A shortage of skills is holding back businesses in Coventry and Warwickshire, entrepreneur Denys Shortt, chairman of the area’s Local Enterprise Partnership, told ICAEW members. Mr Shortt said his own health and beauty products company, DCS Europe, which has a £126 million turnover and employs 200 people, had 20 vacancies it could not fill.
He said: “There’s loads of unemployed people but there’s loads of jobs. There are 1,000 HGV lorry drivers’ jobs available in Coventry and Warwickshire right now. We can’t fill them. It takes £4,000 to train a lorry driver. We need to get businesses to invest in training.”
Mr Shortt, speaking at a breakfast meeting with members held at the newly re-opened Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, went on to criticise schools and universities for their lack of understanding of the commercial world. He said: “We have had people with three Grade A A-levels and 11 A* GCSEs and they can’t get through an interview, they are just unemployable.” He criticised schools’ engagement with business and said even universities left something to be desired. “It needs a radical change.”
Mr Shortt called on local businesses to support the Coventry and Warwickshire LEP.
He said: “No-one had actually asked for my opinion before. I spend most of my life writing cheques to the Government. I pay £250,000 a year in rates but no one has ever asked me a question about business. I thought the LEP would be a great opportunity to get stuck in.
“The Government are listening. Anything that we have to say, you are probably two steps away from someone in senior Government. Your first port of call is the LEP; my next port of call is the Government.”
But Mr Shortt said businesses needed to be more pro-active.
“They keep saying they want to be heard but when you send them a questionnaire they don’t answer,” he said.
He said the top priority for business was access to finance. “There has been a lot of negativity around money and banking,” he said. The LEP organised the first meeting of the seven major banks in the area for 15 years. They all said they were lending so the LEP is putting in ways of measuring their performance.
Mr Shortt said one reason for a lack of lending was the failure of some businesses to present the banks with a persuasive plan. DCS had just secured a £20 million loan. “It’s all about presentation, the management, the quality of the data and the leadership. If you have got a wishy-washy businessman don’t put him in front of the bank. They are looking at the leadership, the numbers and the plan.”
Mr Shortt said he had placed a free, downloadable business plan on his website: www.mystrategyplan.com.
Another problem facing businesses was obtaining planning permission to expand. Mr Shortt said he was trying to persuade councils to make decisions within seven weeks. He said councils should be benchmarked on how many jobs were created in their areas and the contribution planning rules make to achieving growth.
“The Government want to meet us to talk to us about planning. The fast track to having your voice heard is hugely exciting,” he said. “Our LEP is absolutely brilliant. We have a fantastic team. It’s working really, really well. In two years’ time every two years we will change the private sector members of the board. The Government have said we want the private sector to lead the LEP. They want businesses to say what has to be done.”
The Coventry and Warwickshire LEP has seven business members, five local authority representatives and two from local universities. The local authorities are working well together to deliver the LEPs’ policies, said Mr Shortt.
“Businesses in Coventry and Warwickshire are actually fighting not just for survival but for growth. There are probably 20 companies in our region that are seriously going to grow.
“JLR is looking to take on 7,000 to 8,000 jobs but that could anything up to 60,000 jobs in our region if we played our cards right.
“That’s all about talking to Ratan Tata, come to Coventry and Warwickshire, we love you, it’s a great place to do business. What else do you want? What else do you need?
“Whitley, Coventry, has become headquarters of JLR. It will become an automotive centre for Europe.
“At the other end of the scale, small businesses actually matter too. We are asking them what are their challenges and some of them are different from the big businesses’.”