, local authorities, and other business-related bodies.”
He said the “fundamental problem” with past business support strategies in Wales was that the delivery came through networks of largely publicly-funded organisations, or companies which operate mainly through contracts with publicly-funded organisations.
Mr Lawson said they were unco-ordinated, giving no common direction or purpose, and offered no sanction against those which supplied sub-standard support and advice.
He added: “Many also operated in direct competition with each other, which led to questions regarding whether businesses were always getting the most appropriate help available.
“The object of Business Connect, introduced in 1995, and subsequently Business Eye as its successor, was to link all of these bodies together through one telephone number in an attempt to counter the level of confusion reported by the business community at the number of business support bodies which were offering their services.
“But the performance of business support in Wales throughout this era could best be described as ‘patchy’: some areas of Wales had a better service than others.
“There has been confusion, duplication, wasted resources, varying degrees of service quality, and a lack of consistency prevalent throughout the system.
“It is against this backdrop that a new service, Flexible Support 4 Business (FS4B) was established, but after a promising start, it has been disbanded as part of the ERP, which we think is a rather strange decision.
“It is vital that small firms know, as sooner rather than later, what it is going to be replaced with.”
IWJ reported back in October 09 on the Politics Show that ‘businesses didn’t want grants’ ….and ‘there would be an end to the grants culture’
This before the ERP consultation had begun! Consequently, if the conclusions and recommendations are presented before the beginning of the consultation then should we be surprised of the outcome. Also, colleagues (consultants and property agents) of mine who attended the consultation told me they seemed to be ignored when the topic of grants came up, so the writing was on the wall.
Interesting, WAG has a report commissioned by them regarding the benefits of grants, compiled by the London School of Economics Report, and it has ignored it. (Dan Carter and others obviously hasn’t read it) What a waste of money!
About this time, Anglesey Aluminium was offered £48m to safeguard 300 jobs i.e. £160,000 cost per job. Where is IWJ’s constituency? ummmmm Ynys Mon!
It appears due to the massive amount of late applications for grants, the budget going forward looks almost spent. So either way whether its grants or repayable grants it doesn’t look good for the coming year. Furthermore, the ERP team have advised that the new scheme will not be launched, so anyone trying to find out the detail will find it difficult. It appears WAG is trying to put the toothpaste back into the tube, but the damage has already been done. Bad news travels fast and it could take years to reverse the view that Wales is closed for business.
With Wales losing its Assisted Area status in 2 years time, it will be too late!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/30/bt_cornwall_broadband/
According to the Assembly Government's own ambitions of 2016, even Cornwall will have been more competitive than us for two years.
A-S - my first read-through of the responses suggests that there was almost no impetus to abolish grants or business support, only to make the process more streamlined and less bureaucratic. I will need to undertake some proper content analysis to determine whether this is indeed the case but first thoughts are that WAG has not, contrary to their claims, responded to business needs
As for Cornwall, the main issue is that technology moves so quickly and there are cheaper and more effective ways of increasing broadband usage - have written a piece for the Daily post column for Monday which will also appear here.