Agenda item

(Director of Neighbourhoods) To consider the attached report AMED-003-2015/16.

The Economic Development Officer presented a report to the Cabinet Committee and updated them on a number of projects and issues being explored by the Economic Development Team.

(1)        Business Support / Growth Hub – SELEP funded the business support website and face to face business support enterprise that had been put together based on the Southend Growth Hub model that previously existed. Although the website was now active, the official launch will be on the 21 October 2015. A contractor had been appointed, Colbea and they will undertake the face to face element of the business support enterprise.

(2)        Town Centres –  Officers of the Economic Development Team had recently been to a meeting of the District and Town Centres teams. These were quarterly updates with the partnerships on their ongoing projects under the Town and Village Centres Opportunities Fund. A guest speaker from the Braintree Town Team was invited to talk about the experiences of the Braintree Town Team and had given our town partnerships some inspiration and ideas to take forward new initiatives into their towns and enable them to bid for the new Town and Village Centres Opportunities Fund.

We have also met with representatives from Buckhurst Hill and Loughton High Road town partnerships to establish what issues they were facing and to give some input and advice regarding what would work in their towns. We have been actively engaging with representatives from Waltham Abbey Town Partnership on a bid to the Essex County Council Community Initiatives Fund in respect of developing a wayfinding project in the town which was originally an expressions of interest but they have now invited us to make a full application. This had now been submitted and we should hear in November 2015 the outcome of that bid.

(3)        Superfast Broadband – There had been some minor delays in making sure that the rollout went to the most effective parts of the rural challenge area that need it. This evening the very first community event is taking place in Moreton Village Hall which would be the start of the community engagement for the delivery of the project in Moreton, Bobbingworth and the Bovinger area and should go live in the new year. The next community event was scheduled for November 2015 in Fyfield.

(4)        Business Briefing – The Economic Development team were pleased with how the new Business Briefing had developed. There had been a total redesign to give the Business Briefing a new look and feel. The latest edition, published last week, had been emailed out in pdf format to just under 700 contacts and was building. The Business Briefing had been very positively received by the public and there were also around 800 downloads from the website and new business enquiries were being received by the Economic Development team.

(5)        Partner Liaison – The Partner Liaison project had been a key to the Economic Development team reaching out and contacting more Partners. One of the Partners that we have liaised with recently and are very keen to support us was Loughton Library. They are attempting to make the Library more self sufficient and would be running two projects in November - one a Public Office which would encourage new and start up businesses to consider starting some of their work from the Library. There will be desk space provided for them and with people at the same stage in their businesses this would enable them to bounce ideas off each other. The second project was an Ideas Incubator where the Library would be used to encourage people with ideas for social enterprises.

Resolved:

That the progress and work programme of the Council’s Economic Development Section be noted.

Reasons for Decision:

To appraise the Committee on the progress made with regard to Economic Development issues.

Other Options Consider and Rejected:

None, as this monitoring report was for information not action.