CW Growth Hub chief executive reflects on setting up the business support organisation a decade ago and its achievements so far

It is ten years since Craig Humphrey was appointed chief executive of Coventry and Warwickshire Growth Hub. He was formerly Chief Executive of Rugby Borough Council. In this blog, he reflects on setting up the business support organisation and its achievements so far.

I have always been an entrepreneur at heart having run businesses for 30 years before I was the first person in the country to take over as chief executive of a local authority.

During my time in Rugby, I represented the Warwickshire Borough and Districts on the Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership (CWLEP), and supported the ambition of creating a vehicle for business support.

In 2014, I applied to become chief executive of what was, at that stage, known as the Clearing House and was lucky enough to be appointed to the role, in part thanks to the skillset the role demanded, which involved possessing a thorough understanding of both the private and public sectors.

In due course, the Clearing House became the Growth Hub, however as a brand-new initiative it was more or less a blank canvas, and I remember very well my first meeting in August 2014 when I introduced myself to the team, who had been given a target list of companies with which to engage, focusing on advanced manufacturing and engineering. Phil Peak was there on that day, and is still by my side today, a true professional and as passionate about supporting businesses as I am.

We started with a list in 2014 of 450 businesses and now we have around 11,000 businesses on our database, which emphasises how established the Growth Hub has become and the depth of market data we have.

That depth of data is a rich source of intelligence both locally, regionally and nationally and I’m really proud of our ability to draw on robust evidence to underpin our work over the last ten years.

It is testament to everyone who works at the Growth Hub adopting my philosophy, that evidence-based interventions underpin everything we do.

The last decade has thrown up many memories – some good and some not so good! I remember the shock to our economy when parcel delivery company City Link went into administration on Christmas Eve in 2014, and we knew we had to react to support the many desperate individuals seeking advice on what to do next. Phil and I manned the phones to give that advice because other institutions had retired for their Christmas break.

That experience only strengthened my belief that we have to be in a constant state of readiness for when businesses need our support, speaking in a language they understand and reacting within a timeframe they acknowledge.

That code of conduct has been consistent across all our activities over the last decade.

We’re driven by the needs of businesses and not the outputs of programmes. Never was that more clearly demonstrated than when the team was answering calls at 10pm during the pandemic. We’re not bound by 9am-5pm hours if we need to address the needs of our business community. Business does not work like that – and neither should we! Our motto is ‘Run for business, by business’.

I was proud of the way the team reacted to Covid-19 when we made a real difference to the huge response to the national emergency. Locally we were able to help ensure that our hospitals had the PPE equipment they needed, by putting a call out to action for the need for PPE to local and regional suppliers.

In a similar fashion, we were tasked by Government to lead the West Midlands response informing the business community on how to prepare for Brexit.

We undertook the biggest survey of businesses that has ever been undertaken across the region when we contacted nearly 20,000 and had direct responses from more than 6,000.

You cannot deliver any vision without being given the space and time to develop new ideas and that autonomy was afforded me by the Chair and Board of CWLEP, who were focused on the outcomes that can be achieved. On a personal note, I owe a debt of gratitude to Martin Yardley who, as CEO of CWLEP, never micromanaged me, and trusted my ability to deliver upon our emerging vision for business support, which was brave given the scrutiny any new initiative is under. 

We were always accountable, and rightly so, to CWLEP’s Board, but their support gave me the space to start delivering effective business support designed to help boost our economy which has led, in no small part, to Coventry and Warwickshire’s business reputation being unrivalled in the country.

In 2014, Coventry and Warwickshire’s economy was under-performing to the tune of 2.4bn a year, yet over the last decade we have overtaken the national average in terms of Gross Valued Added, and now we have leveraged over £300 million of private sector investment and helped create almost 11,000 jobs.

When we started in 2014, it was obvious we needed to split the team across the Coventry and Warwickshire area so they were accountable to the different local authorities and district and borough councils, and to allow them to really get to know the firms in their local area to deliver the business support that worked.

Some national business support schemes have failed because they don’t enable advisors to build meaningful relationships with companies, which fosters empathy and trust over time, but evidence has shown that our account manager model is the effective way of delivering business support.

Empirical research has shown that companies that are account managed up and down the country are more productive, and I have always had the vision that account management is the most effective way to deliver business support.

This will remain the foundation of our Growth Hub as we aim to continue to provide stability, ambition and growth to engage with businesses across our sub-region.