TIME FOR SOME FRESH THINKING

Small businesses play a significant role at the heart of our communities; they create wealth and sustainable employment opportunities for local people. Profits and investments made by them tend to stay within the communities where they are based. So rather than plunder small to medium sized entrepreneurs from Bristol, we need to grow and sustain our own small business creators in Newport and across Gwent and to make our towns and cities business SME friendly.

For too many years economic development in Wales has been focused on large scale development of what can be best described a single egg solutions, which promise much and deliver significantly less, the focus should be on developing small to medium size local businesses, which are significantly less likely to up sticks and leave for perceived greener pastures and fresh applications of development grants.

This focus on attracting large-scale single source enterprises, which promise much but deliver significantly less than anticipated, is short sighted in the extreme. The LG development near Newport, was a good example of an expensive disaster / fiasco [please take your pick] which promised the usual total of 6,000 jobs - accrued significant public funding - which was committed by the then Welsh Secretary, William Hague, yet never delivered anything like a third of what was promised.

A combination of what can best be described as fantasy island economic assessments, a fatally flawed business case and a forthcoming Westminster election led to one of the spectacularly duller decisions of recent years being made, something that ended up costing us millions of pounds worth of public money. The WDA has in truth not really consistently delivered anything like long-term economic stability and much needed long-term job opportunities to our communities that it should have done.

European funding opportunities (soon to be a thing of the past) have been seriously wasted, where are the significant tangible assets, beyond some visibly badged infrastructure projects that you can literally put your hand on like improved communications (rail, road, broadband infrastructure, etc) that can bring long term benefits to our communities.

Amongst the questions that should have been asked is how much money has been scammed (and scammed may be the key word) into dubious training programmes and questionable educations programmes that fail to deliver the necessary skills that workers and potential workers need to make a decent living in the modern economy?

Back in the day the Plaid driven One Wales Government made significant efforts and attempts to think and act differently when it came to economic development and support for small to medium sized enterprises. This is the only real thing that will put wealth into our communities, and develop and sustain longer-term employment possibilities.

Attracting branch factory operations of a relative short-term duration might get some headlines but it does not help to sustain and develop our economy. We really do need to think differently and focus economic development priorities on smaller local businesses who will be rooted in our communities and offer more flexible employment opportunities.

Friars Walk in Newport is a welcome exception to the last thirty five years, when across the south east, we have seen the commercial hearts of many of our communities (including Newport) seriously damaged (if not ripped out) as a result of a combination of aggressive policies pursued by the larger retail chains and exceptionally poor decision-making on the part of local government and central government indifference.

When combined with the rapid growth of unsustainable, ill-thought out and more than questionable out of town and edge of town retail developments which leave next to no place for the smaller local businesses and retailers and deprive consumers of real choice. When you factor in parking charges, business rates and the effect of the closure of high street banks and post offices in many of our communities and you begin to see why many of our smaller businesses and local shopping centres are up against it.

Local small businesses as well as trading with us the consumers also trade with each other - so the community gets twice the benefit. Money spent by and in local businesses spends on average three times longer in the local economy than that spent with chain stores which is instantly lost to the local economy which in times of recession our communities can ill afford.

Our National Assembly needs to have the power to vary business taxes in order to help boost our businesses, as well as encourage investment in skills and the tools of their businesses and their workers. If we are going to make Wales a nation of aspiring entrepreneurs and to encourage and enable them, our communities and our economy to flourish we need to encourage the development of community owned social enterprises.

It should be pretty clear to most people that before and after the banking crash - the present financial market and its institutions have failed over recent years to supply sufficient venture capital for the SME sector in Wales. One step forward would a venture capital fund for Wales, which should be established by, but independent of the Welsh Assembly Government

Such an independent venture capital fund could raise capital and deliver investment through a co-investment model, with approved private sector partners to our SME sector, where such investment would make a real difference. More of the same old twaddle from Whitehall and Cathay’s just simply won't do at all, vastly expensive one egg, one basket schemes to generate the seemingly standard 6,000 jobs, just won't do.

What we need is fresh thinking and action from the new government - more than just talk, we need some concrete steps to encourage growth, boost manufacturing industry, support our small to medium sized enterprises and an end to the business rates and that's just to start with.  Otherwise it will just be a case of same old, same old with ill thought out public sector cuts which will do nothing to boost our communities, our economy and that’s one thing we cannot afford.

BACKING THE NCSA

Jobs in Cyber-Security

There is huge untapped potential amongst the people and communities of Gwent, something that has remained largely untapped by successive Welsh Labour governments and largely ignored by more distant Westminster governments.

There are real opportunities for growth and the re-industrialisation of our region, but the Welsh Labour Government continues to be content to remain sitting on its hands, unwilling to properly invest in our future.

Most of us would prefer not to see Newport and the Gwent Valleys become little more than a commuter belt for Bristol and Cardiff. Our communities have an identity and a history of their own that it would be tragic to lose and remain too vibrant to be simply written off.

At present Welsh Government spending on research and development remains far below the European average. We need to be aiming to at least match the EU average level of investment if we are to kick-start a realistic return of industry, manufacturing jobs and research and design.

Plaid Cymru’s Steffan Lewis has rightly called for the establishment of an advanced institute of manufacturing to be set up in the Valleys to bring desperately needed funding to the region. This, if it is done right, could deliver better quality apprenticeships.

The percentage of young people in Wales doing apprenticeships in manufacturing fell from 6% in 2006/7 to just 2% in 2014/15. The percentage of apprentices in engineering fell to 8% of all apprenticeships. This grim statistic should raise the question as to whether we are seriously equipping our young people with the skills they need to thrive in a increasingly competitive world.

To be fair there have been some very positive developments in Newport which could have implications right across our region and beyond. The National Cyber-Security Academy, based in the University of South Wales, for example, is providing students in Newport with highly valued, cutting edge skills.

The Welsh Government has so far failed to seize the chance to build on that legacy by designating Newport as the cyber-security capital of Wales. Where we have strengths, we should be building on them and growing our expertise.

The University of South Wales’s innovative project aims to help address a shortage of cyber security skills and develop the next generation of cyber security experts. The pilot National Cyber Security Academy (NCSA), the first of its kind in Wales and a major UK initiative, has been set up at USW’s Newport City Campus.

The project also involves Welsh digital innovation company Innovation Point and major industry players – including Airbus, General Dynamics UK, Alert Logic, Information Assurance, QinetiQ, Silcox Information Security, Westgate Cyber, Wolfberry and the South Wales Cyber Security Cluster – the NCSA will work to close an expected skills gap in the cyber security sector. <

By 2019 it is forecast that an additional 4.5 million personnel will be needed worldwide. The NCSA builds on plans for a £60m Newport Knowledge Quarter, which would see USW work in partnership with Coleg Gwent to build a new learning campus in the city’s riverbank area.

With some funding from the Welsh Government, the £500,000 pilot initiative involves a cohort of current USW Computer Forensics and Computer Security undergraduates. They will work on real-world projects set by NCSA partners, while also ‘flight testing’ the course to ensure it meets the latest cyber security challenges.

The project will develop as industry partners identify new challenges in the cyber security environment. If the pilot is successful, the University will quickly build up the student numbers through the delivery of a full-time dedicated degree programme in Applied Cyber Security.

I don’t think that it is unreasonable for want everyone in Gwent to have access to the well-paid, skilled, high quality jobs, close to home that they want. If our region is to meet the challenges of the years ahead, we need to be investing now to generate economic development and to safeguard our future.

Far too many of our people living across our region feel, that there aren’t enough jobs nearby and that the jobs that are available are often temporary or on insecure, zero hours contracts. We need to move beyond the vague sound bites of the Welsh Labour Government when it comes to economic development; we need proper planning and some action rather than words.