Agenda item

Announcements by the Chairman, Executive Councillors and Lead Officers

Minutes:

The Executive Councillor for Economy and Place welcomed the members of the Committee to the North Sea Observatory, at Chapel Point. It was commented that this was one of the best projects that the County Council had been involved in.

 

The Executive Councillor continued to work with the Executive Councillor for Adult Care, Health and Children's Services on skills and employment issues.  He had previously highlighted the work the authority was doing with the Greater Lincolnshire LEP on raising young people's awareness of local career opportunities. There was a Careers and Enterprise Co-ordinator who worked with several schools in the County and it was reported that between the LEP and the County Council, the funding had been found to recruit an additional two Co-ordinators so that the whole of the county could be covered by this initiative.

 

The challenges of seasonal employment on the coast were highlighted, particularly how this made it difficult for employers to provide structured training for their staff. The County Council had been awarded £367,000 from the Coastal Communities Fund to tackle this problem. The Council would work with business, colleges and young people on this project.

 

It had been a busy time in terms of investment, as significant investment opportunities had been followed up, including a major food distributor who was seeking a well located site for a new business venture, as well as several enquiries about property which could be used as hotel accommodation.

 

The Executive Councillor reported that he had led the Team Lincolnshire presence at MIPIM, the international property conference, whilst the Executive Councillor for Adult Care, Health and Children's Services hosted the Council's annual business networking event at the Belton Horse Trials. He reported that his fellow Executive Councillors for Highways, Transport and IT and Culture and Emergency Services also hosted tables at this event. Just over 150 investors attended the Lincolnshire brunch at MIPIM, and almost 100 businesses attended the event at Belton. Officers were following up around 60 strong investment contacts made at the two events.

 

The 90-plus Team Lincolnshire members wanted to support the Council's efforts to promote government investment in Lincolnshire and that they wanted to collaborate with the Council on important issues like energy infrastructure, skills and water management.

 

The Leader of the Council had welcomed the governor of Hunan province, China to Lincolnshire. The Governor's visit had cemented the economic partnership that had been developed between the two regions and the governor had reported that he had been impressed by the positive welcome he had received from the Leader of the Council, as well as the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Council.  A strong focus on a small number of priorities had been agreed.  Hunan saw Lincolnshire as the gateway to the Midlands, therefore there would be a focus on technology within food manufacture and on advanced engineering, both of which were sectors that Lincolnshire excelled in, and Hunan considered as a priority.  It was reported that Dynex had received a further substantial investment from their Hunan parent company.

 

Three major events for business had been held.  Manufacturing and visitor economy conferences were held in late March and both were attended by roughly 100 businesses and focused on future technologies and promotional strategies, a popular event was held on 2 April for all of the county's tourism businesses to learn about Lincolnshire's heritage coast. 

 

The Executive Councillor advised that in line with their manifesto commitment to support the agricultural sector during Brexit, a meeting of the Lincolnshire Forum for Agriculture and Horticulture was held with lead policy officers from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The event had provided an opportunity to explain about Lincolnshire's priorities for the implementation of the government's food bill and had been attended by Councillors Dobson and Strange. Officers had met with the civil servant responsible for writing DEFRA's food strategy and had given him the opportunity to see how local authorities, the LEP, and private businesses were collaborating to achieve a strong future for the sector.

 

Members were provided with the opportunity to ask questions, and some of the points raised during discussion included the following:

·         What steps were being taken to improve language skills for young people, considering the links with China?  Translators for the visit came from the University of Lincoln and a relationship between BGU and China already existed.  Work was taking place to help people to get accredited so that they could work as a translator.

·         In China there was a strong push for children to be educated in English and Chinese companies always traded in English as it was recognised that English was the most important foreign language.

·         Dynex made semi-conductors for high speed trains as well as for specialist items like the Large Hadron Collider.  The recent investment by the parent company was funding work on battery storage.

·         There was a lot of work going on in terms of battery storage particularly for vehicles as there a need to find a mechanism to store energy that was being created.  The Chinese were moving more rapidly towards developing cleaner power than other areas of the world.

·         The University of Lincoln was working with other areas of China, as well as Hunan.

·         There was a need to find new forms of power and possibly for Lincolnshire to be able to deliver its own power. There was a huge amount of work taking place in this area.

·         In the future, the country would be reliant on energy from renewables and battery storage was a big issue for electricity production. If collection of food waste was the route that the government would go down then processing of this waste produced methane which could be stored until needed and then used to produce electricity.

 

 

 

 
 
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