Kidderminster Enterprise Zone

Mark Garnier Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his time this evening to hear the case for the Kidderminster enterprise zone bid. I am pleased to be able to hold this debate because I am passionate about the future of the local economy, not just in Kidderminster or even in Wyre Forest but in the whole of Worcestershire.

What we are debating this evening is more than just Kidderminster’s enterprise zone bid. It is about how the Worcestershire local enterprise partnership has come together with enthusiasm and considered the many submissions from across the county, and how the business community has worked through the options and come up with what it believes is the best possible enterprise zone bid for the whole county. I am delighted to see so many Members present, and members of the business community in Worcestershire have come down this evening to show their support for this incredibly important bid.

Before I speak more specifically about Kidderminster, I want to speak about Worcestershire as a whole. I do this because it is important to remember that it is the Worcestershire LEP that has looked carefully at the county and decided that the best option for the county—not just for Wyre Forest—is the Kidderminster business enterprise zone. It is important that it becomes an enterprise zone because it is a strong and early bidder for a county-wide enterprise partnership that will bring together business, civic and third sector leaders as an effective advocate for the whole county.

Worcestershire has around 560,000 residents, and across the county there are a number of strong but localised industrial specialisms. We have agriculture and food processing in Wychavon and the Malvern hills, research and development in Malvern and automotive-related industries in Bromsgrove and Redditch.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although the bid from Kidderminster is great, we must all work together with the Worcestershire LEP to ensure that in future years other areas have successful bids, including my constituency?

[Mark Garnier]

My hon. Friend makes a good point; this is about the whole of Worcestershire and it is incredibly important that we work together for this important opportunity.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for securing this extremely useful debate. Does he agree that developing the Kidderminster enterprise zone would be extremely beneficial, particularly for those in the north of my constituency, because it would be so easy for them to travel to Kidderminster for work?

[Mark Garnier]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The whole point about an enterprise zone is that it will not only help people in the immediate vicinity, but attract many people and a lot of economic activity from a fairly wide area—a point I will develop later in my speech. The economy of the south of the county looks to the rural and research-based drivers in her constituency, and the north of the county looks to the black country as its engine for growth. It is for this reason that strengthening the advanced manufacturing base in the north of the county will draw down the manufacturing prosperity of the black country into Worcestershire.

The issues Worcestershire faces are important and the LEP has already got to grips with the major economic priorities and challenges that the county will face in the coming years. Crucially, private sector employment shrunk over the past decade by 1%. This trend was more marked in the north of the county, with Kidderminster seeing an 8% reduction in private sector employment and Redditch seeing a 14% reduction. That said, Redditch has a greater proportion of manufacturing jobs in the region, which is encouraging.

Moreover, work by the West Midlands Regional Observatory shows that Kidderminster and, to a lesser extent, Redditch suffer from problems relating to longer-term restructuring and job losses from the contraction of their industrial base, lower employment rates and higher claimant levels, especially among young people, and a higher proportion of the working-age population having no qualifications at all. To deal with those issues, the LEP sees restructuring the local economy away from public sector jobs, supporting and growing the tourism industry, and building on the industrial assets in the north as the key priorities. It was with this in mind that the Worcestershire LEP identified Kidderminster as the unanimous option for the Worcestershire bid for an enterprise zone.

The town of Kidderminster was once the hub of the world’s carpet industry, with some 20,000 people employed in that key industry as recently as the ’70s and ’80s. Carpets declined as the preferred floor covering, although I am pleased to say that that trend is now in reverse.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to what my hon. Friend is saying. It is a great relief to me, as I represent a Staffordshire constituency, that we are no longer under a regional development agency, as what works in one place in the west midlands does not necessarily work in Staffordshire, so I am delighted that we now have the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent LEP. However, I have to stand up for Minton floor tiles and say that, although carpets in Kidderminster are important, floor tiles are equally so.

[Mark Garnier]

They certainly are, but I must say that one cannot get a better carpet than those made in Kidderminster. My hon. Friend makes a good point about Advantage West Midlands, which is now disappearing. The LEPs are incredibly strong because they bring together enterprise and business to try to structure what they need economically, and the way in which some enterprise zones in the west midlands have come together to take advantage of that opportunity and build on it is very encouraging.

I am pleased to see my friend and co-chair of the all-party group on the economy of the west midlands, the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), in the Chamber in support, because it is incredibly important that we work together across the whole of the west midlands to ensure that we have a strong local economy.

The carpet industry in Kidderminster, as I said, employed 20,000 people, but now we have fewer than 2,000 working locally in that once-great sector. Having said that, I must note that Kidderminster produces some of the finest carpets on the planet, and that is very encouraging. Kidderminster and the wider Wyre Forest now find themselves a post-industrial area, with a handful of significant employers but 5,000-plus small and micro-businesses. Local unemployment in Wyre Forest stands at 4.6% overall, but the figure I find most upsetting is that of the 18 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training, the so-called NEETs, who number 9.1% against an equally tragic but lower 7.2% for the wider county.

The Kidderminster and wider Wyre Forest area is made of stern stuff, and the local district council is keen to promote growth. In 2009, Wyre Forest district council created a private-led regeneration project known as the ReWyre initiative, which is helping to drive forward the economic growth of local businesses in Wyre Forest and, combined with the new LEP private enterprise, taking a firm lead in driving forward economic regeneration.

Owing to that already strong local drive and the early establishment of the Worcestershire LEP, the opportunity for a Kidderminster enterprise zone was seized unanimously. The proposal is to establish an enterprise zone, the South Kidderminster business park, in an area broadly defined by two main arterial roads through the district, the Stourport road and Worcester road business corridors. There is already significant economic activity in those areas, and, although some 3 hectares of previously speculatively developed site is available for immediate occupation, a further 44.5 hectares of brownfield site is available for redevelopment and the specific needs of new and relocating businesses to the enterprise zone.

It is anticipated that that redevelopment alone will bring some 4,000 new jobs to Kidderminster and Wyre Forest, and importantly not just the people of Kidderminster but the wider county of Worcestershire will benefit from those jobs. It is anticipated also that the enterprise zone’s local stimulus will benefit many existing businesses and create new jobs in the wider area, particularly in the towns of Stourport-on-Severn, Bewdley and Redditch.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and commend him for his valuable work for and great contribution to the all-party group that we have established for the regional economy. Does he agree that it is not just the towns of Stourport, Bewdley and Kidderminster that will benefit from the establishment of the enterprise zone, but the black country towns of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton? If greater enterprise, more jobs and prosperity can be brought to areas such as Kidderminster, that will only benefit the constituents I represent just a few miles away in the black country, and that is why I assure the hon. Gentleman that the bid will receive my support and, no doubt, that of other black country MPs.

[Mark Garnier]

I am incredibly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. It shows the cross-party support for the local economy in the black country and the west midlands, and that we are all coming together to try to support the local economy, to move things forward and to deal with the issues that face us. They include slightly stagnant economic growth, but we will deal with that through local enterprise partnerships and business expansion zones.

The development’s knock-on effect will be incredibly important. The Stourport road corridor runs through one of the most deprived wards in England and Wales, Oldington and Foley Park, where almost 8% of residents are on jobseeker’s allowance and almost 30% of 18 to 24-year-olds are NEETs. There will be not only an immediate impact on local unemployment, but a long-term change of prospects for the large numbers of families who have been hit by the long-term decline of the carpet industry—families whose unemployment can be measured not in weeks, months or years but, in far too many cases, in generations.

Specifically, it is anticipated that growth in the Kidderminster business park will come from a mix of new businesses moving to the area, the expansion of existing businesses benefiting from the local economic stimulus and, importantly, the creation of new businesses, all of which will take advantage of the local mix of good and available skills, existing supply-chain businesses, the availability of land and existing property for immediate use and, of course, the incentives available through the enterprise zone.

The existing and well established ReWyre initiative and the Worcestershire LEP, working together in partnership, will manage and implement the enterprise zone. Not only will they draw up a flexible and sustainable investment plan for the zone, but crucially they will create a single, strong marketing identity, developing a vision for the zone and the district for the next one or two decades. South Kidderminster business park already benefits from an up-to-date local development framework, with the Wyre Forest core strategy having been adopted in December last year. The core strategy already identifies the fact that South Kidderminster business park will offer attractive, accessible and high-quality employment locations. The area also provides a strong and clear basis for the designation of local development orders, simplifying planning requirements and thus accelerating development opportunities.

What is important about the Kidderminster business zone bid is that there are qualified, work-ready people willing to take on work immediately. I recently spoke to a local employer who was advertising for new staff and who told me that he was inundated with good-quality candidates, all of whom he could have taken on. That is as good an indicator as any of a willing and ready work force available to meet the needs of new businesses in Kidderminster.

The Wyre Forest and Kidderminster area is an incredibly wonderful place to live. At that all-important final meeting when the managing director of a company seeking to relocate to a town such as Kidderminster has to discuss moving home with his or her family, I am sure that the family members will relish the opportunity of living in an area with outstanding natural beauty, fascinating towns, excellent nearby shopping, good schools, and a wide range of activities to keep any family healthy and happy. [Interruption.] And good carpets, yes.

I am here to urge the Minister to do everything he can to help Kidderminster’s bid to pass successfully through the selection process. The ingredients for success are already there. We have an available and willing work force ready for immediate employment. We have available space for new businesses to take up immediately. We have a local development plan already in place supporting South Kidderminster business park. We have a local business organisation—the ReWyre initiative—already in place to drive the Kidderminster enterprise zone forward. We have the unanimous support of the local enterprise partnership behind Kidderminster. We have the will to rebalance the local economy towards private sector employment.

Crucially, an enterprise zone in Kidderminster will help to enable our third sector partners who work in more challenging areas to prepare the long-term unemployed for long-term employment. It will raise aspirations, drive economic regeneration and give breadth to the wider Worcestershire economy. I invite the Minister to visit, because I am sure that he will agree that there is no better candidate for a business expansion zone than Kidderminster.