Our chief executive highlights CW Growth Hub’s increasing importance to businesses in the sub-region and looks to the future

Ten years ago the Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub was established and in this blog, CEO Craig Humphrey, highlights its increasing importance to businesses in the sub-region and looks to the future of the organisation.

The Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub has established a very good reputation locally, regionally and nationally over the last decade and that has stood us in good stead in light of recent Government changes.

It meant that, following the decision at Whitehall to wind down LEPs, our upper tier local authorities saw the value in what had been achieved and wanted to continue to support that in the future, which would not have been the case if we hadn’t delivered over the last ten years; a performance in which we all take great pride.

Part of the reason for our positive standing at Government level is a result of a proposal we were asked to write about how business support could, and should, be delivered and we provided a template as to how it could be rolled out across the country.

It was orchestrated through our relationship with Stratford-on-Avon MP Nadhim Zahawi, who was then a Business Minister and an admirer of our account management approach with the business community.

There’s so much demand placed upon Growth Hubs from the micro end of the market and, although pre start-ups don’t move the needle of the economy to any meaningful degree, they need support and that’s where digital assets can really help.

Account management led interventions are expensive so they need to be used strategically. I have consistently encouraged our account managers to focus on the SME community within the supply chains, and to spot those with the capability, opportunity and ambition to grow through intervention, and increase their growth into double digits.

Scale-ups also have a vital role to play in boosting the economy and there is a whole host of scaling companies who are growing 20 per cent year-on-year, which need bespoke support.

We have deployed account managers to recognise those scaling businesses which may be looking at alternative ways to raise substantial funds and to build relationships with them.

Coventry and Warwickshire doesn’t actually feature very well in a league table of scale-up companies, and I want to change that by targeting their needs.

We are constantly evolving and, having become a stand-alone organisation in 2023, the CW Growth Hub Group now consists of three companies – Coventry & Warwickshire Growth Hub, C&W Business Solutions and CW Champions.

Interestingly, over the last couple of years, Business Solutions has grown its commercial activity to become a multi-million-pound turnover business, which is necessary to underpin the Growth Hub’s free-to-access services.

Business Solutions was born out of a vision our management team had in 2016 that there were areas of support provision that we could provide ourselves.

The projects we deliver on a regional scale have been excellent and I hope that over the coming years we continue to grow our commercial activity and deliver excellent outcomes.

We fundamentally believe that central Government need to continue to fund Growth Hub activity because business support delivers the outcomes that are needed to grow the economy, but stability and consistency are equally important.

We have met recently with officials from the Department for Business and Trade who came to Coventry to discuss and explore our views on what works in business support and what doesn’t.

I advocated that the short-term funding available doesn’t lend itself to stability and consistency, so one of our ‘asks’ was for funding models over two years to allow Growth Hubs to plan for the short and medium term.

We had a very productive meeting and shared loads of ideas that could be implemented in the future and I am delighted to be talking to Government not only on behalf of Coventry and Warwickshire but also on behalf of the National Growth Hub network with a prospectus that builds on the philosophy shaped here locally.

I’m confident, and know that business support is delivered effectively when those who are responsible for funding have long-term strategic involvement in parallel with the growth ambitions of the Government. Supported businesses grow quicker and are sustained longer, but it all needs to be underpinned by an Industrial Strategy.

When people say to me ’what does a Growth Hub do?’, I compare us to a GP surgery. Whenever we as customers have a health enquiry our first port of call is to access the system through our GPs.

Doctors won’t necessarily be the kidney or cancer specialists but they can put you in touch with the right specialists to address your particular problem. Here at the Growth Hub, we consult, diagnose and only then prescribe the relevant support a business needs to remedy their challenges; from moving premises, finding skilled staff, or securing finance to purchase capital equipment.

The Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub has achieved a great deal over the last decade, and there is so much more we want to achieve in the next ten years!