02 Mar Collaboration key to boosting employment opportunities and reviving West London’s communities
Cross-sector collaboration will be key to building a high performing economy for West London’s communities.
That was the view of John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow’s CEO, who closed the Capital West London Summit with a plea for all organisations to become involved in the mission to create a successful, growing economy for the region.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has been a devastating time for many people and as we saw the impact on people’s lives and the local economy, it taught us so much about how pivotal Heathrow is to our local communities,” John said.
“But even as were trying to save our business, we were looking to the future, and we protected the work Heathrow does in the community. The children in local schools are the children of my colleagues who will come to work for us one day, and we are committed to supporting their education, as they will pay us back with the quality of their talent. Our local communities and ourselves are one.”
John Holland-Kaye cited the Heathrow Local Recovery Plan, led by Heathrow and Lord David Blunkett in partnership with key local stakeholders, including fellow speaker Cllr Stephen Cowan, as an example of what could be achieved when the public and private sectors collaborated with academia and local stakeholders to make a difference to their local communities.
“It became apparent just how many opportunities we have to create jobs. We have some of the biggest job and wealth creators in the UK, if not the world, based in our region. There are 200 company HQs based in West London and they come here because of its unique connections,” John told delegates.
“We learned we have incredible clusters of business, media, life sciences and tech all based here in West London which creates a great opportunity. Working with West London Business and West London Alliance we convened 12 leaders from key organisations and wealth creators to see how we could help recover the local economy.”
John Holland-Kaye explained the Recovery Plan focused around four key areas:
- Skills – ensuring there was a match between the skills needed and the skills available and taught
- Business growth and innovation – supporting small companies emerging with ideas from Imperial College and other large West London institutions so they could grow and scale up into medium and large sized companies
- Place and a sense of identity – harnessing the collaborative spirit across all boroughs to enable the region to compete with places such as Amsterdam and Paris
- Net Zero and Infrastructure – encouraging collaboration across companies and the public sector to support an effective transition
Cllr Stephen Cowan, leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council and chair of the West London Economic Recovery Task Force, said the project “proved that when we reach out to people with good hearts and determination in all organisations and bring those people together, it is very much the way forward for our country and our region.”
Cllr Cowan told delegates his authority had set about making West London a global hotspot for STEM, media and life sciences industries.
“We went about co ordinating our efforts with businesses as an alliance in order to see a whole bunch of benefits; enabling greater understanding of business problems and developing shared solutions which will lead much of the country as we go forward.”
“We have to get super competitive, but the objective is to leave no one behind in any community. We know in the future people may have many jobs in their working life and we need to equip them with the skills to work in any business and possibly even start one of their own. That’s how we begin to compete in the 21st century.”
Gary Young, Business Operations Director – UK Public Sector, Fujitsu, said it would be key to invest in fast start-ups.
“We need to look in West London, identify them and drive growth. Why don’t we make West London the Silicon Valley of the UK?”
Kim Challis, Regional Managing Director APCOA (UK & Ireland) spoke of the challenges of decarbonising the transport system and the importance of ensuring a joined-up and considered approach to achieve success.
“This is one of the biggest challenges we will all face in coming years, and we have been looking at Electric Vehicle (EV) charging together with the purchase of green and renewable energy as two of the quickest ways to achieve sustainability. But the infrastructure we have is not ready, so we are lobbying hard on that, and the field of EV charging is incredibly complex.”
Kim told the conference they are producing comprehensive guides on dos and don’ts so companies can make an informed choice, as they look to make their commercial or workplace car parks sustainable in response to demand. And she added they were encouraging all companies to make their vehicles more sustainable, including adjusting tariffs to favour EV and hybrid vehicles and working with SMEs to encourage them to use electric scooters for deliveries in order to benefit from noise and pollution reductions.
Kim Challis and Gary Young also discussed issues around skills for the future, as there was recognition that companies would need to be more flexible and community-orientated if they wanted to recruit and retain talent.
Kim said “In the West London area we have over 100 vacancies and it is incredibly tough to fill them in terms of getting skills matching, so organisations like ourselves are having to think about different ways of investing in training and re-training. We can no longer assume the right individual with the right skills is out there. We have to be ahead of the game.”
She said APCOA now had around 40 apprenticeships running and she was particularly proud of a ‘mums back to work’ scheme which had its first nine employees return to the workplace – one into a senior job after 20 years’ absence – thanks to retraining and upskilling.
Gary Young agreed there was market pressures on recruitment as companies were competing for specific skillsets.
“It’s harder than it has even been, but not impossible and we are having to look at things in a different way – getting access to skills earlier.”
He said Fujitsu had introduced apprenticeship schemes and he was proud of the virtual work experience programme which had enabled the company to extend its reach into new areas, improving the demographics of the workforce, in particular the gender balance which had traditionally been a challenge for tech companies.
John Holland-Kaye concluded by saying: “We are still at the start of this journey, but it is amazing how powerful the combination of all these companies and organisations can be.
“It is not a question of how much we can achieve by working together, it is a
question of what can’t we achieve by working together.”