3. Foundation
FOUNDATION – Building Regional Resilience to Industrial Structural Change
Across Europe, public bodies are pressed by an increasing need to provide preparatory support to the economic support system in advance of the closure of anchor firms in their region which act as significant employers. The impacts of a closure of course go beyond direct employees and ripple, wave like throughout the regional services sector and economy. Management of such anticipated structural change requires proactive renewal of business approaches and policy supports. Regions are encouraged to introduce pilot projects based on their own strengths and to provide appropriate business supports for the re-alignment of the regional industrial base. This proactive approach by regional stakeholders is critical to building the resilience of these regions and enabling them to adapt to change.
The importance of SMEs and start-ups to the regional economy is widely recognised in terms of the provision of employment, contribution to GDP, driving innovation and supporting regional resilience. It is imperative that the relevant regional stakeholders keep informed, inspired and equipped to provide the appropriate SME and start-up supports, particularly in regions anticipating structural change.
The project is part funded by the Interreg Europe programme. The project links partners across the EU regions to work on developing common, transferable good practice from their own regions. It is imperative that industry players, business support organisations and policy makers understand how their support processes can work when faced with shocks (firm closures) to collaboratively develop alternative growth and employment through supportive policies and programmes to boost SME competitiveness.
Here in Oldham the project will focus on how robust the support system coordinated by the Greater Manchester Growth Hub are when faced with these major structural changes. Recent examples in Greater Manchester include the closure of the Thomas Cook with the associated job losses.
The partners from the project come from Ireland (Cork Institute of Technology, lead partner), United Kingdom, Finland, Spain, Italy, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland and Austria.