Date: Tue 14th September, 2010
Venue: The Illustrious Suite, Bath Rugby Club 11 Argyle Street, Bath, BA2 4BQ
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Insider’s economic forum roadshow paid a second visit to Bath in eight months – and the changed public sector landscape informed the discussion, which was held at Bath Rugby Club.
Given the cuts in the public sector, the panellists considered how is Bath and North East Somerset Council going to encourage private companies to invest in the city and area.
John Betty, director of development and major projects at Bath and North East Somerset Council, said local authorities had never invested heavily in encouraging businesses to come and invest, so to extend the cuts would not change the landscape greatly.
"But what really will affect things is the removal of that regional tier of the public sector, with the disbanding of the South West RDA here and the creation in its place of a West of England local enterprise partnership."
Property professional representation on the panel included John Mulholland of King Sturge and Andrew Maltby of Deeley Freed Estates.
Both said the council had in important role to play in enabling planning to proceed. They also said the council’s management of its property estate held the key to things. "The council is the largest landowner in Bath. It needs to use its corporate estate effectively for the good of the economy," said Maltby.
Graham Street, managing partner at Withy King and the fourth member our five-strong panel, concurred: "I think the council, as the guardian of the commercial interests in the city, needs to show the necessary leadership and not be scared to get creative about coming up with a really transformative answers."
Professor Peter Hawkins, chairman and founder of Bath Consultancy Group, was the fifth panel member, and he said one issue for Bath lay in the fact that many businesses used it as a base to do business elsewhere.
"The question is, how to we get those who are here to engage fully with the city, given how many look beyond Bath for most of their work?"
Another issue that came up was the proximity of Bristol, and the question of how the two cities should work together.
Some saw Bristol as a threat, said Maltby. "But the two places have different cultures and a different business base. And Bristol is strong on office space already, with 17 million sq ft of space in the city, while Bath needs to do more to work on widening its economic base."
The panel members were in agreement that Bath is a strong subregional centre in its own right, and Bristol is an opportunity for Bath rather than a threat.
"It’s a clear advantage," said Betty. "These two cities can feed off each other: there is no room for competition, to my mind. The two cities need to work together as this is clearly a natural economic area."
The other point of real discussion came back to the public sector and how it can be made to work effectively in the widest economic interests.
"I’m struck that we keep talking about structures," said Hawkins. "If we spend less time worrying about structures and spent more time worrying about what they are there to do we might be better off. How do we turn talking shops into places of action? We aren’t short of structures, but we are short of effective structures."