Herefordshire Council brings sustainable prosperity to the county

This vision provides a way forward for the whole of the county, with organisations pulling together to achieve a joint goal by building on the distinctiveness of the county, maximising technology to support enterprise, capturing the potential of individuals and ensuring their communities thrive long into the future as wonderful places to live and work.

Herefordshire is one of the most sparsely populated counties in the country. Several problems present barriers to enterprise in the area:·

• Infrastructure limitations - the predominantly rural area has a high number of SMEs (60% of businesses employ less than 4 people), transport links are limited and, access to higher capacity bandwidth is limited;·
• Diversification - the national decline of the county’s key industries, manufacturing and agriculture (which account for 18% and 6.7% of employment respectively), is being felt locally with farmers in particular is being forced to seek alternative methods of income generation;·
• Employment and education - Herefordshire is failing to capitalise on the quality of school education. Skills levels, access to quality jobs and pay levels are all below the national average, and;·
• Regeneration of Hereford City - local people are choosing not to shop in Hereford has 70% retail leakage arising from people who live close to Hereford choosing not to shop there.  Congestion and flooding restrict business growth in the city.

These four factors combine to create a challenge for the growth of local businesses, as well as damaging the appeal for new business relocation. To tackle them, a raft of measures was put in place.

To create an infrastructure to support enterprise, Leominster Enterprise Park opened in 2004 covering a 30-acre site for businesses to relocate and expand. The site is now over fifty per cent occupied and still has 5-10 years worth of growth. An Enterprise Centre advises Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) which want to take the next step to growth and an expansion programme is currently underway which will create over 850 quality jobs.  A Redundant Building Grants Scheme has been put in place, which enables companies to regenerate premises to expand their businesses.  Twenty-three grants totalling £800,000 were issued last year that will ultimately create over 270 jobs.  

In 2003 ETL Systems, a company which designs and manufactures specialist equipment for satellite communication application and environmental monitoring equipment, were looking for new accommodation. The council helped them a former find a disused radio repeater station at Madley. They were awarded a Redundant Building Grant of £43,000 to cover 25% of the total cost of converting the premises for light industrial use.  The move to the new site not only enabled the company to remain in the county, safeguarding 16 jobs and creating an additional 20, seven of which are graduate posts.  A further building is now being built onsite.  

Working initially with clients in the UK and Europe, today ETL Systems are global suppliers adding cable companies, satellite operating companies and systems integrators to their blue chip customer base and they now ship globally.  Council schemes have also awarded them £25,000 to help their expansion into new markets.  

To support agriculture, the lifeblood of the county, a tourism campaign has raised the profile of local food and drink, including the introduction of the Flavours of Herefordshire Awards which recognises producers, shops, visitor accommodation, cafes and restaurants are awarded for the role they play in using and selling locally produced food and drink. The campaign also includes an annual food festival that in its second year saw attendance double to 8,000. Dragon Orchard, a family-run traditional fruit farm which introduced an innovative crop sharing scheme, is one of the many quality food and drink producers in the county involved in the awards. 

To encourage high quality employment, a £28.5m purpose-built Learning Village is being created to enable a step change in the way that education and training are delivered.  The Village provides a coordinated approach to the delivery of a wide range of courses specifically targeted to meet the needs of local employers.  A business development unit and a high technology engineering and craft workshop are in place, and next year the range of Higher Education courses available in the county will be greatly increased. The Learning Village aims to create 48 new jobs, assist skills development for 600 people and assist 60 businesses.

The Regeneration of Hereford City has also been a major strand of activity. The £900m Edgar Street Grid scheme involves the regeneration of a 100-acre site in Hereford City. A retail quarter will open in 2012, and the scheme will also include over 1,000 new homes, create 1,700 new jobs, provide 25,000 ft2 of new private office space, and will claw back at least 10% of lost retail spend.  To compliment the scheme, work has already taken place to improve the historic centre of Hereford.  

Results are already being seen in terms of growth in the number of VAT registered businesses, a £53m increase in the value of tourism of and the profits of creative businesses increasing by 314%.  The council’s work has received numerous accolades including the Baker Tilly and Hereford Times Trailblazer Award for Innovation and the Queen’s Award for Enterprise.

Herefordshire Council was the winner of the 2008 Enterprising Britain competition for the West Midlands.