BBC’s Midlands Today programme have given Advantage West Midlands a well-deserved slating today over its £6m new offices for West Midlands Business Link.
Local businesses are struggling with the credit crunch, the onset of a global recession and the continual decline of the manufacturing industry upon which the economy of the West Midlands connurbation has traditionally been reliant.
With so many companies struggling to stay in business, spending £6m of taxpayers money on new offices for Business Link instead of spending the money helping local businesses is an insult.
The floods last year dealt a blow to many businesses throughout the West Midlands euroregion. AWM offered grants to affected businesses but some or all of it had to spent on advice from the West Midlands Business Link service. Prior to the pointless regionalisation of the Business Link service, every major town had its own local service staffed by local people with local knowledge who could build up a face to face relationship with their clients. Now there is one regionalised Business Link service located on a business park on the side of the M5. No more local knowledge, no more face to face relationships unless you’re based in Quinton or you can afford to take half a day or more out of work to travel to their offices.
According to the BBC News piece, AWM say that they helped 8,700 businesses last year, exceeding their own target. According to the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform, AWM’s target for helping businesses in 2006-07 was a minimum of 6,000 and a maximum of 9,000. Their target for 2007-08 is a minimum of 10,333 and a maximum of 13,667. Half-year figures for April 2007 to September 2007 showed that AWM was on schedule to miss that target by about 30% if their exceptionally poor performance for the first half of the year continues for the rest of the year.
AWM has evolved into a vast, unaccountable quango employing 260 people at the taxpayers expense and spending £320m a year of our money. AWM will continue to waste taxpayers money for as long as they exist because they have never been accountable to the taxpayer - they have never been held to account for their waste and neglect of the people who pay their bills.
The only way to stop the rot is to abolish AWM and hand their money and responsibilities back to democratically accountable, elected local authorities.
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Is it just a coincidence that the new offices are on the site of the proposed new eco-town that St Mowden want to build in Quinton?????
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:42 pmWell they’d know because they’ve got a hand in the eco-town plans. They wouldn’t spend £6m on a new office that was going to be knocked down, surely?
June 24th, 2008 at 5:56 amI have to admit to having some ‘form’ here in that many years ago I was employed within the Business Link network in the West Midlands. What surprises me is not that businesses are rightly indignant about the cost of the new building but that this story has only emerged since AWM took over responsibility for Business Link.
In the previous era the Chambers of Commerce received £m’s of taxpayers’ money to operate Business Link. These organisations also moved into swanky offices and/or used the Government money to subsidise their other activities.
Nothing was said then…perhaps because it doesn’t suit the political agenda of this website. After all the Chambers are the ‘voice of the private sector’.
June 24th, 2008 at 2:32 pmAs an anti-regional campaign, local business link organisations wouldn’t have been “on the radar”. It’s only since AWM took over a thriving network of local business link services and then regionalised (read: broke) them that we’ve taken an interest.
I agree that there should be more accountability in all these type of organisations but with my West Midlands NO! hat on I’m interested in them because if the regional aspect.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:47 pm“Is it just a coincidence that the new offices are on the site of the proposed new eco-town that St Mowden want to build in Quinton?????”
That will be Quinton in Warwickshire then…. hahahahahhahahahahhahahhahahahah….. come on, get to grips with Google…..
July 23rd, 2008 at 9:19 pm