New delivery plan will help firms fight back after pandemic - Stephen Parnaby

While the recovery from the impact of the coronavirus lockdown is surely but steadily beginning – we know we still have far to go before we reach anything like normality in the Humber economy.

In the Humber our critical industries – including the ports, energy generation, oil refining, chemicals production, agriculture and food manufacturing – operated throughout lockdown, serving the nation with power, food and essential goods.

So too did businesses providing essential services such as care, food retail and telecommunications, and many other businesses found a way to adapt to keep trading, whether by implementing social distancing in factories or introducing homeworking on a scale never seen before.

However, a great many businesses were forced to temporarily close, and across the Humber over 105,000 people were placed on furlough.

Our initial response to the burgeoning emergency was as swift and robust as it could be – forming the Humber Economic Resilience Group, which together with the region’s business membership and support organisations and local authorities, co-ordinated the economic response.

We also worked with our partners in the Humber Local Resilience Forum, enabling a systematic, planned and co-ordinated approach to the Covid-19 response in the area, strengthening local resilience through close collaboration.

However, as we move to a new phase in our recovery from the lockdown, we need a new delivery plan to ensure businesses can operate as effectively as possible while the world fights Covid-19.

We have worked with partners to develop a delivery plan for this next phase, covering three important factors: support for businesses, support for people, and investment in infrastructure.

In terms of supporting businesses, the Humber LEP’s Business Growth Hub has been allocated almost £850,000 of new funding to help support the economic recovery of businesses in the Humber.

Split across three new support services, the funding will help businesses in the Humber to plan and implement their strategies to revive their operations and then to thrive in the longer term.

The funding will facilitate new staff to specifically support start-up companies, new grant programmes for existing businesses and new peer networks open to businesses from across the Humber area.

In terms of supporting the region’s people, our focus is to support people in work to progress, upskill and retrain where necessary to maximise the current and future workforce.

This can be achieved through a number of measures, including through schemes funded by a £3.25m allocation of additional funds from the European Social Fund, a new Growth Hub workforce development adviser specialising in apprenticeships, traineeships and T levels, and encouraging businesses including SMEs to provide more work experience placements for young people.

Finally, in terms of infrastructure, we will be supporting investment that improves the quality of infrastructure in the Humber and supports continued employment in the construction sector.

The Humber is in the position to build on its strengths, having gained much momentum over recent years, and as a LEP we remain focused on providing clean growth opportunities, maximising the potential of our ports and manufacturing industries and building our region’s knowledge economy, which will ensure the success of the Humber’s economy in the long term.

Stephen Parnaby - Chair of the Humber LEP

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James Mitchinson