Video Transcript
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Worcestershire Growth Hub’s July 2023 newsletter. Our team have been busy out and about at events across the county, supporting businesses and working hard on developing and learning about a range of new business support schemes which will be coming very soon.
Firstly, I’m pleased to confirm that the Worcestershire Growth Hub’s flagship support scheme, Professional Business Advisors, is returning for a fourth delivery wave.
Via this scheme, businesses will be able to engage with expert professional businesses to receive 1 to 1 support across key areas such as marketing, sustainability, workforce planning and financial strategy. This support is entirely free for the business.
This programme has supported over 600 businesses so far and I encourage businesses of all sizes across the county to enquire with the team and see if this support could help your business.
We know that globally sustainability is a big focus for many. To help local businesses, we have some sustainability support available. We’re working with the County Council on two new webinars focused around net zero and how businesses can achieve it. If you’d like to find out more about these webinars, please follow the links in the newsletter.
Good news for businesses is that we’re starting to see the next wave of business support grants coming through via local district councils and national programs too. We know it’s a challenging time for many and if you want to be one of the first to be able to access these grants, please follow the links in the newsletter articles and make sure you engage with the team.
Many of the businesses we talked to have told us that access to working spaces is a challenge. However, there are a growing number of co-working spaces that are popping up across the county, which provide a flexible space and location that many of you are after.
As well as the benefit of engaging with other like minded individuals. The Growth Hub have recently been made aware of a couple of new spaces which I’d like to flag with you now. First, we’ve got Oak House workspace in West Worcester, and secondly, Coffee and Lounge, which is based in Worcester City Centre. You can find links to both of these in our newsletter.
And if any of you have got any other co-working spaces around the county that you’d like us to highlight, please let us know as we’ll be putting together a list of all of the ones we’re aware of across the county, and we’ll make them available on our website.
The Growth Hub is also working with partners like the Local Enterprise Partnership, County Council and District Councils to gather intelligence to help inform future support programs and funding.
The focus at the moment is around workforce planning, and I’d like to ask you to spare us 5 minutes of your time so that we can better understand the challenges that you’re facing with your workforce. The information and insights that you provide us will be key so that we can help you in the future. The link to the survey, again, can be found within the newsletter.
As always, please continue to contact our team for any business support concerns you have. We are here and we are on hand to help your business.
I wish you all a happy, safe and sunny summer holiday period. We will be back again in August with more updates for you.