Bureaucrats do enjoy creating clunky names and here is a fine example. But keep reading as this one has money to give away.
The Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership (HotSWLEP), which covers Devon, Plymouth, Somerset and Torbay is one of 39 LEPs created across the country following the Coalition Government’s Local Growth White Paper of October 2010.
They replaced the role of the Regional Development Agencies which were disbanded simultaneously but the LEPs have taken too long to develop anything like an effective role.
This is largely because the Government gave little or no guidance, leadership or financial support to help the LEPs develop.
The HotSWLEP (a snappy little acronym) is a partnership managed by a voluntary board consisting of business leaders, alongside representatives from local government and educational institutions. They work together to lead and influence the economy of Devon, Somerset, Plymouth and Torbay by improving economic growth and job creation.
The HotSWLEP’s key achievement has been the award of the highest allocation of funding in the country in the second round of the Growth Deal - £65.2 million - and the LEP aims to use this to deliver transformational growth in the South West.
However, the big question for most businesses is how can we access any of this money?
In recognition of this difficulty the HotSWLEP is about to launch a new Growth Hub which will be available for all businesses, whatever size or sector, to include farmers and other rural businesses, in the Heart of the South West area.
The Growth Hub will be a single point of contact, free at the point of access, for all businesses seeking advice and support on any issues relating to the operations and aspirations of their business and signposting to international, national or local resources.
Enquiries can be about anything that business owners may wish to ask - whether they are looking for information on new funding opportunities from grants or loans, where to go for tax advice or help with their expansion plans, innovation or export.
A core value of the Heart of the South West Growth Hub is to simplify the often confusing range of local and national, public and private sector business support services that are on offer in the UK, so that businesses can make an informed choice about what type of support is best for them.
The signposting service is offered free as part of the HotSW LEP’s Growth Deal funding, and the expert business support advisors will be on hand to deal with questions themselves or refer to experts in specialist areas.
Providing a top-quality, seamless business support service is a major part of the HotSWLEP’s strategy to generate transformational economic growth through a range of initiatives that will help businesses grow, including infrastructure improvement, skills development and inward investment.
Businesses can email info@heartofswgrowthhub.co.uk or phone 03456 047 047 to register their interest. Alternatively visit the interim website and complete our business support enquiry form: http://www.heartofswgrowthhub.co.uk/register-your-interest/
James Stephen MRICS FAAV
Partner
Rural Practice Chartered Surveyor, Wells
T: 01749 683381
E: james.stephen@carterjonas.co.uk
A property blog written and authored by our specialist blogging team, discussing all and any matter relating to the residential, rural and commercial property markets.
Showing posts with label bank of england. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bank of england. Show all posts
Thursday, 14 April 2016
Friday, 4 September 2015
Busy doing something
It’s off to work we go this summer, according to Will Mooney, Carter Jonas partner and head of commercial in the eastern region, as he considers the difference between being in business and being productive
It is a truth universally perceived that nothing happens in the summer months. It is, apparently, a ‘slow news’ time. Great. So there’s nothing going on in Greece, Syria, Turkey or, closer to home, with welfare reform or the Labour Party’s leadership race that’s been worth reporting or commenting on during July and August will see little of substance to report either? If only it were so.
Clawing back from the weighty economic and political scene, I know that with the exception of a two week break away from the office – but not work, necessarily - my summer will continue to be as busy as the rest of my year and as so it is for most business peers.
But is being busy the same as being productive?
Not if recent reports hold true. The UK’s productivity levels are a fifth lower than the G7 countries’ average. In a post-recession position this should not be the case, it seems. Some commentators point out that the recessions of the 1980s and early 1990s burst forth in to a time of increased productivity, fuelling innovation and growth.
At this point, we have to acknowledge our fortuitous position in the East of England in being a location where innovation is the main driver of business activity - whatever the wider economic picture.
The UK economy is acquiring form for underperformance. Called the ‘productivity puzzle’, there are ongoing efforts to try and unpick the reasons why.
One strand involves the examination of the methodology and definition of ‘productivity’. In an age where much business is based on knowledge, data and information in providing services, it may no longer be credible or useful to measure ‘productivity’ in the way it can in economies where industry and manufacturing dominate.
Greater minds than mine are charged with considering how advice and services which, eventually, lead to revenue generation can be calculated and judged against conventional measures of productivity.
Indeed, is it even relevant to judge productivity in a complex world where social and business time and networks mingle? Many a coffee shop brainstorm session has brought forth an idea which, down the line, has resulted in revenue generation for many parties – not least the coffee shop owner.
How can we measure the contribution of the cappuccino to productivity? Yet without that setting and stimulant, the idea which eventually resulted in money being made might not have occurred.
It’s an over-simplification of the modern productivity puzzle but it illustrates the complexity of a business life away from a manufacturing setting where input versus output can be assessed more easily.
Another view of the puzzle suggests that the poor productivity can be blamed on quantitative easing (QE) and low interest rates.
This view argues that many businesses are only around post-recession because of the ‘easy money’ supplied by QE and the perpetuity of low interest rates. In to this mix comes the tolerance of lenders who, mindful of an atmosphere of bank-bashing, have been reluctant to pull the rug from under these unprofitable and unproductive businesses when they really should have done so.
In this view, as long as these ‘zombie companies’ have been able to service their debt, they have survived and have held back the natural innovation and productivity surges which should occur post-recession.
With the Bank of England, for the second year in a row, making mid-summer murmurings of interest rate rises in the not too distant future, perhaps August is a actually a good time to bury what will be bad news for some.
It is a truth universally perceived that nothing happens in the summer months. It is, apparently, a ‘slow news’ time. Great. So there’s nothing going on in Greece, Syria, Turkey or, closer to home, with welfare reform or the Labour Party’s leadership race that’s been worth reporting or commenting on during July and August will see little of substance to report either? If only it were so.
Clawing back from the weighty economic and political scene, I know that with the exception of a two week break away from the office – but not work, necessarily - my summer will continue to be as busy as the rest of my year and as so it is for most business peers.
But is being busy the same as being productive?
Not if recent reports hold true. The UK’s productivity levels are a fifth lower than the G7 countries’ average. In a post-recession position this should not be the case, it seems. Some commentators point out that the recessions of the 1980s and early 1990s burst forth in to a time of increased productivity, fuelling innovation and growth.
At this point, we have to acknowledge our fortuitous position in the East of England in being a location where innovation is the main driver of business activity - whatever the wider economic picture.
The UK economy is acquiring form for underperformance. Called the ‘productivity puzzle’, there are ongoing efforts to try and unpick the reasons why.
One strand involves the examination of the methodology and definition of ‘productivity’. In an age where much business is based on knowledge, data and information in providing services, it may no longer be credible or useful to measure ‘productivity’ in the way it can in economies where industry and manufacturing dominate.
Greater minds than mine are charged with considering how advice and services which, eventually, lead to revenue generation can be calculated and judged against conventional measures of productivity.
Indeed, is it even relevant to judge productivity in a complex world where social and business time and networks mingle? Many a coffee shop brainstorm session has brought forth an idea which, down the line, has resulted in revenue generation for many parties – not least the coffee shop owner.
How can we measure the contribution of the cappuccino to productivity? Yet without that setting and stimulant, the idea which eventually resulted in money being made might not have occurred.
It’s an over-simplification of the modern productivity puzzle but it illustrates the complexity of a business life away from a manufacturing setting where input versus output can be assessed more easily.
Another view of the puzzle suggests that the poor productivity can be blamed on quantitative easing (QE) and low interest rates.
This view argues that many businesses are only around post-recession because of the ‘easy money’ supplied by QE and the perpetuity of low interest rates. In to this mix comes the tolerance of lenders who, mindful of an atmosphere of bank-bashing, have been reluctant to pull the rug from under these unprofitable and unproductive businesses when they really should have done so.
In this view, as long as these ‘zombie companies’ have been able to service their debt, they have survived and have held back the natural innovation and productivity surges which should occur post-recession.
With the Bank of England, for the second year in a row, making mid-summer murmurings of interest rate rises in the not too distant future, perhaps August is a actually a good time to bury what will be bad news for some.
Will Mooney MRICS
Partner
Commercial, Cambridge
Tuesday, 8 July 2014
Rise in interest rates is inevitable
A rise in interest rates is inevitable at some point but Will Mooney, Carter Jonas partner and head of its commercial agency and professional services in the eastern region, wonders how soon is now?
A year ago in these pages I was anticipating the end of the central banks’ monetary stimulus for their economonies. In the case of the Bank of England, it was, at that point, the £375 million worth of quantitive easing.
‘Removing the punchbowl just when the party is getting good’ is the phrase attributed to the Federal Reserve’s longest serving head who first coined it to describe the withdrawal of stimulus. Now there’s another central bank party pooper in the form of the threat of interest rate rises. Or rather, it’s the talk of the threat interest rate rises which is the spectre at the feast.
The Bank of England has held its base interest rate at 0.5 per cent for more than five years. At such a record low level, the only certain way is up. But when? And by how much? Such uncertainty could be damaging at worst but is unhelpful at best.
Since the late 17th Century, governments and, subsequently, the Bank of England have used the cost of borrowing as a means of responding to the economic pressures of the times. In the early years of Margaret Thatcher’s administration, in 1981, interest rates rose to an all-time high of 17 per cent. But that was a time before the great push towards property-ownership which has set itself in the psyche of the British public in the successive three decades to the point where it is commonly accepted as the touchstone of daily, domestic economic prosperity.
Now the 2014 property-owning democracy is incredibly twitchy about any talk of interst rate rises even if they are just going to be incremental by those ‘baby steps’ mooted by some commentators. There’s also a slice of homeowners who’ve moved in to the housing market since 2008 and whose lives are highly-geared around access to finance and low interest rates. There are plenty of other homeowners for whom a time when base rates were always in double figures is a dim and distant memory - if they remember it at all.
There is a view that interest rates are too blunt an instrument to control the complexities of a modern economy. But, in early June, when the European Central Bank slashed its deposit rate to below zero – minus 1 per cent – so it actually will cost commercial banks to keep their money centrally, it must have left many a lay person marvelling at the sophistication of economists, financiers and policy makers. Far from blunt.
In order to avoid the economic - and party political - collateral damage a big hike in interest rates could mean, we’re beginning to see policymakers hint at returning to a time when supply and demand mechanisms were deployed by governments in order to control the economy. Specifically, in 2014 , the housing market.
Measures include the new Mortgage Market Review – the pre-mortgage interview recently introduced where lenders look beyond income to consider household expenditure as a factor before making a mortgage offer. Then in his Mansion House speech, the Chancellor of the Exchequer took his own supply and demand ‘baby steps’ in trying to make councils bring forward brownfield sites for development. There are some who say this should go further and developers should be given the right to build on the green belt.
How far it is politically advisable for the coalition administration to try and control supply-side market conditions with a more hands-on approach remains to be seen.
What would be helpful is certainty. The market doesn’t like uncertainty. Endless speculation about rises in borrowing costs at a time when, in my own commercial property sphere, investors are ready to commit to more than ‘baby step’ investments is probably more harmful than the level at which any actual rise will be pegged.
A year ago in these pages I was anticipating the end of the central banks’ monetary stimulus for their economonies. In the case of the Bank of England, it was, at that point, the £375 million worth of quantitive easing.
‘Removing the punchbowl just when the party is getting good’ is the phrase attributed to the Federal Reserve’s longest serving head who first coined it to describe the withdrawal of stimulus. Now there’s another central bank party pooper in the form of the threat of interest rate rises. Or rather, it’s the talk of the threat interest rate rises which is the spectre at the feast.
The Bank of England has held its base interest rate at 0.5 per cent for more than five years. At such a record low level, the only certain way is up. But when? And by how much? Such uncertainty could be damaging at worst but is unhelpful at best.
Since the late 17th Century, governments and, subsequently, the Bank of England have used the cost of borrowing as a means of responding to the economic pressures of the times. In the early years of Margaret Thatcher’s administration, in 1981, interest rates rose to an all-time high of 17 per cent. But that was a time before the great push towards property-ownership which has set itself in the psyche of the British public in the successive three decades to the point where it is commonly accepted as the touchstone of daily, domestic economic prosperity.
Now the 2014 property-owning democracy is incredibly twitchy about any talk of interst rate rises even if they are just going to be incremental by those ‘baby steps’ mooted by some commentators. There’s also a slice of homeowners who’ve moved in to the housing market since 2008 and whose lives are highly-geared around access to finance and low interest rates. There are plenty of other homeowners for whom a time when base rates were always in double figures is a dim and distant memory - if they remember it at all.
There is a view that interest rates are too blunt an instrument to control the complexities of a modern economy. But, in early June, when the European Central Bank slashed its deposit rate to below zero – minus 1 per cent – so it actually will cost commercial banks to keep their money centrally, it must have left many a lay person marvelling at the sophistication of economists, financiers and policy makers. Far from blunt.
In order to avoid the economic - and party political - collateral damage a big hike in interest rates could mean, we’re beginning to see policymakers hint at returning to a time when supply and demand mechanisms were deployed by governments in order to control the economy. Specifically, in 2014 , the housing market.
Measures include the new Mortgage Market Review – the pre-mortgage interview recently introduced where lenders look beyond income to consider household expenditure as a factor before making a mortgage offer. Then in his Mansion House speech, the Chancellor of the Exchequer took his own supply and demand ‘baby steps’ in trying to make councils bring forward brownfield sites for development. There are some who say this should go further and developers should be given the right to build on the green belt.
How far it is politically advisable for the coalition administration to try and control supply-side market conditions with a more hands-on approach remains to be seen.
What would be helpful is certainty. The market doesn’t like uncertainty. Endless speculation about rises in borrowing costs at a time when, in my own commercial property sphere, investors are ready to commit to more than ‘baby step’ investments is probably more harmful than the level at which any actual rise will be pegged.
Will Mooney MRICS
Partner
Commercial, Cambridge
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