Get Ready For Brexit - Business Intelligence Survey underway
October 28, 2019
The biggest ever survey into the issues and concerns of businesses across the Midlands is underway as part of a Government campaign to get companies ready for Brexit.
Around 18,000 businesses are being contacted over the next few weeks as part of a major telemarketing programme across the region’s Growth Hubs.
The Coventry and Warwickshire LEP Growth Hub is collating the responses and will carry out detailed analysis from across businesses which are part of the Midlands cluster – the Black Country, Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, Greater Birmingham and Solihull, Worcestershire and The Marches.
This is part of the Government’s Get Ready for Brexit £108 million national campaign to ensure that businesses are as well placed as possible to handle the withdrawal from the European Union in whatever form. In Stoke on Trent and Staffordshire, 42 businesses have already responded to the business intelligence survey within three days.
Nicola Kent, manager of the Stoke on Trent & Staffordshire Growth Hub, said they were concerned that a third of businesses have carried out little or no preparation for Brexit.
But she said that the preparation work the Growth Hub had been doing showed there is a need for information since traffic to their website had increased 58% per cent in the last few weeks with the Brexit page offering support to many businesses.
She said: “This is the biggest deepest dive into the business community that has ever been carried out in the Midlands.
“Often we carry out surveys which involve a couple of hundred businesses but to be engaging with 18,000 businesses will mean we can capture intelligence on a larger scale to feed-back to Government.
“We want to know what we can put in place to help them as the UK prepares to leave the EU and the early indications are that there is a lot of uncertainty about the future after the EU Exit.
“Local surveys have highlighted that many businesses are not prepared to invest in moving to new premises or buying machinery until they know the outcome of the negotiations that are taking place.
“The guidance on the Government website is very worthwhile and I would urge anyone as a starting point to go there because it doesn’t take long to find what you need. The challenge is that there is a great deal of data so if businesses are struggling to interpret it then the Growth Hub and local Department of International Trade Advisors can help.”
“We are keen to extend the conversation from just Brexit to the future, and individually as Growth Hubs across the Midlands we now have the resource from Government to engage further with the business community,” she said.
“Therefore, we are trying to gather economic intelligence and find out the concerns businesses have which can help Growth Hubs plan business support to make sure we are providing the services needed.
“Skills and recruitment are one of the biggest worries and by being better informed we will be better placed to address the challenges that businesses are facing.”
