Swindon & Wiltshire Institute of Technology plans brought to life at Business West online event

2nd March 2021

At our February Swindon & Wiltshire Business and Economy Meeting we were delighted to be joined by Chris Baish, Vice Principal of the newly merged New College Swindon and MD of the Institute of Technology.

The Institute of Technology (IoT) represents a significant development for business and the economy in Swindon & Wiltshire, providing a platform to bring the future skills profile of the region in line with the requirements of businesses in key industries.

In his presentation Chris described the national and regional context of the IoT explaining that the idea was born out of a government initiative to create a local, technical educational and skills offering that is employer led in order to help close the skills gap in STEM related areas.

Reflective of this, Chris spoke about the close working partnerships that had been formed with the anchor employers, who will be taking on level 3-4 and degree apprentices to gain work experience whilst studying a range of subjects at the IoT, including software testing, networking engineering, AI, cyber security and games design.

Local employers signed up as partners of the IoT include Business West members Nationwide, Catalent and Excalibur Communications.

Whilst the bulk of course delivery will take place via New College Swindon, the University of Gloucestershire and Oxford Brookes will provide the teaching on vocational degrees such as cyber security, where the university partners have nationally and internationally recognised expertise.

Following multimillion pound investment, which will see the Pegasus Tower at New College Swindon’s North Star Campus transformed by the creation of a number of state-of-the-art digital labs, engineering workshops, film studio and science labs, the IoT is due to open its doors in early September.

News of this extensive investment in the North Star Campus provided a fitting segue to an update from Dave Dewart and Sam Rackham of Swindon Borough Council regarding the ongoing investment and regeneration of Swindon town centre.

In 2019, Swindon was one of 101 places across the country that could submit a bid to the Government’s Towns Fund of up to £25m. In early 2020 the Towns Fund Board was established to oversee the allocation and distribution of funding to deliver the greatest social and economic benefit for the town.

Taking a strictly evidence-based approach, the Towns Fund board strived to allocate funding to projects and initiatives that could demonstrably help to upskill workers, encourage inward investment in Swindon, improve connectivity in and around the town centre, cut carbon emissions and tackle climate change and capitalise on Swindon’s local heritage. The Board awaits an announcement from Government any day on the success of their bid.

In terms of specific projects businesses and residents can expect to see coming on board in the near future, the Fleming Way Bus Boulevard has received additional funding from the Future High Streets Fund of £25m announced at Christmas, which with Council and SWLEP funding will see this project get under way during 2021.

CEO of SWLEP Paddy Bradley and Director of Swindon & Wiltshire at Business West Ian Larrard gave their regular updates. Elsewhere there were presentations from Lucy Cumming of Dialogue Language Services – Swindon’s foreign language translation experts, specialising in localising websites, cultural awareness training, voiceovers and subtitling for businesses – and John Blake, Commercial Director of pioneering waste to energy start-up Biofactory.

John’s engaging presentation focussed on Biofactory’s unique latrine system, which turns human waste into fuel used for cooking to provide safe sanitation in high density, low-income areas of sub-Saharan Africa and replace the harmful indoor campfires which are common across the region.

With the Biofactory system successfully passing the technological proof of concept phase, the rugged and easily deployable latrine is now being piloted in of Mozambique said John to understand the social and cultural barriers to adoption of the innovation out in the field.

Swindon & Wiltshire Initiative Manager Dave Battrick closed the meeting, noting the date for next month’s event on 24th March.

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