Economic Development Newsletter February/March 2015 Introduction Welcome to the February/March edition of the newsletter. In this edition, we look at the latest news from the Milton Keynes Council Economic Development Team (ED). 2015 has started strong with a fantastic array of local and national achievements; from 10 year accolades, outstanding job growth over 25 years, being placed in Sunday Times top 50 urban places to live and a recent mention in BBC’s Holby City. Job numbers have tripled since 1980’s Centre for Cities released a land mark report on the 4 th March entitled “A Century of Cities”. Within this report Milton Keynes has again been highlighted as a beacon for economic strength with a staggering statistic on job growth. Jobs have tripled in Milton Keynes over the last three decades having created over 150,000 jobs compared to only 53,000 in 1981. An interesting point that was raised within the article was the lack of an industrial legacy to deal with, so the challenge for MK from its inception was not to offset the decline of more traditional industries with jobs growth in new areas, but to create new jobs and encourage new investment. This in turn has allowed our economy to become much more knowledge-focused with over one in five jobs in Milton Keynes being in Knowledge Based Industry. The report published in early March states: “New town initiatives in the South gave rise to some of the best-performing cities today, such as Milton Keynes, which was born in the 1960s and now boasts 150,000 jobs and one of the nation’s most dynamic local economies.” Commenting on the report, Centre for Cities’ acting CEO, Andrew Carter, said: “A Century of Cities offers a unique opportunity to make sense of the long-term factors behind the two-tier urban economy of progress and decline that we see in Britain today.“ “But it is also a positive and constructive lesson of how, in the face of enormous changes, targeted investment, strong leadership and an appetite for transformation can help cities to reach unprecedented heights of economic strength.”
Transcript
Economic Development Newsletter February/March 2015
Introduction Welcome to the February/March edition of the newsletter. In this edition, we look at the latest
news from the Milton Keynes Council Economic Development Team (ED). 2015 has started strong
with a fantastic array of local and national achievements; from 10 year accolades, outstanding job
growth over 25 years, being placed in Sunday Times top 50 urban places to live and a recent
mention in BBC’s Holby City.
Job numbers have tripled since 1980’s
Centre for Cities released a land mark report on the 4th March entitled “A Century of Cities”.
Within this report Milton Keynes has again been highlighted as a beacon for economic strength
with a staggering statistic on job growth. Jobs have tripled in Milton Keynes over the last three
decades having created over 150,000 jobs compared to only 53,000 in 1981.
An interesting point that was raised within the article was the lack of an industrial legacy to deal
with, so the challenge for MK from its inception was not to offset the decline of more traditional
industries with jobs growth in new areas, but to create new jobs and encourage new investment.
This in turn has allowed our economy to become much more knowledge-focused with over one in
five jobs in Milton Keynes being in Knowledge Based Industry.
The report published in early March states: “New town initiatives in the South gave rise to some of
the best-performing cities today, such as Milton Keynes, which was born in the 1960s and now
boasts 150,000 jobs and one of the nation’s most dynamic local economies.”
Commenting on the report, Centre for Cities’ acting CEO, Andrew Carter, said: “A Century of Cities
offers a unique opportunity to make sense of the long-term factors behind the two-tier urban
economy of progress and decline that we see in Britain today.“
“But it is also a positive and constructive lesson of how, in the face of enormous changes, targeted
investment, strong leadership and an appetite for transformation can help cities to reach
unprecedented heights of economic strength.”
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Milton Keynes Business Achievements Award
As part of the Economic Development team, Invest Milton Keynes was proud to sponsor the “New Business” award category at the recent Milton Keynes Business Achievement Awards for 2015. The night was a success with a vast range of businesses taking home awards in a number of different employment sectors, showing just how diverse the Milton Keynes business community is. Formula Fast Karting picked up the “New Business” award which is recognition of the hard work and future potential of the business and we offer our congratulations to them on a well-deserved win. It has been a pleasure to be so closely involved with the awards over the past 2 years, these awards provide local businesses with an opportunity to not only showcase themselves, but it’s also a chance for the business community to come together.
MK Future Cities Conference
MK leads the way on innovation with Smart Cities and hosted a major national conference on 5th March showcasing Milton Keynes as a leading ‘smart city’ with the main objective to entrench MK’s place on the national map as a cutting edge model smart city. The event was orchestrated by the Open University on behalf of the council and its partners and held at the Transport Systems for Catapult and around 230 attendees heard from some of the UK’s leading smart city figures. A smart city has been defined as ‘a city seeking to address public issues via ICT-based solutions on the basis of a multi-stakeholder, municipally based partnership’. Recently, Milton Keynes has stolen the march on other aspiring smart cities with its scale of deployment and joined-up thinking in the smart city innovation space, including the world’s first open access, urban scale internet of things and high profile projects on autonomous mobility.
News from SEMLEP
The South East Midlands has been unveiled as home to the fourth fastest growing Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) in England during 2013, behind London, Birmingham and Manchester with an increase to our economy of 4% in 2013.
Chair of SEMLEP, Dr Ann Limb, OBE DL, said: “The South East Midlands is a national growth area, home to the UK’s fastest growing city, Milton Keynes, and the UK's second 'Garden Town' at Bicester in Oxfordshire, so it is not surprising that SEMLEP has been flagged up as one of the England’s highest growing economies. Our recently signed Local Growth Deals means more jobs and homes for the South East Midlands and our Enterprise Zone in Northampton plays a vital role in driving forward the economy, creating hundreds of jobs and attracting businesses to the town.”
Daniel Mouawad, Chief Executive of SEMLEP, said: “Also enabling our economy to thrive is SEMLEP’s Velocity business support programme, which we set up to help small and medium sized businesses to grow, recruit and thrive. Velocity has now engaged with 10,000 businesses and has already awarded 100 revenue and capital grants totalling over £527,000.”
Between April 2014 and February 2015 Velocity provided support to 200 different businesses in the form of; advice, workshops grants and target based incentives throughout Milton Keynes. The total grants awarded over the 10 month period exceeded £70,000 and helped created 28 new jobs and safeguarded 43 jobs.
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SEMLEP has also secured European Structural Investment Funding (ESIF) of approximately £79million to be delivered over the next six years. Businesses and communities throughout the SEMLEP area will have the first chance to bid for EU funding towards job and business growth and local businesses and enterprises have access to potential funding for a range of areas such as low carbon initiatives, competitiveness, innovation and rural economy sectors of food, drink and tourism.
Please click the following link for more information: www.semlep.com or contact the SEMLEP
team on 01234 436100. To discuss project ideas please contact Lindsay Mitton at
Operations director Dino Rocos said: “Our new Milton Keynes DC will complement our two Magna Park sites and provide us with the space to continue to build on the improvements we have made in providing better service to our shops and customers.”
“We recognise the high level of talent and valuable experience that currently exists with our partners across the sites that we propose to relocate and every partner will be guaranteed a new role at our new DC.”
Volkswagen Financial Services HQ update
The new £36 million HQ has been officially opened by German Ambassador Dr Peter Ammon in March and the significant investment in Milton Keynes has been described as a “vote of confidence in our workforce”. The four story office, which has a BREEAM A rating and has been nominated for a BCO award, currently employs 650 staff with an expectation to employ up to 1000 by 2018.
Broadband Connection Vouchers
MKC has joined the governments SME Superfast Broadband Connection Vouchers Scheme to offer
a helping hand with up to £3000 of vouchers for better broadband.
The Scheme started on the 1st of April 2015 and is due to run for the entire year, giving SME’s
plenty of opportunity to sign up to receive the benefits. The Vouchers are offered on a first come
first served basis with the application process being very simple and straightforward. All they
need to do is enter their postcode at www.connectionvouchers.co.uk to check eligibility and
follow the process from there.
Team News
The place to watch this year will be Central Milton Keynes, we have been working very closely with intu, centre:mk shopping centers, Lloyds Court and Norfolk & Ashton House. All four have been introducing their ideas to key stakeholders including the Town Council, MKCCM and MKDP. More updates to come on the developments in the coming months.
Business Visits
The ED team continues to meet with existing businesses in Milton Keynes, each edition we will be giving you a flavour of some of the visits we have undertaken with the diverse range of businesses throughout Milton Keynes.
We created a Sector Task Group which included colleagues from Planning and Infrastructure, Transport and the Neighborhood Employment Program as part of our continuing commitment to meet with businesses to discuss the challenges they are facing.
Our first meeting focused on logistics, we met with employers in Magna Park to better understand employment and transport matters, we undertook a useful discussion around the challenges Magna Park employers are facing with regards to recruiting staff for peak periods and the impact that has on our transport system. Updates on the progress of the dueling the A421 were given as
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well as an overview of the current house and schools building program Milton Keynes is embarking on.
Following on with logistics earlier this month we were invited to visit and have a tour of Kuehne+Nagel, the second largest logistics company in the world, which provided a unique opportunity to gain an insight into the co-ordinated movement of goods from a warehouse to a store. Business growth and recruitment were hot topics when we met with iD Medical, a medical recruitment company who currently provide staff to 90% of the hospitals in the NHS and have earned industry wide accreditation, success and many accolades. iD medical were keen to share their growth plans as they are on course to double the 400+ workforce. iD Medical also operate the iD Medical school that offers a range of courses for medical professionals including clinical skills workshops to team communication skills workshops and English language courses. We discovered the joy of apples when we met with Virtual Orchard, a cidery that has just won a velocity grant to buy a spirit still to produce flavoured vodka and whiskey, in addition to their production of cider using locally sourced apples from around Milton Keynes and the surrounding countryside. Virtual Orchard are keen to encourage others to create their own cider by offering an “introduction to artisan cider making course” and the opportunity to hire an apple press. Borrowing and lending is a hot topic and we met with both NatWest and Metro Bank to keep abreast of the banking services that they offer for pre start-ups to high turnover SME’s. These meeting’s give a great insight into the products and services that are on offer to the Milton Keynes business community. We raced off to meet with Mugen Euro Ltd to discover more about their two distinctive business arms, Mugen Motorsport which has created a zero carbon emission electric motorcycle to compete in the Isle of Man TT Zero Challenge and won the race in 2014 and Mugen Products which provide motorsport orientated premium products designed and produced exclusively for Honda models. This visit showed that once again Milton Keynes is home to amazing motorsport and high performance businesses that are really pushing the boundaries of technology and innovation.
Social Media Growth
Our social media presence goes from strength to strength, our twitter followers at the end of
March stood at 2903 (7% improvement from January) and our LinkedIn connections at 1931 (9%
improvement on January). The Economic Development team continues to promote through social
media channels to ensure that MK possesses the advantage with national and international
business stakeholders.
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Enquiries
The overall enquiry figures show 402 year to date, and the investment successes stand at 126.
Throughout February and March, we had 12 investment successes consisting of 7 micro, 3 small, 1
medium and 1 large business, some of which came from our key sectors including Technology and
Financial/Business Services. The team continues to promote MK through multiple channels and
partners.
LoveMK
Don’t Forget its LoveMK on the 30th April! Destination MK plan are asking everyone in Milton
Keynes and those who are proud of the city to add #LoveMK to every tweet they make to try and
get it trending in the UK, as it did last year.
Help Spread the Word
Follow us at @InvestMK twitter feed at www.twitter.com/InvestMK and by joining our LinkedIn
group at http://uk.linkedin.com/in/investmk
Pam Gosal
Head of Corporate Economic Development & Inward Investment
Companies arriving in or relocating within MK 7 110 16 126
From Target Group* 1 21 3 23
Total Jobs Created 65 1425 465 1890
Total Jobs Retained 83 2026
871 2897
High growth, high value, knowledge-based businesses
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Enquiry Activity Update
The chart below shows the trends for commercial land and premises enquiries from 2012 – 2015
Enquiries
We received 85 enquiries this February and March compared to 72 last year and therefore
the cumulative total for the year to date is 402 against 345 in 2014. Our current caseload
is 16 category ‘A’ and 60 category ‘B’ enquiries.
(Category ‘A’ covers Enquiries from UKTI and foreign owned businesses; land enquiries; industrial
premises over 50k sq. ft.; office premises over 10k sq. ft. and key business sectors. Category ‘B’
Enquiries cover all other requests for support.)
The figures in tables above, on companies arriving in or relocating within MK, jobs created, jobs
retained and on land and premises enquiries help to show that MK is open for business and also
that there is a very positive outlook on the economy in MK.
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Enquiries by Sector
February
2014
February
2015
March
2014
March
2015
Office 10 9 4 10
Industrial 16 15 19 16
Retail 2 1 0 2
Land 4 3 5 8
Information and Support 3 9 9 9
Total for Year so far 308 354 345 402
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The Labour Market in Milton Keynes, February 2015
Unemployment (claimant count) in Milton Keynes was 3,000 (1.8% of the working age population)
in February 2015 from 2,817 (1.7%) in January 2015, an increase of 183 claimants.
The February 2015 rate of 1.8% compares to the rate of 2.7% in February 2014, a 0.9% decrease in
the unemployment claimant rate in a year.
The MK unemployment rate of 1.8% was higher than the 1.6% rate for the South East Midlands
Local Enterprise Partnership (SEMLEP) area and compared to rates of 1.3% in the South East
England region and 2.1% in the UK as shown in Figure1.
Figure 1: Unemployment Rates in MK, South East and UK, February 2015
Source: NOMIS
Youth unemployment in Milton Keynes is relatively low with 1% and 2.7% for age groups 16-19
and 20-24 years of age respectively.
The unemployment rate in Milton Keynes is low and the economic outlook is improving.
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Getting our residents back into work
Those that provide employment support continue to deliver an impressive service to the unemployed residents of MK. The Neighbourhood Employment Programme (NEP) has again successfully built on previous performance by achieving its highest February performance for employment outcomes since the programme started in January 2012. A key success this month was achieved by its commissioned partner, MK College in partnership with Job Centre Plus (JCP) with its impressive 33 job outcomes as a result of delivering Sector Based Work Academies and a Workability programme leading to successful appointments with the new Morrison’s supermarket. Along with 206 new people starting training courses this has proved to be a great month all round. A second job club has opened for unemployed 50+ year olds (in addition to the one that is held every Wednesday at AGE:UK, Peartree Bridge) delivered in partnership with JCP, and is held every Tuesday at the Job Centre along with another specialist job club for 18-30 year olds for residents of the YMCA and the users of their homeless night shelter. This strong working relationship with JCP along with the sharing of live job vacancies is resulting in a continued reduction in unemployment levels in MK. A new ‘Wrap Around’ service has been introduced in Central Milton Keynes Library, it opened its doors on Monday 2nd March and will be trialled on a monthly basis for a six month period. Unemployed residents can attend and receive employment support along with advice about benefits, money management/budgeting, housing assistance and much more. The service hopes to bring together as many agencies as possible that can provide an holistic level of support to those who have need of their services. Overall, Milton Keynes Council, with its multi-agency cohesive approach to supporting people onto an educational pathway and business recruitment support has continued to contribute to the ongoing reduction in local unemployment levels.
