• A new experience for me today with my first Overview and scrutiny committee for Economic development and enterprise. I get to the civic early so I can grab some “Award winning” lunch this time I opt for the welsh rarebit which reminds me of a home economics lesson many years ago which taught me to make said dish. I think I made it ever night for 2 weeks after that!
I get to the meeting in time for a pre briefing after which Mike Barnes leaves potentially because he is upset with my attire (Jeans, T shirt and trainers) unfortunately doing the job that I do the kids just don’t engage with me the same if I wear a suit and without going home getting changed and coming back is just a waste of time!
The Committee is made up with elected members and council officers who are involved in the decisions that we are “scrutinising” I begin to put some names to faces Ashy Mckay (who cancelled a meeting 4 times with me before I became a councillor) Jonathon Phipps and various others.
• Various items are discussed and I get the scrutiny well underway in a baptism of fire by questioning why VAST are delivering £690k worth of social enterprise support as revealed in one of the agenda items.
Im a big fan of VAST and the services they offer but am interested to find out how this came about. I think there is a clear line between voluntary and social enterprise and think that sometimes the 2 can be confused and social enterprise not really understood. It takes some people a lot of time sometimes to understand that you can generate a sustainable profit for doing in essence charitable work.
I believe that social enterprise support could be delivered by an individual small coalition or organisation with real experience in the sector, having started the 16th fastest growing social enterprise in the UK I know what support I lacked and how better support could have helped me catalyse my ideas faster and better. If there is not an increase in the amount of registered community interest companies in the next 6 months I will be paying this more attention and for £690k I would be expecting to see a huge increase in registered social enterprise.
• Next up the director of resources talks us through what capital investment has or is about to take place and highlights progress with Chatterley Whitfield, The University boulevard, The east west development and so on. Ideas are bounded around by another councillor about private and public partnerships involving development of council owned small and medium strips of land that actually makes perfect sense. I think many times people are scared to take “new” action, implementing ideas that might be new or risky or even unheard of that actually make perfect sense. Get the council to team up with local builders to develop small estates of maybe 10 or so houses and share the profits, it creates jobs, local wealth and of course housing!
• The Spode development is discussed and proposed ideas circulated. Hotels and conferencing seem to be the main focus of the regeneration and although it sounds good in principle im not sure it will work. With so many high quality conference venues in London or Birmingham why would people come to Stoke? We need to do something with the 6 towns, the city centre obviously needs more focus but the others need less shops and more niche markets…Burslem has creativity but what does Longton and Stoke have?
• Finally we discuss the “Make It” branding that has been created and promoted everywhere from Stoke home games to the back of buses. I really like the branding and really like the illuminated banners that have gone up around the ring road. Its these sorts of things that will encourage inward investment and we need to work hard to establish this brand to accompany the capital investment that is taking place. My main comment however is that I would like to track the amount of enquiries and conversions into business relocation or land development and how this branding and marketing exercise is helping to increase this. I leave a final comment that we need to make sure Local creative businesses are the ones designing and producing the artwork as if not then we ourselves are not really “Making It” Staffordshire!
