Bristol and West of England Initiative meet at Aerospace Bristol for a look at the future of the region

We welcomed over 100 members to our September Bristol and West of England Initiative meeting, held at Aerospace Bristol, a museum based in Filton and home to the last Concorde to ever fly. As you may know the Concorde was designed and built in Bristol, and even had its own special runway.

Delegates were also  invited to tour the Brabazon Hangers, the future site of the YTL Bristol Arena, by the team from YTL. The name Brabazon comes from the incredible plane that the hangars were built to house, one of the last ever propeller passenger planes. Unlucky for the Brabazon, its massive 90 metre wingspan debuted only months before the invention of the jet engine, and so it never really had a chance. But YTL is giving the Brabazon name new life by creating a whole new town around the site of the new YTL Arena, called Brabazon. Their plans for the town and the Arena itself are  ambitious, and we can’t wait to see it. 

After the YTL Bristol Arena and Brabazon Tour we sat down for a series of presentations, starting with the President of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce, Jaya Chakrabarti MBE. Jaya talked about the reality of doing business in these unprecedented times, urging that businesses and leaders in the region shouldn’t wait for government to kickstart the needed change in the world and should take action themselves. 

Next up, Sally Cordwell, the Chief Executive of Aerospace Bristol talked a little about the history of the museum and of Concorde, including an anecdote on a recent tour she gave Bryan May from Queen, where he reminisced that the last time he had flown on Concorde was with Freddie Mercury before he passed away. 

Sally told our Initiative Members that the purpose of Aerospace Bristol was to inspire the next generation of aerospace engineers, and to that end they’ve had 32,000 children visit since they opened. Aerospace Bristol offers a hands on approach to aerospace history, and she hopes that visiting the museum will help inspire more girls to enter STEM careers – traditionally those dominated by white men.  Aerospace Bristol isn’t standing still though, with huge growth plans and an entire building yet to be put to use. To fund these growth ambitions they will be starting a fundraising campaign in the near future.

Following Sally, Business West’s Chair, Colin Skellett provided an update to our plans to move to a members ownership model, rather than shareholders, and that changes to our board have already begun. Business West is moving to a smaller but more diverse board and have hired a new Membership Director to help bring more tangible benefits to membership. We’re going to give more prominence to local chambers and initiatives and work with a Strategy Committee and Advisory Council to help direct and amplify our voice. 

Colin also talked about the new opportunities opening to Business West, including an exclusive partnership with Hydrogen South West as part of our commitment to climate action. 

Our penultimate speaker was Victoria Matthews, manager of the Bristol Initiative. She talked about the challenging environment that businesses find themselves in due to rises in the cost of living and in particular the energy crisis. Because of this, Business West has seen more and more businesses recognising the need to decarbonise and take action, and is developing areas we can help to support them. Part of this work involves cleaning up our cities and decarbonising transport, which we are working towards with both public and private partners. 

Victoria further outlined our major areas of development:

• City Leap, an initiative led by Bristol City Council that partners with the private sector to decarbonise the city
• Western Gateway Partnership, the UK’s first pan-regional powerhouse to span two countries, working to support the UK on its journey to net zero and provide opportunities to those at risk of being left behind
• City Centre BID – the ballot closes this month.

Victoria also highlighted our Quarterly Economic Survey, which closed last week for Q3. The QES is one undertaken by all the Chambers of Commerce in the UK to capture the temperature of business locally, regionally and nationally. Results will be released soon.

Finally, the last speaker for the night was Toby Savage, Leader of South Gloucestershire Council. Toby praised the spirit of innovation in the region, highlighting the many important and impressive research and development projects that are based in Bristol and South Gloucestershire, including innovations for transport, communications and more.

Toby then moved on to discussing the climate crisis, and how it has showed its hand a little this summer with the historic  heatwaves that we saw in July and August. What it also showed us was not just how harsh a hotter climate will be, but also how disproportionately it will affect people of colour, low-income families, the elderly, and homeless and disabled people. 

South Gloucestershire Council has a target to reach Net Zero by 2030, and they are pushing to reach that as soon as possible. Over 50,000 jobs will be created by new green initiatives and they are working to improve access to STEM careers created by new climate related initiatives for people of colour, women and others who traditionally have not gone into these roles in large numbers.