Agenda item

Keith Rogg from Parklife will give an update on progress (30 mins)

The Chair welcomed Keith Rog, Senior Manager Innovation and Investment and Mike Trust, Business Advocate, both from the Parklife Business Parks Project, Gloucestershire First.

In their presentation they gave a brief overview of the Parklife Project and its achievements to date.

In addition to the core Parklife activities, there was a focus on four key initiatives namely:

• A business development programme
• An environmental management programme
• Redundancy support programme
• Graduate challenge

They highlighted some of the successful outcomes from these initiatives which included getting 51 graduates into jobs in the county, a Response to Redundancy programme which had supported 400 people, a series of one-to-one meetings with businesses and joint procurement initiatives. Details were set out in the performance report update which was circulated to members at the meeting.

They commended the very positive relationships between the council and Gloucestershire First and thanked the Economic Development Team and the Boy Racer’s group for their contribution to the Parklife programme.

They concluded by highlighting the 50% reduction in the core funding for Gloucestershire First and that the project funding for Parklife provided by the borough council was due to come to an end.  Given that over 50% of businesses involved in Parklife considered that the programme had had a very positive input to their businesses,  their final question to the committee was how the two organisations could continue to work together to achieve these positive outcomes? 

In response to a question about the nature of the demand for graduate support and apprentices, Keith Rog explained that there was ongoing demand and the county was also keen to attract graduates back to Gloucestershire after they had studied elsewhere. They were able to assess demand through their regular contact with businesses at the parks.

Another member suggested that Parklife could be underselling themselves by focusing on outcomes with intangible benefits such as one to ones with businesses whereas they needed to be quantifying the real value that they offered to businesses. He also asked whether the programme was working with the landlord community at the business parks.

Keith Rog confirmed that they worked closely with landlords and potential investors to increase the standards available at the sites. He could provide members with a lot more information regarding the value they added to businesses but the data circulated focused on the outputs required for the Service Level Agreement.

In response to a question Keith Rog defined a business park within the programme as ‘a Business Park with strategic economic importance to the borough’s economy”.  He acknowledged that there were other business parks in the borough and they would like to extend the programme wider but were limited by the funds they had available.  They also hope to improve the signposting to all parks across the town, particularly for those arriving at the railway station. 

The chair thanked them for an excellent presentation and said that the committee had been impressed by their achievements in supporting the local business community. On behalf of the committee, he recommended that Cabinet look closely at the financial situation to see whether there was any way that the Parklife programme could receive some further funding.

He invited representatives from Parklife back to give a further update to the committee in a years’ time.