GFirst LEP and BIS meet to drive exports and high level skills in the Business and Professional Sector in Gloucestershire

Creating high level skills, apprenticeships and exporting in the Professional and Business Sector is one of the Government’s key strategic initiatives for economic growth and one for GFirst LEP at a local level in Gloucestershire. To look at ways of stimulating growth opportunities in this sector that covers businesses providing professional services such as accountancy, law, architecture, education, engineering consultancy, management consultancy, recruitment, HR and media, representatives from GFirst LEP, the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) met earlier this week in a workshop session.

Creating high level skills, apprenticeships and exporting in the Professional and Business Sector is one of the Government’s key strategic initiatives for economic growth and one for GFirst LEP at a local level in Gloucestershire.  To look at ways of stimulating growth opportunities in this sector that covers businesses providing professional services such as accountancy, law, architecture, education, engineering consultancy, management consultancy, recruitment, HR and media, representatives from GFirst LEP, the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) and UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) met earlier this week in a workshop session.  

Ruth Dooley, a partner in Hazlewoods, a firm of chartered accountants who leads the GFirst LEP’s Business and Professional Services (BPS) sector, chaired the workshop session with the main objective to provide input into the Government’s new Professional and Business Services strategy “Growth is Our Business”. Discussing the strategy that featured a case study, the group were able to explore ways of increasing the lucrative opportunity of exports in Business and Professional Services by enhancing international competitiveness and reducing trade barriers in the county.

Ruth Dooley, Chair of the BPS Sector Group, GFirst LEP said: “I’m delighted that we were asked by Government to specifically provide input into their new strategy. The aim of the workshop was to bring together like-minded and forward thinking business leaders from across the BPS sector in the county to brief them about the Government’s new strategy and discuss its potential in terms of its impact for growth to boost skills, exports and investment.

This workshop provided us with a valuable opportunity to discuss how best we could encourage the BPS business community to engage more with the UK Trade & Investment services to not only expand their own exports and investments into emerging markets, but that of their clients too. It also provided us with a valuable opportunity to discuss how best we could work more closely at a local level with schools and identify ways of creating non-graduate routes into the BPS Sector.

The discussion from the workshop was invaluable.  It was particularly rewarding to see how many of the aims of the strategy align with the proposals for our Growth Hub later this year to provide seamless support services for business, targeted particularly on those with high growth potential in knowledge-intensive sectors.

The feedback from the workshop will now feed into the overall plans and activities of the final Strategic Economic Plan that will be submitted in March to drive further economic growth for the county.”