Well, anyone on the ground will tell you that the RDAs, while nominally still running, and still costing the tax payer money, are now largely chiefly engaged in finding their senior staff new employment rather than doing the job they were set up to do. Progress on the LEPs that will replace them has been patchy; not a surprise, I suppose, as their success or failure will hinge on local efforts. Coupled with the announcement of a move of the services provided by Business Link to a wholly voluntary set-up, this will be an interesting couple of years for those engaged in trying to grow engineering businesses. I suspect that there is an opportunity for industry bodies, such as the EEF and the FSB, to come to the fore, either under their own flag, or in partnership with the LEPs. That provides a dilemma about the support to small concerns not yet able to pay subscriptions to membership based organisations.
Interestingly the programme of setting up national specialist technical centres, funded through a combination of national and EU grants, with industry support, has continued unabated; one I'm especially interested in is the National Composites Centre(NCC) in Bristol. Should this initiative be sustained past the inevitable early teething problems I believe it does stand a chance of boosting the income the UK gets back from engineering technology. However, I am concerned that there may be a tendency for the industrial backers to do their best to ensure that the major benefits are for themselves, either directly or through preferred engagement with their supply chain, rather than being more widely available for SMEs which might use the technology outside the industries where current usage is concentrated.
Of course, at the moment I have my own personal reasons for keeping an eye on this, as I'm working for Rolatube, an innovative composite materials start-up (product pictured) based in Hampshire. I can think of all sorts of ways that the NCC could help us once they're up and running, but suspect they may be too busy running around after the likes of Airbus and GKN, their major industrial partners, to look at helping to grow smaller ventures into the large companies of the future.
Am I worrying unnecessarily? I hope so, but time will tell!
(As ever, you can learn more about me at my website.)
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