To receive questions relating to items on the Agenda from members of the public and responses thereto.
Details of questions should be notified to the Corporate Manager Democratic and Civic Support by 10.00am at least three working days prior to the meeting. For this meeting, questions must be submitted by 10am by Monday 16 November 2020.
Further information about speaking at a committee can be found here: Speaking at a Committee
Minutes:
In accordance with Standing Order 19, a member of the public, Mr P Cleasby submitted the following question on the Local Industrial Strategy:-
What progress has the Council made in attracting funds in response to each of the funding requests set out in the Exeter Local Industrial Strategy?
The Council Leader, Councillor Bialyk offered the following response and explained that the clear steer from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) officials, following publication of the Exeter Industrial Strategy (EIS), was that Whitehall would expect the formal Industrial Strategy to be on the same geography as the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and include Devon, Somerset, Plymouth and Torbay. The Exeter Industrial Strategy has been used to inform the production of the Heart of the South West Local Industrial Strategy with its focus on clean growth and Exeter’s opportunity based on data and climate and environmental sciences. Having encouraged the Heart of the South West Councils and LEP to produce an Industrial strategy for consideration by the previous Government, we have still not heard back from Government on whether the draft Industrial Strategy has been accepted.
Funding has been secured by Exeter College as part of a hub and spoke proposal for digital, to be known as the South West Institute of Technology, with the hub being based at Exeter. The skills escalator has been widely discussed and may well have supported the successful bid by the College. Funding has been secured from the Cabinet Office and the One Public Estate to produce a business case for a sustainable development fund. Funding continues to be secured by the Exeter Science Park to support the provision of new accommodation. There has been no success with the Institute of Environmental Risk, or in relation to Sparx (an Exeter based educational technology company) and Exeter City Futures. However, since the publication of the Exeter Industrial Strategy, Sparx has secured major private sector investment and it has been rolled out to many more schools in this country and abroad. In short, we have done a lot of work as a city and region to support the industrial strategy but we still await the publication by Government and funding has been secured from Government and this has been administered through programmes administered by the LEP and/or Devon County Council, and the case with the One Public Estate.
Mr Cleasby did not ask a
supplementary question, but he agreed that this was all very
encouraging and he thanked the Leader for the response. He looked forward to the Heart of the South West
LEP publishing their plans soon.
The Leader referred to his membership of the Heart of the South West LEP Board, representing the Devon district authorities who had been pushing for the publication of the plans which he considered would be unifying. It was disappointing that in view of the delays to the devolution discussion, the plans had also been set aside for the duration of this Parliament. He confirmed that this authority was looking at other opportunities to draw down funding for important projects in our city and also the greater city region. He welcomed Mr Cleasby’s question and suggested there was always the opportunity to ask such a question in the public section of the next meeting of the LEP Board.