D2N2’s 2014/15 Annual Review is published today (June 24) in the business sections of the Nottingham Post and Derby Telegraph.
The Review looks at work over the last 12 months by the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) – across its area of Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire – on:
- providing investment for businesses looking to expand and create more jobs;
- re-developing areas for enterprise, including the Nottingham and Derby Enterprise Zone sites;
- collaborating with local authority partners on gaining greater self-governing powers for the area, through devolution;
- supporting key economic sectors such as transport and logistics, food and drink manufacturing, low carbon technologies and the visitor economy;
- promoting skills and training;
- investing in transport and infrastructure.
The 24-page publication, free within the two daily papers, also includes financial and statistical information on the LEP’s progress to date – revealing rises for the D2N2 area as a whole in employment and skills levels, and a drop in working age unemployment – and messages from its Chief Executive David Ralph and Chairman Peter Richardson.
D2N2’s Annual Review 2014-15 – Delivering Growth
Companies featured in the 2014/15 Annual Review as having received funding help from D2N2 to expand include kitchen manufacturer Kesseler UK Ltd of Kirkby-in-Ashfield, marine specialist Coldharbour Marine of Linby and packaging specialist the Corrugated Case Company of Chesterfield.
Major area development projects featured, which D2N2 also contributed investment towards, include Castleward and the Riverside Chambers in Derby, and the new biosciences building next to BioCity Nottingham, on which work is due to begin this summer.
D2N2’s investment in, and promotion of skills and training, across its catchment – including through a ‘Provider Charter’ launched in April (2015) which encourages colleges and institutions, and employers, to work more closely together, so that training programmes fill the skills gaps in local workforces – is also covered in the Annual Review.
Peter Richardson, Chairman of the D2N2 LEP, said: “It’s been a year in which the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership began delivering on the objectives it had set for itself following extensive consultation with the businesses, local authorities, education providers and communities in its area.”
He added that those strategies – including for eight key economic sectors in the area – were now bearing fruit. They would be aided by the £214million in European Structural Investment Funds (ESIF), announced by D2N2 in March, which would provide funding for project bids around business development, combatting social exclusion, low carbon technology development, skills and training, helping people into employment and a range of other issues up to 2020. (More information on the ESIF programme can be found on the D2N2 website at www.d2n2lep.org/EUFunding).
D2N2 Chief Executive David Ralph added: “D2N2 is a Partnership. What drives us is our core value of working collaboratively, to ensure that the sum is greater than the individual parts. This is an absolute necessity, if our economy is to be driven forward in a way which sees all communities share the benefits of economic success.
“I am pleased to say that the D2N2 economy has performed strongly over the past two years, and that as an organisation the LEP has moved from writing strategies and preparing plans, to advancing our ambitions and achieving tangible outcomes.”
To read the key financial and statistical information from the new 2014/15 Annual Review, go to web link www.d2n2lep.org/growth
For further information about the work of the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership go to website www.d2n2lep.org
Media wanting further information on this article can contact Sean Kirby, Communications Officer, on the D2N2 Newsdesk, on 0115 9578749 or email: sean.kirby@d2n2lep.org
