Kidderminster Enterprise Zone

Debate between Karen Bradley and Mark Garnier

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mark Garnier]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The whole point about an enterprise zone is that it will not only help people in the immediate vicinity, but attract many people and a lot of economic activity from a fairly wide area—a point I will develop later in my speech. The economy of the south of the county looks to the rural and research-based drivers in her constituency, and the north of the county looks to the black country as its engine for growth. It is for this reason that strengthening the advanced manufacturing base in the north of the county will draw down the manufacturing prosperity of the black country into Worcestershire.

The issues Worcestershire faces are important and the LEP has already got to grips with the major economic priorities and challenges that the county will face in the coming years. Crucially, private sector employment shrunk over the past decade by 1%. This trend was more marked in the north of the county, with Kidderminster seeing an 8% reduction in private sector employment and Redditch seeing a 14% reduction. That said, Redditch has a greater proportion of manufacturing jobs in the region, which is encouraging.

Moreover, work by the West Midlands Regional Observatory shows that Kidderminster and, to a lesser extent, Redditch suffer from problems relating to longer-term restructuring and job losses from the contraction of their industrial base, lower employment rates and higher claimant levels, especially among young people, and a higher proportion of the working-age population having no qualifications at all. To deal with those issues, the LEP sees restructuring the local economy away from public sector jobs, supporting and growing the tourism industry, and building on the industrial assets in the north as the key priorities. It was with this in mind that the Worcestershire LEP identified Kidderminster as the unanimous option for the Worcestershire bid for an enterprise zone.

The town of Kidderminster was once the hub of the world’s carpet industry, with some 20,000 people employed in that key industry as recently as the ’70s and ’80s. Carpets declined as the preferred floor covering, although I am pleased to say that that trend is now in reverse.

[Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to what my hon. Friend is saying. It is a great relief to me, as I represent a Staffordshire constituency, that we are no longer under a regional development agency, as what works in one place in the west midlands does not necessarily work in Staffordshire, so I am delighted that we now have the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent LEP. However, I have to stand up for Minton floor tiles and say that, although carpets in Kidderminster are important, floor tiles are equally so.

[Mark Garnier]

They certainly are, but I must say that one cannot get a better carpet than those made in Kidderminster. My hon. Friend makes a good point about Advantage West Midlands, which is now disappearing. The LEPs are incredibly strong because they bring together enterprise and business to try to structure what they need economically, and the way in which some enterprise zones in the west midlands have come together to take advantage of that opportunity and build on it is very encouraging.

I am pleased to see my friend and co-chair of the all-party group on the economy of the west midlands, the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), in the Chamber in support, because it is incredibly important that we work together across the whole of the west midlands to ensure that we have a strong local economy.

The carpet industry in Kidderminster, as I said, employed 20,000 people, but now we have fewer than 2,000 working locally in that once-great sector. Having said that, I must note that Kidderminster produces some of the finest carpets on the planet, and that is very encouraging. Kidderminster and the wider Wyre Forest now find themselves a post-industrial area, with a handful of significant employers but 5,000-plus small and micro-businesses. Local unemployment in Wyre Forest stands at 4.6% overall, but the figure I find most upsetting is that of the 18 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training, the so-called NEETs, who number 9.1% against an equally tragic but lower 7.2% for the wider county.

The Kidderminster and wider Wyre Forest area is made of stern stuff, and the local district council is keen to promote growth. In 2009, Wyre Forest district council created a private-led regeneration project known as the ReWyre initiative, which is helping to drive forward the economic growth of local businesses in Wyre Forest and, combined with the new LEP private enterprise, taking a firm lead in driving forward economic regeneration.

Owing to that already strong local drive and the early establishment of the Worcestershire LEP, the opportunity for a Kidderminster enterprise zone was seized unanimously. The proposal is to establish an enterprise zone, the South Kidderminster business park, in an area broadly defined by two main arterial roads through the district, the Stourport road and Worcester road business corridors. There is already significant economic activity in those areas, and, although some 3 hectares of previously speculatively developed site is available for immediate occupation, a further 44.5 hectares of brownfield site is available for redevelopment and the specific needs of new and relocating businesses to the enterprise zone.

It is anticipated that that redevelopment alone will bring some 4,000 new jobs to Kidderminster and Wyre Forest, and importantly not just the people of Kidderminster but the wider county of Worcestershire will benefit from those jobs. It is anticipated also that the enterprise zone’s local stimulus will benefit many existing businesses and create new jobs in the wider area, particularly in the towns of Stourport-on-Severn, Bewdley and Redditch.