Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-29)
MICHAEL CARR,
DIANA GILHESPY,
GLENN HARRIS,
JEFF MOORE
AND ANTHONY
PAYNE
27 APRIL 2009
Q20 Judy Mallaber: Can I ask you
to expand a bit more on the support and help that you are giving
to individual businesses affected by the credit crunch? Jeff and
Mike, you have both talked about the problems that businesses
are having, even if they are trading perfectly well, because bank
finance has frozen and because of the problems with credit insurance.
The business support officer in my local sub-strategic partnership
has been going around some companies there that have such problems,
and others in Derby. Do you have the powers that you need? How
easy is it for you to talk to the banks and try to give them a
kick up the backside to do something? Are you using your transition
loan fund, and what happens when it dries up? Do companies and
banks realise that there are Government programmes, and is it
possible to tap into that? How are you linking to Government Departments
in doing that? Perhaps you could expand on some of those matters,
because we will all have businesses in our areas that desperately
need that help and yet should be able to carry on trading perfectly
satisfactorily.
Michael Carr: Judy, I will lead
on that, if that is okay. There are lots of questions inherent
in that. Can I start with the way that we have been trying to
organise the business support services to respond to business
needs? I will then move on to the way we are working with banks
a little bit, as part of that. First and foremost, we felt that
it was important that we engage fully with businesses on the challenges
that they had. The main vehicles we used to do that were things
like the "survive and thrive" events that Jeff talked
about, through which we opened a door to businesses and gave them
some very practical advice and guidance. We also then supported
them fully through the Business Link service, and in doing so
we have refocused the work of the Business Link adviser teams
to predominantly look, when they go in, at the financial health
of businesses. Since we set up alongside the Government under
their "real help for business" campaign, we have carried
out more than 5,500 free health checks on businesses in the East
Midlands over a three-month period. So we have been working extremely
closely with businesses, making them aware that the support is
there, and we have seen a significant inflow of established businesses
coming to talk to us. In many ways, this recession has brought
Business Link to the fore, and it has been seen to respond very
strongly in the eyes of businesses, given the numbers that are
contacting it and the constant positive response that we get from
our independent surveys of the work that it is doing. In terms
of direct support, we have moved forward. For those businesses
that have really been struggling with regard to their own financial
position, we changed the way that we offered our business transformation
grant. That grant was made available to bring expertise through
the Business Link network into a business, paid for on a 50:50
basis. We felt that for businesses that were struggling and wanted
some form of accounting or recovery expert to come in, we could
offer the first three days of that support free of charge. More
than 65 businesses have already taken advantage of that. We have
also tweaked our capital support grants to help businesses, particularly
those that were being challenged in the third quarter of this
year with regards to resource efficiency and the cost of energy,
etc., by giving specific help to get them to invest in capital
schemes that were better and more cost-effective for them. We
have moved quite a lot of the focus of our work to directly supporting
businesses in that sense. Working with the banks, and the long-term
future development of that, has been very much at the forefront
of our work. We have developed on the ground some pretty good
relationships with the banks over the past three to four months,
and that has been based on two things. First, there is the work
that we have been doing through the regional economic cabinet
and Phil Hope's work, in particular driving the banks at regional
director level to come together and recognise some of the challenges.
Secondly, we have been using our risk finance forum and have invited
more of the regional directors of those banks to come in to that,
so that we can debate and discuss the issues. What is coming out
of that is a clarification to the relationship managers of banks
as to exactly what support is available, so that they are clearer
about being able to direct their clients to business support.
Similarly, the adviser teams are becoming much more aware of the
requirements of banks. They can help prepare the client for help
from their bank by having them go in with the right information.
Over the past three months, we have seen much closer working with
the banks, and pleasingly, the banks are now starting to offer
more money as loans. You will remember that, around Christmas
time, it was very difficult, and you will also remember in particular
the Denby issue that we worked on closely together, which was
a typical situation of the banks freezing. I am pleased to say
that the banks are now starting to unlock a little bit; I am not
saying that things are easy, but at least the communication and
support are there for us to actually help clients find bank lending
if it is appropriate for them.
Q21 Judy Mallaber: That is very
helpful. Is there anything else that would be of assistance to
you in that work? You have already made one request for us to
put something forward to the Government about your end-year funding.
Is there anything where those programmes could work better and
where there could be extra help?
Jeff Moore: Mike will give some
more detail, but I think the more we can market Business Link
at a national level, the better. Business Link has had a very
successful reception during the recession and the downturn, and
the experiences of the vast majority of businesses that go there
have been positive. But I am surprised at how much we need to
keep taking out the message, "Use Business Link as your source
of access and advice." I do not know whether Mike has anything
specific to say.
Michael Carr: First and foremost,
we work very closely with the team at BERR on those areas. We
work with them on our own budget submission, and Jeff alluded
to the fact that credit insurance is a big part of that, and you
will have seen, through the budget, that credit insurance changes.
In terms of a wish list, export support, particularly around credit,
is still lacking, which is preventing some of our businesses in
the region from exploiting the favourable trading position that
has come from having a slightly weaker pound at present, because
they cannot raise the finance or get the guarantees from their
partner bank in European or Far East countries, or get support
from their own bank. We have raised that with BERR, so it knows
that it is an issue, but it would be good if we could further
endorse the fact that we need to get some export finance.
Jeff Moore: We have seen a much
more receptive climate from the banks since Christmas. I think,
certainly in terms of ourselves as a regional agency, that the
banks are very willing to co-operate with what we do and with
what we want them to do. There will be a number of answers to
the question of whether that then translates into individual investment
decisions in individual banks, but I do not think that any more
can be done with the banks for the time being. We think that we
have done enough schemes, and that they now need to be well-publicised,
operated and the banks need to continue to drive them right throughout
the banking sector. Something like 26 lenders have signed up to
the enterprise finance guarantee scheme. It is not about signing
up more lenders, but about driving that scheme through and getting
people to access it. The more we can do to market the services
of Business Link in that respect, the better.
Michael Carr: I have just one
thing to add, which is that the banks are now saying that there
is not sufficient traffic for them to be able to hit the targets
that they have agreed with the Government, so one of our challenges
is how we now drive that up. I think that that is partly because
businesses do not believe that the banks are going to be able
to support them. Things are changing and we have to get confidence
back into our businesses, so that they can approach the bank and
will probably get a slightly more favourable response than they
might have had three or four months ago, which was such a damaging
period when, in effect, the banking system froze.
Q22 Mr Laxton: That is interesting,
Mike, and is not something that I had picked up—you learn
something new every day. Jeff, you said in your presentation that
your Board—I will not use the word "dominated"—has
a higher proportion of people with business expertise than from
other areas. Pretty much every year, or as every year has gone
by, added responsibilities have been given to RDAs, such as research
development grants in 2005, economic and social funding and rural
development programmes in 2006, regional development funds from
the European Development Fund in 2007, manufacturing advisory
service and so on. The Business and Enterprise Select Committee
undertook an inquiry a short while ago. What is your response
to the position that they took? I think they said that if additional
responsibilities, particularly in the areas of planning and so
on, were handed over to RDAs then in effect this could have the
tendency to switch off business people from engaging, or continuing
to engage, in the way that they have in the past with RDAs. Do
you think that that was a valid comment made by the Select Committee?
Do you see signs of that? Have you got concerns about additional
responsibilities being handed over to your organisation?
Jeff Moore: I remember that very
well because I gave evidence in chief to that particular question.
They asked, what do you think one of your major weaknesses is?
How I actually responded was that I said, in the eyes of business—and
I mean business out there generally and particularly the sort
of business representative organisations such as the CBI, the
EEF and the IOD—in their responses to the Select Committee
on Business and Enterprise they pointed out that we had too broad
a remit. That is the view of a number of business representative
organisations. So, in answer to that question, I said that that
was seen as a weakness by some businesses. I felt that that was,
in a way, a strength. The reason it was a strength was because
we had been seen as successful deliverers from 1999 onwards. When
the Government had a problem in this sort of economic development
sphere, they said who can we give it to? They gave it to the RDAs.
It was in recognition of our delivery strength that we ended up
with such a broad remit of responsibilities. So like all good
interview candidates I turned my weakness—hopefully—into
a strength, which is what I also put on the public record at that
time. I think business is concerned about the breadth of our responsibilities.
It has made the comment that it feels our remit has potentially
been diluted. It is concerned that, if we take on the full range
of planning powers that was at one time envisaged under the sub-national
review, or now the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction
Bill going through, that we would be weakened even further. Clearly,
the debate in Parliament has moved on. There are now different
proposals in terms of planning responsibilities where they will
be discharged jointly by the leaders board and ourselves. I think
it is something that we need to watch for. I still see us getting
quality applicants to be on our board, so I do not see any diminution
in the enthusiasm of business representatives to give up their
valuable time to serve on our board because they feel they are
going to be hammered about deciding on planning applications,
or not doing what they should want to be on. It is a concern that
we need to watch for. Certainly business representation, representative
organisations, have raised it as a concern. We just need to make
sure we deal with that task as the world changes, as the Bill
goes through and becomes an Act. We need to make sure we are not
deflected from those core purposes and priorities. I recognise
the concern. The one other comment I would make is that I did
say "dominated by business representation" in my presentation—I
did not mean that. The majority are from business; they certainly
do not dominate it. We get a very robust contribution from our
four local authority representatives who are on the board, from
our third sector representatives and the VC of a university, so
while they are in the majority eight or nine of the 15, they do
not dominate it. Certainly, this potential diminution of powers
is of concern, but we always argued that one of the key weaknesses
of our first 10 years was that we delivered the strategic regional
economic strategy, yet the spatial strategy was delivered by another
organisation at a different time scale to a different evidence
base. There is no criticism of the assembly in that, but they
did the spatial strategy and we did the economic. One of the key
problems there was that we could have an economic strategy that
says, let us say, ABC district needs a factory or three factories.
Yet the spatial strategy could say, well, in ABC district it will
stay for ever brownfield, or greenfield, or whatever and the two
did not marry up. Part of the whole thrust behind the sub-national
review is to overcome that problem so that they are done at the
same time, to the same evidence base, by the same combined group
of people. That should overcome some of the fetters we have had
to activity, particularly in Lincolnshire in our first 10 years.
Chairman: I think we must be telepathic,
because Peter Soulsby is going to pursue the issue of the sub-national
review.
Q23 Sir Peter Soulsby: Thanks,
Paddy. I mentioned this earlier on. Clearly, there has been a
lot of criticism about the fact that the spatial strategy and
the economic strategy have been separated. As you have said, Jeff,
the proposals are somewhat modified now. Is there not, even with
the revised proposals, still a danger that the RDA will be deflected
from its core task of delivering a regional strategy? Is there
not also a danger with the proposals that are now emerging that
we might actually have something that is less transparent and
less accountable than the division of responsibilities we have
had until now?
Jeff Moore: I look to colleagues
if they want to contribute as well. I do not know if you want
to contribute to this one, Anthony. There is a danger in any change,
Peter. People are concerned about change and concerned about uncertainty.
After a fairly slow start we are working very well, we think,
with the assembly to develop the proposals going forward from
April 2010. They are obviously, inevitably, somewhat grey because
the Act has still got to be passed, the Bill is going through
Parliament and it has not even been through the Commons. In fact,
I think it gets its Third Reading in the Lords today and goes
through to the Commons later on in the week and going forward.
So there is always a danger in change. I think that we are aware
of that danger. What we need to do is make sure we have geared
up properly. Anthony works with the assembly and he works with
the Government office for the region to try and overcome precisely
those difficulties. We need to develop the RES and the integrated
regional strategy going forward.
Q24 Sir Peter Soulsby: I am interested
in how you are planning to recruit the necessary skills among
those who work for you and whether it will need some change in
the balance of those on the board.
Jeff Moore: Anthony, you address
the skills, and what we are doing about filling the gaps.
Anthony Payne: The first thing
to say is that we have been working very closely with regional
partners, local authorities, the Government office and the assembly
to put a change management plan in place to help deliver SNR.
That has been submitted now by the Government office through to
central Government and we are waiting for a response on that.
That, if you like, sets the framework for the change management.
Obviously, we need to work through the detail, but it goes through
and addresses things like stakeholder engagement and how we are
going to get the right people around the right table to actually
develop a joint regional strategy. That change management plan
will be key to the work going forward. It has had buy-in and support,
both from the emda board now and from the local authorities
leaders board. That relationship between us and the local authorities
leaders board, made up of the nine upper-tier local authorities,
if you like, and five districts now, is really maturing and positive.
The second thing to say is that we have agreed how we will create
a joint board between us to look at the single regional strategy.
We will have to develop that and take it forward. There will be
a lot of learning for all of us, but we have agreed the principles
behind that. Picking up on Jeff's last point in relation to added
responsibilities and complexity, indeed, it will be a complicated
process—there is no denying that—but there are key
things that will benefit and improve as a result. For example,
one of the key challenges that we always find within the region
is marrying up things like energy infrastructure and where development
should go, capacity and opportunity, and by working and bringing
all this together, we stand a much better chance in the regional
strategy to marry those things, rather than having them in separate
documents, not necessarily always contradicting each other, but
with the opportunity and possibility to contradict each other.
Undoubtedly, it will be a complex process, and undoubtedly, we
will need the skill set internally. We have got a spatial team
internally, with spatial planning skills. We have got a very strong
research team, which we talked about earlier in relation to the
evidence base for the RES, and we will adapt and use that appropriately
to make sure that we can use those skills to take forward the
single regional strategy.
Jeff Moore: In terms of your question
about the board specifically, Peter, I do not see a need to change
the skill mix of the board. That change happens naturally, as
we get rotation of the board—each board member has a maximum
of two three-year terms—and in the recruitment process,
a balance is struck between particular expertise. Also, a joint
board of ourselves and the leaders board will commission and ensure
that the integrated regional strategy gets done. That will have
three local authority leaders on it, and it will have three emda
board members and will commission the work from the existing assembly
planning staff and from our economic staff. We have agreed with
the Assembly—we have made major progress with David Parsons
there—that that joint board will always be chaired by a
local authority. Now, that joint board has to get the integrated
regional strategy signed off by the economic development agency
and by the leaders board. So I think that, in terms of the leaders
board, which is 12 or 13 people, and the economic development
board of the RDA, you have sufficient of the skills sets that
you will need, but they will be refreshed over the period of time
that we go forward. Our biggest concern at the moment is perhaps—I
suppose that I would make this point, wouldn't I?—that regional
assembly has a scrutiny function of the RDA. We, as we have said
here today, are delighted to come out and be accountable and scrutinised.
What I do not want to do, though, is be accountable and scrutinised
in duplicate, time and again. We have written to the regional
assembly, asking that it drop its scrutiny programme for 2009-10,
because we are now, as we have evidence this afternoon, being
scrutinised by yourselves. So the concern is that we will spend
a lot of time being scrutinised and not be doing the day job.
That is our main concern at the moment with the changeover, because
that is not happening in other parts of the country.
Q25 Sir Peter Soulsby: Can I just
follow that question of scrutiny? It may be something we want
to return to later. When, as you describe it, you are going to
be working in such close partnership with the leaders board—indeed,
you will have a joint body—and with the change in arrangements
for the regional assembly, is there not going to be a need for
new mechanisms for you to be accountable to people in the region
rather than to us as parliamentarians? Is there not going to be
a deficit, a gap, if you are working in such close partnership
with them and they are not going to be the ones to stand back
and hold you accountable?
Jeff Moore: This is one of the
main issues that has been raised on the Bill. The problem is that
the leaders board is effectively scrutinising itself and therefore
there is a conflict of interest when it is operating jointly with
us. That is something that is developing. I do not know whether
Anthony has got any more from the development of progress on the
Bill. It is something that everybody is looking at because we
need to be accountable to you as the Regional Select Committee
and we also need to develop that in-region scrutiny function as
well, but that has not yet been done. We also need to make sure
that they do not duplicate each other. The great danger is that
we spend all our time attending scrutiny and nobody is doing the
day job to be scrutinised. I am not making that point about today,
but that is certainly a concern that our business board representatives
express quite regularly. We need to find a way that that conflict
is overcome and I believe it is Parliament that is trying to address
that conflict through communities and local government policies.
Chairman: Coming to an end, three quick
questions, first from Judy.
Q26 Judy Mallaber: The Equality
Bill was published today and we have not really had any mention
on issues about that. I wondered what the make-up of the board
was in terms of gender and race. I realise you have a difficulty
because you are not necessarily nominating people but perhaps
you could answer that.
Jeff Moore: Recruitment to the
board is done by BERR. We do not do that ourselves. We take no
part in it at all. I need to stress that for the record because
that is often mistaken. People often think that I have some influence
on who is on our board and I have no influence at all. I find
out after others who our new board members are. The recruitment
is done by BERR who very much have an eye to political, gender,
ethnicity and geographic representation on our board. We started
with 13 and rapidly had to go to 15 in 2000 because we had nobody
from Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire. It is something that is
addressed all the time but it is BERR that looks at that. In terms
of the Equality Bill, Harriet spoke this morning about the need
to take a strategic view, that those authorities that are key
throughout the country need to take a strategic view about equalities.
The answer I would give you is the one Diana gave you on rural-proofing—everything
we do, we rural-proof. Similarly, everything we do, we equalities-proof,
and that is what we will do in terms of our response to the Equality
Bill. Are we making sure that the services and products that we
have to offer reflect the needs of the whole diverse East Midlands?
Q27 Chairman: I have noticed a
spat that has been going on in the local paper, the Nottingham
Evening Post, between you and one of our colleagues, Alan
Simpson, who specifically asked me to raise the issue of the kitchen
at QMC. It would be helpful if you could just put your side of
the story on the table.
Jeff Moore: Fascinating, because
I thought things in that case should be the other way round, because
Alan is actually my MP personally. Maybe the question should go
the other way. There was a project put forward by the combined
City and QMC to build a new kitchen for those hospitals onsite
to cut down on some of the cook-and-chill transportation that
was happening from elsewhere, and try to push some of the procurement
activity into the East Midlands. We thought that it was an excellent
project—no doubt about that—something that we hope
the National Health Service would pursue. But as you will recall
in my reference to the many questions that you have asked today,
particularly John and Bob as it were, we have decreasing budgets
and increasing demand on those budgets, and so we have to make
tough decisions. We did not think that funding that kitchen, which
could have been funded by the NHS, was the most appropriate use
of our money in this difficult time. Effectively, finding money
to do the £6 million transition loan fund and the money to
help other major employers have been where our priorities lay.
We see it as a useful project and a good one for the NHS to do,
but our Board Resources Group, our investment committee of seven
independent, non-executive board members, were unanimous in deciding
that they would not be able to fund that project because it was
not at the top of their priority list, given the declining budgets
and increased demands. We have to prioritise, and we cannot do
everything, and that was one of those that we decided not to do.
If John asks me specifically about schemes, that effectively is
a scheme that is not going ahead with our money. But we hope it
goes ahead with NHS money, because we can see the merits of the
project for the NHS.
Chairman: We will go straight to the
conclusion.
Q28 Sir Peter Soulsby: It will
be very quick. We have had over two hours of questioning. We talked
about the challenge of the economic climate, but surprisingly,
we have not heard anything at all from you about climate change.
It has been suggested that emda has been pretty slow to
respond to the challenge of climate change in general, and the
Stern Report in particular. I wonder whether that is a legitimate
criticism. I think all that we have had from you today is a picture
of some wind turbines in passing, and nothing more substantial.
Jeff Moore: It might have been
a quick question, Peter, but it may be a long answer. At least
three of my colleagues will want to refute the comment that we
are light, weak or windy on climate change. First, I will go to
Anthony to talk about some of our strategic responses, then to
Diana, and then Mike will talk about some of the things to sum
up what we are doing directly with businesses, so it may be a
longer answer.
Anthony Payne: In January this
year, the regional climate change action programme was launched.
It identifies a number of priorities for the region. We are playing
our role there in leading around all the economic resilience work
to support that action plan, looking at resource efficiency, adaptation
to climate change and all those types of agendas. Stepping back
slightly, as an RDA, we have looked at our performance as an organisation.
We have brought in things such as environmental management systems
to our own management. Year on year, we are reducing our own resource
use—energy use, water use, paper use and all that—to
show our responsibilities as an organisation. At the same time,
as a regional body, we are supporting research. We have done a
number of pieces of cutting-edge research, first, around the economic
impacts of climate change, which is due to report very shortly.
That will bring out baseline information on the breakdown of CO2
emissions per sector across the region and on the type of activities
that could be undertaken to address some of the challenges. We
are also working on a study, which Diana is very close to, looking
at climate change impacts on the Lincolnshire coast and what that
means for the development of the coast. I know that Mike will
come on to this as well, but one of the first things that we did
as an RDA through the business support service was look at a much
more coherent resource efficiency business support package for
companies across the region. That was in direct response to the
economic performance and increased productivity of businesses,
but against the backdrop of all the issues that we are all very
well aware of around the climate change agenda. We can give examples
in written evidence, if you want, of the type of support that
we have given to companies to improve their bottom line and reduce
their resource use. As a result of one project, we helped a joinery
company in Leicestershire put in a biomass installation for their
energy use, using the waste from their products to provide their
energy. It has given them huge financial savings over the year
and a huge saving in their CO2 as well. I think that we have been
doing a lot to support business. It depends who you talk to but
there are people who would say that we have done more than our
fair share. To go back to the first thing that we were talking
about today—"A Flourishing Region"—the other
thing that is really important to point out is that we undertook
a very strict sustainability assessment of that RES and made sure
that it itself addressed, as far as it could, the sustainability
and the climate change agendas through many of the actions that
that RES purports to support. For us, the third RES does that
better than any of our preceding RESs. That was a really important
piece of work for us as well. Can I pass on to Mike and Diana?
Diana Gilhespy: Just a couple
of things: as well as working with the Environment Agency on the
Lincolnshire coast issue, we are also working with it on flood
risk in our cities and on projects such as the Avenue, which Jeff
mentioned. On that we are not only doing the remediation but also
working with the EA to put in a flood risk programme that will
save[6]
about 800[7]
homes and businesses within Chesterfield. Again, it is about making
sure that we marry up our funding with the Environment Agency
to solve all of the issues that surround our towns and cities.
Another thing is that for all of our funding, either directly
into construction projects or indirectly via our grants, we insist
that the projects meet the highest environmental standards. We
support our businesses to meet those standards as well. In other
words, it is not a question of saying, "You have to have
those standards", we also support our supply chains in the
construction sector to try to meet those standards. On the rural
programme that I mentioned—the European programme—we
are very much focusing on energy and resource efficiency, in particular
around biomass, other energy usage projects and water use—capturing
rain water so that instead of letting it run off and the problems
that that causes, we use it.
Michael Carr: Last but not least,
Peter. Anthony has already talked a little about the business
support programme and I would like to give a bit of structure
on that. We have the majority mainstreamed through the Business
Link service. All our advisers over the past two years have been
going through quite an intensive capacity building programme to
make them more aware of the requirements of business around resource
efficiency. As I mentioned earlier, we back that up with the business
transformation grant, which we put some more money into in September
last year to try to help to make small capital investments in
that area with businesses. They can also use that same grant to
access expertise. Anthony was alluding to the business resource
efficiency work that we have been doing. Waste work is a large
grant scheme, in which you can get up to about £40,000—BTGs
are limited to about £10,000. We are just about to start
a new campaign, following the success of a programme that we ran
around a theme called "Survival of the Fittest", which
was very much targeted at waste efficiency, with the help of the
Carbon Trust and Envirowise. We are now starting a programme simply
called the "Improving Your Resource Efficiency" programme.
That is what we have been doing from a business point of view.
Jeff touched very lightly on beyond just the wind turbine—the
fact that in Loughborough University we have been doing a tremendous
amount of work to build a low-carbon research and development
exploitation community. That is really one of the stand-out university-based
projects. There is good work going on in other universities that
we have supported, but there you have the ETI, the fuel cells
development that Rolls-Royce and others use quite substantially,
and Cenex—excuse the acronyms—which is another automotive-based
resource efficiency programme. Our new science park, phase 2 of
Holywell, will be significantly low-carbon-based in its output.
That gives you a flavour of the approach. We take it very seriously.
It is hugely important in today's agenda.
Q29 Chairman: I am sorry that
we have not had time to cover all the ground that we had hoped
to. In particular, we have not talked about the PricewaterhouseCoopers
study, which came out extremely well, or the ECOTEC study, but
we have got them and shall read them. Thank you for all the information
that you have given us today. It has been a really helpful, constructive
dialogue. Maybe I should take it forward a little bit. I think,
Jeff, you have promised to let us have a look at the revised budget
provided for BERR by 31 May—that would fit in with our timetable
and what we intend to do. We have put out a call for evidence
across the East Midlands asking a variety of different things,
one of which is sustainability. I know you have your own networks.
It would be helpful if you could draw attention to people for
evidence. We have met the executive team today, but privately
you have said that there would be an opportunity, if we wanted
to, to meet some of your non-executive directors. That might be
helpful. Finally, we are going to take a couple—perhaps
three—oral sessions around the region and talk to stakeholders.
But, ultimately, what we would like to do is to have a similar
session to this towards the back end of June or the beginning
of July, giving you some feedback about what people have been
saying to us and giving you a chance to comment. We have started
on a path. You have got us off to a good start. I am really grateful.
It is the first evidence session that we have had. I found it
really helpful and constructive. If we work together in this kind
of way, we can ensure that people who live and work in the East
Midlands aspire to that top 20 in Europe that we are all keen
to get to. Thank you all very much. Jeff, you had the first word,
so you can have the last word, if you like.
Jeff Moore: It was a pleasure.
Hopefully, when we have our follow-up session, we can avoid microphone
chess, because I felt rather restricted—I know others did—that
we could not respond immediately. Ergonomically, that was not
at all helpful. Maybe we shall get more of a rapport. I feel for
those who have had to create it in this way, but it has been a
pleasure for us. We have enjoyed it. Thank you very much for giving
us the time, particularly allowing us to present at the start.
We look forward to seeing you again in a few months' time and
rounding off. Thank you very much indeed.
6 Correction by Witness: I meant to say protect,
not save. Back
7
Correction by Witness: I meant to say 155 homes and businesses,
not 800. Back
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