The Midlands Engine for Growth is made up of the 11 LEPs across central England, has a shared economy of £222 billion annually and is home to over 11.5 million people. The area has already played a strong role in the recovery of the UK economy with private sector employment growing more than three times faster than London and the South East in the last year.
Businesses will flourish with the Midlands Engine’s connectivity, trade and investment links, innovation, financial support and skills pool.
Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP
Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills
The Midlands Engine Strategy was launched by the Chancellor Philip Hammond on 9th March 2017.
The strategic themes are:-
Promotion
The Midlands Engine will promote the region’s strengths, assets and opportunities actively to target domestic and overseas audiences and will focus on sectors that provide the greatest opportunities for the region for inward investment.
Midlands Connect
The connectivity of the Midlands Engine will be central to its success and the Midlands Connect initiative will set out a credible long term transport investment strategy for the Midlands Engine identifying early investment to improve road and rail networks and explore how new technologies can increase capacity of existing transport networks.
Innovation
The Midlands Engine will drive up business innovation, improving business productivity and competitiveness working in partnership and pan-regionally to bring forward innovations that support the primary sectors and drive this through the supply chain.
Finance for Business
Supporting the SMEs to grow will increase employment right across the Midlands and help to diversify the business base. SMEs can be a key source of innovation, and medium sized enterprises are crucial to developing local supply chains that support global brands. Access to appropriate sources of finance is essential for businesses to reach their full growth potential and to facilitate the survival of new business start-ups and the Midlands Engine will offer a single and substantial access to finance proposition.
Skills
The availability of a strong talent pool is crucial to enable employers to improve their productivity and grow more quickly. The Midlands Engine will work to ensure that the employer base links closely with skills providers and skills provision is tailored to employer demand.
Final Strategy Documents including Midlands Connect activity can be found in the links below.
