Once a world leader as the engine of growth in the industrial revolution, the Black Country has seen more than 1,000 businesses go to the wall in the past year.
And it is now below the national average for the number of start-ups per head of population, according to a State of the Region report by the Black Country Consortium, an organisation promoting regeneration in the area.
Despite this, Stewart Towe, chairman of the Black Country’s Local Enterprise Partnership, one of 39 in England that bring local authorities and private businesses together, is optimistic.
Towe, who also owns steel frame-maker Hadley Group in Smethwick, says: ‘There’s a new agenda and an inclusive spirit that wasn’t there before. Successes include securing millions of pounds of investment for the Black Country.’
The Partnership covers 31,245 small and medium-sized firms in Wolverhampton, Walsall, West Bromwich and Brierly Hill and Merry Hill. The LEP, which is a successor to the Regional Development Agency Advantage West Midlands, was the first to have its board approved by the Government in January last year.
It is focusing on removing barriers to growth in six areas – planning, access to finance, business advice, education and skills, transport and overseas trade.
Despite some disputes between local authorities over whether the Black Country and Birmingham should be covered by one partnership, Towe says firms just wanted someone to ‘get on with it’.
SCG Solutions in Stourbridge, an integrator for companies supplying the rail industry – including to Bombardier, Alstom and Siemens – is one of about 100 firms to receive advice on access to finance at the Partnership’s Open Access to Finance Forums.
Steve Marsh, boss of SCG, who runs its consortium turning over £20 million a year, says that by attending one of the quarterly events, designed to introduce small and medium-sized accountants, brokers and financial advisers to the local business community, he met Central Finance.
The contact helped him to secure a £50,000 loan through the UK Steel Enterprise Fund to boost exports.
Marsh says that while he feels the now defunct Advantage West Midlands was more engaged with local firms, the LEP does the best that it can.
Pargat Housewares, an aluminium cookware and bakeware maker in West Bromwich, received help from the Partnership to secure funding under the Government’s Regional Growth Fund scheme.
The fund supports projects that can create jobs, are based in areas dependent on the public sector and are supported by private sector investment.
Narinder Kaur, sales director at Pargat, says: ‘The LEP worked with several manufacturers and pooled the projects to meet the minimum investment required. Without its support it would have been impossible to secure the vital funding.’
The company says that it will use the investment to ‘place less reliance on the Far East and bring manufacturing back to the UK’.
Towe admits that the Partnership does not have the funding for everything it wants to do, but is eager to promote initiatives it thinks will benefit the Black Country.