The remit for the Norfolk and Suffolk LSIP is in four parts:
Articulate the employers skills needs – what are the skills employers need locally and struggle to find?
Translating employers needs into changes in provision – how can those employers needs best be met by the provider in more responsive ways?
Address learner demand and employer engagement – what can local stakeholders and employers do to raise demand for and make better use of those skills?
Report annually to the DfE on what we want to achieve, why it matters, what changes are needed, and who needs to be involved. In other words what does skills success look like?
As you will be aware, the timescale for engaging the wider business community across Norfolk and Suffolk has been extremely tight and continues to be ongoing. Next steps for the LSIP include further interaction with our four Working Groups and the convening of the Common Framework Group to consider potential solutions and actions. The full Local Skills Improvement Plan will be submitted to the Secretary of State by 31 May 2023.
As required by the Department for Education, we are pleased to provide you with the draft priorities, as identified by a range of businesses across our region to help support your consideration for the LSIF bid. Click here to view
This Norfolk and Suffolk Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) collaboration event is a chance to showcase the extensive employer engagement which has taken place, detailing the analysis and key findings in which businesses are communicating the regions skills gaps and needs.
We will be showcasing what’s working well in the region and how we can continue to influence a local skills system which puts employer engagement at the heart of the agenda.
Norfolk Chambers of Commerce is working closely with Hitachi Energy to bring a Meet the Buyer event for the Hornsea 3 on 25th April at Norwich City Football Club.
This event is a key chance for local SMEs in specific sectors, to meet and discuss the opportunities to work on the Hornsea 3 Offshore Wind. This project will provide huge value for local businesses and will enable opportunities for collaboration within the supply chain.
Hitachi Energy has been appointed by Ørsted, the world’s most sustainable energy company, to deliver the Hornsea 3 offshore wind farm.
With a capacity of 2,852 MW, Hornsea 3 will produce enough low-cost, clean, renewable electricity to power around 3.2 million UK homes, making a significant contribution to the UK Government’s ambition of having 50 GW offshore wind in operation by 2030 as part of the British Energy Security Strategy.
The project (subject to Ørsted taking a Final Investment Decision on Hornsea 3) will see the installation of 240 km of onshore cables that will connect the offshore wind farm from the landfall at Weybourne in Norfolk to the Norwich Main National Grid Substation. Works are scheduled to commence in March 2023 with an anticipated completion in 2027.
Both Hitachi Energy and Ørsted are committed to engaging with the local community and supply chain to maximise the benefits and opportunities for individuals and the local economy.
Hitachi Energy has proactively identified a number of the relevant trades, services, commodities, and skills required and is working closely with Norfolk Chambers to co-ordinate and facilitate as many opportunities as possible for local, and particularly, for small businesses and individuals to get involved and benefit from this exciting project.
Hitachi Energy is advancing the world’s energy system to be more sustainable, flexible, and secure. As the pioneering technology leader, we collaborate with customers and partners to enable a sustainable energy future – for today’s generations and those to come.
Norfolk Chambers of Commerce, Chief Executive, Nova Fairbank said “Following previous successful Meet the Buyer events, we’re delighted to be bringing back another event. Our mission is to connect the Norfolk community and what better way than bringing Norfolk businesses together on such a significant project”.
If you’re interested in attending the event to showcase your services, please click here.
Norfolk Chambers mission is: Connecting, supporting and giving voice to every business in Norfolk.
As part of that mission, we are here to support our members goals and aims, get their voice heard and promote the ‘wow’ factors for Norfolk’s business community.
To help us achieve this we are now using our monthly columns in both EDP and the Lynn News to shout about our members successes; to hear from them on thought-leadership; to get their views on issues that impact on businesses; and to understand their thoughts and feelings on what is happening in Norfolk.
Every member of Norfolk Chambers can contribute to these columns. We will also ensure that your content appears on the Chambers website and in our social media. You can be an individual, a big company, or a small business. You can be anywhere in Norfolk.
Now, more than ever before, Chambers is about you – the members. Because it’s you who define Norfolk, who fuel its growth and deliver its goods and services. It’s you, who create and innovate to make the county the success it is.
Let’s work together to share positive news about Norfolk. So, if you’re a Chamber member and you want to help celebrate the success of Norfolk, this is your chance.
We’ll collate your stories and input, and we’ll use our media columns, website and social media to share them. From here on it will be your voices. Do it!
Commenting on the Prime Minister’s announcement she will seek to extend the Brexit deadline, Dr Adam Marshall, Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, said:
“The clock is still ticking, and avoiding a messy and disorderly exit from the EU is still the top priority for our business communities. The government must take firm action, now, to ensure that this is not allowed to happen by default.
“Yet businesses need to see outcomes, not just more process. On-going uncertainty is having a real and negative impact on business confidence and investment all across the UK. Our own quarterly survey of businesses, the biggest independent survey in the UK, is concrete evidence of this – with the worst figures across the board in nearly a decade.
“The Prime Minister may have issued a revised road map, but business communities still have little sense of the destination. It’s like being asked to follow a sat-nav to an unknown location – with the nagging worry that the directions may yet lead to a cliff.”
The Norwich BID (Business Improvement District) has acquired a limited number of licenses for Rio Carbon Reporting’s Carbon Tracker.
“What is Rio?
Rio is an intelligent sustainability management system. This platform helps businesses, public sector organisations, and SME’s track their sustainability data, report on their progress, and learn to become more sustainable.
Rio can not only help businesses track their sustainability journey, but the platform also analyses your data and provides actionable ways to improve your sustainability and save you money! Rio can help with:
Target-setting establish your organisation’s targets and monitor progress
Reporting provide information to key stakeholders
Legislation access a legal library of environmental legislation (with synopses!)
Identify opportunities to reduce your carbon footprint
Training Rio Learn provides training resources on a range of topics to increase sustainability knowledge.”
Staying up to date with our skills and professional learning is always a good thing. In fact, with the fast-moving working environment, this has become even more important. Attending a training course can give you a new approach to tasks, an investment in your knowledge, and helps to encourage your staff to grow professionally too.
With the support of our expert trainers who are specialists in their business areas, Chamber Training offers a diverse choice of half day courses across the year, with the Spring and Summer dates now released.
Whether you are looking to develop your business writing, or hone your Instagram for your work account, or prepare documents for international trade, our training course are here to advance you and your business.
The courses comprise of small groups, with the chance for one to one support from the trainer, groups activities, and the opportunity to answer questions throughout. All handouts from the sessions will be available, and light refreshments with tea and coffee will be included too.
Entries are now open for the Eastern Daily Press Business Awards 2023.
The theme for this year is those heroes, the team members that are the difference between success and failure.
We are pleased to see so many of our members involved with the awards already, with several being sponsors of the award categories and local Charity and Norfolk Chamber members, Walking With The Wounded being named EDP Business Awards Charity of the Year for 2023.
The award categories are:
Norfolk Business of the Year, sponsored by Barclays
Reacting to reports that the sunset clause might be removed from the Retained EU Law Bill, William Bain, Head of Trade Policy at the BCC, said:
“Over the past few months, the BCC has consistently put forward a strong business case to remove the uncertainty caused byan imminent sunset clause forretained EU law.
“If Ministers are now considering a more pragmatic approach this would be greatly welcomed. Firms have been battered by the pandemic, energy costs, inflation and rising interest rates, but their confidence in the economic outlook has been starting to grow. Now is not the time to knock that with a hasty sunset clause across vast areas of UK regulation.
“But it would appear the Government has been listening and we welcome the opportunity for further dialogue. Businesses are keen to see reform which removes barriers to growth, where appropriate,thatkeepscosts down andavoidsdivergence within the UK internal market.”
Responding to the House of Lords European Affairs Committee report on the future of the UK-EU relationship, William Bain, Head of Trade Policy at the BCC, said:
“The BCC welcomes these clear and well-evidenced proposals for reform of access to the UK labour market. We provided evidence to the Committee based on our research among businesses in key economic sectors.
“There are still particularly tough issues faced by firms who cannot attract sufficient UK staff in care, hospitality, manufacturing and logistics.
“We need a fast, efficient and affordable system to access skills from outside the UK when we can’t recruit and train locally. The Shortage Occupations List (SOL) is key tool to do this, but it must reflect the reality on the ground.
“UK firms are also hampered when it comes to travelling to Europe due to the lack of flexibility in some of the business travel and mobility rules in the Brexit deal, especially in relation to financial, professional and business services.
“We urge the UK Government to respond decisively to these findings, so that firms can have the confidence in access to the skilled workers they need to grow their businesses and get economic growth moving.”
A copy of the full committee report can be found here.
At Norfolk Chambers of Commerce we love to experience first-hand the amazing work our members do across the county. On the morning of Tuesday 30 April local businesses also joined us to see the great work done by the Hawk and Owl Trust as we held our first ‘netwalking’ event! As members arrived at the Hawk and Owl Trust reserve in Sculthorpe we welcomed them with freshly cooked breakfast rolls and plenty of tea and coffee. Attendees were networking over breakfast enjoying views of two week old lambs out the window. After a few words from the Hawk and Owl Trust Fundraiser, Angela Glynn, their Conservation Officer Nigel Middleton prepared attendees for the guided walk they were about to take across the 53 acre site. As Nigel guided us through the reserve, attendees had time to spark conversations both business and nature related to the sounds of various bird species around us! We stopped at several points along the walk to hear from Nigel about the reserve, including a treetop ‘Hide’ which was built entirely by volunteers for visitors to sit and watch from. After we’d finished our walk we gathered back in their facilities for a hot drink and continued conversations. This event provided a fantastic opportunity for businesses meet one another in a refreshing environment surrounded purely by nature and great work. The Hawk and Owl Trust have recently launched a corporate membership scheme allowing businesses to join for a yearly donation, receiving membership cards for staff to use, an Owl nesting box via their ‘Adopt a Box’ scheme and much more. Get in touch to find out more.
British businesses and consumers will soon be able to reap the benefits of the UK’s first trade deals negotiated from scratch since leaving the European Union with the agreements set to come into force this month.
Expected to increase bilateral trade with Australia by 53% and with New Zealand by 59% in the long term, the two game-changing free trade agreements are anticipated to go live across all three countries from midnight on 31 May.
Both trade deals will drive economic growth and innovation across the UK, Australia and New Zealand through the removal of tariffs on all UK goods exports, open unprecedented access for services, cutting of red tape for digital trade, and by making it easier for UK professionals to live and work in Australia and New Zealand.
It comes just weeks after the UK concluded negotiations to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a free trade area worth £9 trillion, putting us at the heart of a trading powerhouse.
Business and Trade Secretary, Kemi Badenoch, said: “With these two deals the UK is using our status as an independent trading nation to tailor agreements to our country’s economic strengths. Alongside our recent conclusion of talks to join CPTPP, the government is forging a bold new future alongside the world’s most dynamic and fast-growing economies.
“Putting these trade deals into action will help create new opportunities for business, boosting wages and helping spur economic growth.”
Head of Trade Policy at the BCC, William Bain said: “It is good news to hear that the free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand will finally come into force at the end of the month.
“These deals will lower tariffs, simplify customs procedures, allow for greater freedom of movement for labour and provide stronger market access for the UK’s world-leading services sector.
“But the success of any free trade agreement comes down to whether businesses use it, so it’s vital the Government shouts from the rooftops about these new opportunities.
“A recent BCC survey also found almost a quarter of firms (23%) said finding a business partner or distributor overseas would encourage them to either start exporting or export more.
“We have strong Chambers in both Australia and New Zealand and will be working with them to get the most out of these trade deals for all our economies.”
Services are central to the UK’s economy, accounting for around 80% of its economic output and workforce, and one of its biggest export success stories. The provisions in these deals complement our strengths and will help deliver on the PM’s priority of growing our economy.
UK professionals from scientists and researchers to lawyers and accountants will have access to Australian work visas without being subject to its changing skilled occupation list. Brits will also be able to work more freely in New Zealand through commitments which enable UK service suppliers to deliver contracts.
Other UK benefits include:
Investment opportunities and access to government contracts, including putting British businesses on equal footing to compete for an additional £10 billion of Australian public sector contracts per year and high investment screening thresholds for UK investors in New Zealand
Tariff free access to both markets for all British goods and flexible rules of origins, giving businesses a competitive edge over international rivals
Reaffirmed commitments to the Paris Agreement and opportunities to grow our low-carbon economy, with tariffs on environmental goods liberalised
Removal of UK import tariffs on majority of goods from Australia and New Zealand, reducing prices for UK consumers on favourites such as wine and manuka honey and lowering costs on machinery parts for UK manufacturers
Progressive rules on digital trade and free flow of data, cutting red tape for SMEs and easing trade while protecting intellectual property, brands and innovations
There are robust protections for British farmers in both deals, including staging tariff liberalisation for sensitive goods over time.
Both countries are key members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a huge trade bloc in the Indo-Pacific.
The agreement is expected to enter into force on the 31 May, subject to finalisation of UK domestic procedures with remaining changes to UK law coming into force at the end of May.
More information on the UK-Australia free trade deal can be found on GOV.UK and the GREAT website.
More information on the UK-New Zealand free trade deal can be found on GOV.UK and the GREAT website.
Reacting to the latest ONS GDP figures, David Bharier, Head of Research at the BCC, said:
“The first estimate of GDP for Q1 2023 of 0.1% growth indicates the UK is avoiding a recession and shows the resilience of businesses who are having to weather serious headwinds.
“However, this also means we’re in a period of virtually no growth. The core issues affecting British businesses, such as unprecedented inflation, energy price shocks, and record tightness in the labour market, have not gone away.
“A further rise in the interest rate will also impact firms that have resorted to using finance to manage cash flow.
“The Government must now act fast and set out a plan for economic growth to mitigate the impacts of these shocks. Businesses need to see a reduction in the cost and burden of trading internationally, particularly with the EU, as well as support for those continuing to be hit by record energy costs.”