Objectives
This project will join up activity across Birmingham, Black Country and Solihull to increase inward investment, business events and international visitor expenditure.
The immediate results for the project area are: creating 500 new jobs for people in the ERDF target deprived areas, attracting / creating 50 new SME businesses, providing business support to 500 SMEs, and indirectly attracting 4,690 private sector jobs.
The project will also contribute to attainment of the following longer term results (split by work area):
Inward Investment ‘Invest’
- By 2014 secure additional inward investment worth £60 million to the regional economy.
- By 2014, Birmingham will rise to at least 12th from 14th in 2009 in the Cushman & Wakefield European City Monitor.
Visitor economy ‘Visit’
- To increase visitors to the project area from 49,759,435 in 2009 by 5% by 2014; this will be measured by the annual STEAM survey.
- Birmingham maintaining the position of the UK’s 4th most visited destination by International visitors as measured by the ONS International Passenger Survey.
- To increase the value of leisure tourism to the project area from £5.4bn by 3% as measured by the annual STEAM survey.
- To reduce the percentage of visitors who are dissatisfied with signage and mapping from 23% dissatisfied in 2010 to 10% in 2014 through the installation of 85 ‘Interconnect’ digital information points and signposts in Birmingham.
Business events ‘Meet’
- From 2011 to 2014 maintain the British Meetings Survey 2010 position of Birmingham as 2nd most popular destination for large (over 100 delegates) conferences & events, after London by undertaking campaigns, buying media space and PR in trade journals, attending trade exhibition, event organiser familiarisation missions to the project area.
- By 2014 attract and deliver at least 14 new events to the City region, with at least one new event to relating to each of the target investment sectors that have been identified.
Business support (cross cutting)
- To increase the productivity of 500 SMEs within the ERDF areas, measured by 175 new jobs created in the supported firms.
- The support will be delivered by a process of analysis, engagement and action by Marketing Birmingham staff, through a combination of mentorship and peer support and use of sector specific experts to develop support for SMEs with growth potential in the supply chain.
- Conferences will be used as platforms to link to investment. The aim is to increase SME capacity by exploiting conferences staged in the city region to provide face to face contact to access new markets or increase sales e.g.’ meet the buyer events’