Interview: SCR Growth Hub’s David Grimes on "responding to the needs" of regional businesses

In April of this year, businesses located within the Sheffield City Region (SCR) were given a significant boost withthe launch of a new support service which enables businesses to access critical advice in order to grow.

The Sheffield City Region Growth Hub is a single point of contact for all businesses across the nine local authority areas of Barnsley, Bassetlaw, Bolsover, Chesterfield, Derbyshire Dales, Doncaster, North East Derbyshire, Rotherham and Sheffield.

The Growth Hub, which has core funding of £4.82m, acts as a ‘gateway’ for businesses to access specialist support in a number of key areas to enable growth, including innovation, exporting, accessing finance and training.

As the Growth Hub was launched a little over a month ago, Bdaily recently spoke with David Grimes, head of the SCR Growth Hub, to discuss what this new portal means for the business community in the SCR.

There has been a national roll out of 39 Growth Hubs across the country, so firstly I asked David when did the Sheffield City Region Local Enterprise Partnership first consider launching its own?

“Roughly 12 months ago,” he said. “There were a number of Growth Hubs piloted around the country, some have been operational for several years, and some have only recently launched including the SCR Growth Hub which launched on the 27th of April.”

For businesses wondering if they qualify to receive support from the Growth Hub, David explained: “The Growth Hub has a number of business growth specialists that can help businesses where there is a need, but also help them to find the right support based on what support they need whether skills and training - identifying suitable sources of finance, accessing specialist support or for new businesses and entrepreneurs.

“The aim is to simplify regional and national business support that is available to businesses along with the best of what is on offer from across the region.”

“Over the coming years businesses will simply have a single place to go regardless of what support they are looking for. The Growth Hub will be able to best advise and signpost to the most appropriate support - whether local, national or supported by the Growth Hub itself.”

Along with the core funding of £4.82m, the SCR Growth Hub also has a £22m Business Investment Fund, a Skills Bank fund of more than £17m and access to the Sheffield City Region European Structural Funds of approximately £90m.

I was interested in asking David if he thought there were enough funds to to cater for businesses throughout the nine local authority areas. He said: “There is funding in place to offer support for businesses across the region for a number of years and is certainly enough to cover all the local authority areas.

“There is ongoing work underway to understand what the key needs are for business, if there is additional need above and beyond the significant support that is already on offer, we will look to understand what this is and if there is a requirement there may be the opportunity to look at additional support as and where required.”

As for types and sizes of businesses already taking advantage of the SCR Growth Hub, David commented:

“The Growth Hub is already working with businesses of all sizes, from entrepreneurs and startups, to larger businesses that are drawing down funding towards staff training.”

“There are a number of areas of support under the growth hub and some elements will be more attractive to different businesses depending on the support they may need and that’s the point, it’s about ensuring the businesses get the right support for them.”

The ultimate aim of the SCR Growth Hub to is grow the the city region economy. So I asked David when he thought the impact of the SCR Growth Hub will be felt economically?

“We are a month into the Growth Hub and with funding for an initial 5 years, I expect it will take some time to see real impact at a regional level,” he said. “However we are already seeing the growth of individual businesses that we have supported so far, and as they say, every journey starts with a single step, and therefore we are making a difference already and will continue to have a positive impact. But demonstrating impact at a regional economic scale will most likely be measured in years not weeks.

David concluded by stating that theSCR Growth Hub is “about a long term approach to economic growth but also about the growth hub responding to the needs of our regional businesses to ensure we are enabling them to grow and that we are responsive to the needs of the City region.”

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