It has been a busy time for our work on planning and transport. We have submitted our final representations for the West of England’s Joint Spatial Plan, with a strong evidence base that continues to argue that as a business community we consider that our local authorities need to be more ambitious; with higher numbers of homes, in more sustainable locations and with a stronger emphasis on protecting and increasing employment land for both office and industrial use. We are awaiting a formal enquiry on these plans after May, where we hope to put our views across to the planning inspector. Notwithstanding our call to be more ambitious we certainly want to see and recognise the importance of there being a final adopted Joint Spatial Plan in place. Let's hope this can be put in place in the next few months.
We put in strong support for Bristol Airport’s growth plans to raise the current ceiling to allow it to continue to grow and provide connectivity for the region’s businesses and its many tourists and leisure visitors. We also put in a broadly supportive submission into our four council’s consultation on future transport plans (known as JLTP4), although we did raise concerns that in failing to choose housing growth close to our existing urban centres and deciding to ‘jump the green belt’ and locate large housing sites in fringe locations in North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, the city region would be facing much higher transport infrastructure costs that would make it harder to convince central government to fund. We also raised concerns that Avonmouth and Severnside faced big transport infrastructure shortfalls, whilst the region needed to also make sure South Bristol benefited from future transport & infrastructure funds to help unlock future jobs and business growth. As a step towards this, we have strongly supported the major £250m Housing Infrastructure A4 corridor & South Bristol Bid recently submitted to government by WECA and the councils.
Making the right choices now on housing, transport and employment level will be a critical part of our city region’s ability to compete nationally and internationally. Birmingham and Berlin are both fighting for future business, and we cannot afford to be complacent. It may not be glamorous, but it is an area where the Chamber is able to put forward a strong voice for our business communities that may otherwise not be heard
For many years, the Chamber has actively been working on creating diversity across the city region and Be On Board, which has recently been launched by Kalpna Woolf, is an important new project we’re involved in. More details can be found here.
As you may be aware, in Summer 2018, the West of England was announced as one of the 6 places across the country that would form the second wave of Local Industrial Strategies. To guide the development of the Local Industrial Strategy a suite of evidence has been produced focused on the factors that contribute to productivity growth, as well as the Grand Challenges set out in the National Industrial Strategy. This is constantly evolving and can be found here.
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