Agenda item

(Director of Neighbourhoods) To consider the attached report AMED-004-2017/18.

The Economic Development Officer (EDO) presented a report to the Cabinet Committee and updated them on a number of projects and issues being explored by the Economic Development Team.

3.         Town Centres

Waltham Abbey Wayfinding Project

The Waltham Abbey Wayfinding Project was managed by the Council on behalf of the Town Partnership. 14 of the 15 signs have been installed and the last one was due to be installed on Friday 12 January 2018.

4.         Business Support

One Business Briefing

To date the One Business Briefing magazine for businesses which was published in August 2017 had now been downloaded from the Council’s website in excess of 660 times. The Spring edition was now being planned with a theme of tourism in the district.

Meet the Buyer

On the 23 November 2017, in conjunction with Epping Forest Chamber of Commerce, the Economic Development team organised a Meet the Buyer Conference to enable local businesses to meet face-to-face with some of the biggest buyers in and around the District.  Small and medium sized enterprises were able to understand how big organisations in the public and private sector buy, what they procure, how much they procure, and opportunities available.  The event attracted over 70 delegates, representing a wide variety of sectors from aviation, health, research, tourism, and education. The Team secured sponsorship from the Marriott Hotel Waltham Abbey and the event included speakers from London Stansted Airport, Public Health England, Essex County Council, Epping Forest College, and Vibrant Partnerships.

5.         Digital Innovation Programme

Economic Development officers in conjunction with One Epping Forest, Princess Alexandra Hospital and West Essex CCG submitted an application in November 2017 to the LGA / Design Council ‘Design in the Public Sector’ programme. The application was put together as a Digital Innovation Zone (DIZ) project to address the level of A&E incidents amongst the over-75 population of the Digital Innovation Zone.

A third Smart Places Seminar focusing on Digital Skills for future jobs was planned to take place on 9 February 2018 at Haileybury College in Broxbourne Borough. It was planned that external speakers from business and academic perspectives will bring forward their thoughts on what was coming down the line in terms of digital opportunities and threats, but crucially also to focus back on what businesses, colleges etc. need to do now to prepare themselves and their workforces for an increasingly digital future.

The DIZ Board continued to meet on a monthly basis. This cross-border grouping, originally formed of Epping Forest District Council, Uttlesford, Harlow, East Herts and Broxbourne Councils, Essex County Council, the London Stansted Cambridge Consortium, Princess Alexandra Hospital, West Essex CCG and KAOData, chaired by Councillor Lion (with Councillor Mohindra as Vice Chairman). The Board had now welcomed representatives of Further and Higher Education and the voluntary sector. Membership will continually be reviewed and supplemented where appropriate to ensure it represented the key stakeholders in our digital future.

An expression of interest had been submitted, on behalf of the DIZ Board, to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) to be involved in the DCMS Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) Programme. This programme will explore opportunities to expand full fibre networks through a range of mechanisms. Representatives of the DIZ Board from EFDC and Essex County Council attended a workshop on the programme on 15 December 2017 and DCMS will now be inviting the submission of full bids.

6.         Superfast Broadband

At the end of November 2017 the network build had reached just over 3700 premises. Building work to install the final two cabinet areas of the network in Hastingwood and Ongar had now commenced. Wayleave negotiations to facilitate Gigaclear to build part of its network across North Weald Airfield are ongoing. Unfortunately, due to a number of issues that the contractor had faced, the full completion of the network was scheduled for 31 March 2018.

Funding for Phase 4 was recently added to the Capital Review programme and a report was submitted to the Cabinet on 7 December 2017. The tender process was underway through Superfast Essex / Essex County Council (ECC) and the bidders’ proposals were likely to be evaluated in January / February 2018. Economic Development and Finance officers from EFDC will take part in the tender evaluation process. At the point of awarding the contract EFDC will be required to enter into a written agreement with ECC to confirm the £350,000 funding and prior to signing this agreement a further report will be taken to Cabinet outlining the outcome of the tender process and seeking its confirmation to proceed. The completion of the tender process was still ongoing and it was hoped that the contract would be awarded by the end of February 2018.

8.         Partner Liaison

The inaugural meeting of the Epping Forest Skills Board took place at Epping Forest College on 4 December 2017, under the chairmanship of Councillor Gagan Mohindra. Members included representatives of local large and small businesses, the County and District Councils, Epping Forest College and the DWP.

Following a presentation giving an overview on the economy, employment,  education and training in the District, there was a round table discussion on the major challenges and opportunities facing the local skills agenda. Areas of focus included increasing apprenticeships, the construction industry, future developments in the digital economy and employability skills for young people.

Consideration was given to how the Skills Board could best influence the skills agenda and whether the initial Board needed additional representation. The EDT will be adding a skills section to future reports of the Cabinet Committee. A second meeting was being arranged for early in 2018.

Councillor W Breare-Hall stated that most of the Economic Development reports could be quantified by data such as how many new businesses have opened, how many businesses have closed, how many new jobs have there been and how many visitors to the district. He suggested that this report could be an annual report to the meeting.

The EDO officer advised that he would take this back to the EDT and a meeting should be arranged with members to discuss how best to bring this report showing a statistical analysis.

Councillor A Grigg asked if any of this work had been covered in the Local Plan work that had been undertaken by the EDT.

Mr Macnab advised that a number of studies in support of the Local Plan on a local level, which have included the allocation of sites of employment and commissioned visitor accommodation statistics have been prepared as part of the Local Plan process. He stated that it would be possible to bring these together to collate into the statistical analysis report that members required.

Resolved:

That the current progress and work programme of the Council’s Economic Development Section were noted.

Reasons for Decision:

To appraise the Committee on the progress made with regard to Economic Development issues.

Other Options Considered and Rejected:

None, as this was a monitoring report for information, not action.