• Swindon & Wiltshire Experts
• Wednesday March 26 2025
• Author Name: Phil Smith

Opinion – What our businesses need from the next West of England Metro Mayor

Whoever becomes the West’s new Metro Mayor in May must work with the business community to create prosperity for all, says Business West’s managing director Phil Smith 

“We need to better sell our region” is now a common refrain I hear in my conversations with business members, senior leaders and politicians on an almost daily basis. It was a key talking-point at the Festival of Flourishing Regions, the Devolution and Growth event, and the recent Mayoral Hustings that Business West held.

The West of England has an impressive innovation track record, attracts significant private sector investment, has a strong talent pipeline, and is an attractive destination for businesses and workers looking to relocate.

However, the region has not provided government with a compelling proposition for investment and growth, and this presents a missed opportunity.

We need public and private investment so we can drive inclusive and sustainable growth. We need this to help tackle pressing issues that our region faces, which include unaffordable housing, poor transport connectivity and a skills gap.

But we also have a positive offer to government: when the UK is desperate for economic growth to help pay for public services, our region has the underlying strengths and dynamism to help generate the ideas, businesses and income to deliver this.

We need investment to take advantage of the many opportunities our region currently has, which include advances in green energy and AI, advanced manufacturing, tech and defence.

In May, we will have a new Metro Mayor for the West of England. Business West wants to work with them to bring our region to the top table of combined authorities. We will then have greater access to support and powers to make our region grow.

The next Mayor must work closely with the business community for our region to meet its potential.

We would like them to focus on:

Raising our region’s profile in Whitehall

Following the 2024 General Election, our new government offered deeper bespoke devolution deals to ‘Established MCAs’ in housing, transport, planning, innovation, investment, trade and skills to regions across the UK. These regions will receive a financial boost to tackle issues that hamper growth. However, the West of England, which received a Best Value Notice in 2024, missed out.

With the Best Value Notice now removed, the next mayor has the chance to reset relations between the Combined Authority, Whitehall and Westminster. This is a critical step towards raising our region’s profile and making the case for investment.

Collaboration

The West of England Mayoral Combined Authority is the only combined authority in the South West. It could therefore play a major part in unlocking more investment throughout the whole of the South West region.

We believe the strength and visibility of our region is greatly enhanced when our Metro Mayor works shoulder to shoulder with our business community. This means collaborating on joint challenges and demonstrating the economic strength and potential of our region. This will help set out our narrative to central government, making the case for investment.

Transport and infrastructure investment

The West of England’s public transport is the poorest performing of any comparable city region in the UK. Our transport is unreliable and inefficient, and it contributes to over a third of the region’s carbon emissions.

Better transport connectivity is fundamental to improving economic growth, social mobility, cohesion and is essential to achieving net zero targets. We need transport that connects people to places and allows all residents to feel the benefits that our region has to offer.

We hope to see our next Mayor work with Network Rail, and later Great British Railways, to take forward ambitious plans for Mass Rapid Transit within our city region that will transform how people who live, work, and visit our region travel within it.

The next Mayor should also consider how our two key international gateways, Bristol Airport and Bristol Port, can be better accessed by visitors, workers, and supply chains. This is important if we want to maximise the impact that they have as major actors of regional economic growth.

Housing and planning

Our region is facing an acute housing crisis. Average house prices and private rent rates have both outpaced national averages, particularly in Bristol where rents have increased faster than in any other part of the country. This makes it harder to attract and retain talent and means workers are spending more on housing costs, rather than spending in the local economy and benefiting fully from rising wages.

We require long-term, joined-up, strategic planning to help overcome the significant challenges of our region: that means space for our future homes and communities, new growth opportunities for businesses, and scaling infrastructure across transport, energy and other areas to enable sustainable growth.

Major initiatives, such as Bristol Temple Quarter and the Brabazon Development show the art of the possible when the public sector and private sector work together. These schemes are providing homes and offices that are well served by public transport and show we can deliver high quality new places that new communities can be proud of.

Brabazon, a 380-acre brownfield site, is based on the principles of a 15-minute neighbourhood. It aims to become the most sustainable new urban community in the UK.

The next Mayor has an opportunity to improve living standards across our region by showing leadership on tackling our housing crisis, working in partnership to apply innovative solutions at the pace our region needs.

Innovation support

Innovation is a critical factor in driving economic growth. It gives businesses in our region a competitive edge, provides jobs and solutions to emerging regional and global challenges.

Our region’s strength in innovation and technology has meant that we are host to five of the UK’s Unicorn Start-Ups, with over fifty university spin-out companies. We attract a high level of technology and intellectual property-related deals. Our innovation spend per head is actually higher than London, due to the strengths of our universities and growth businesses.

We call on the Mayor to work with Central Government on turning the West of England into a Trailblazer for innovation accelerations. This will allow local leaders to develop bespoke innovation support for our region, delivered in partnership with UK Research & Innovation.

Skills support

We need to prepare the workforce for booms in construction, major infrastructure programmes and the net zero transition. The new Mayor will also need to ensure the effective transfer of AI technology expertise into UK workplaces. This is essential if we are to improve the UK’s workplace productivity.

Investment and growth

The West of England region is an increasingly attractive destination for private sector investment. Our regional ecosystem has great assets and a wave of opportunities on our patch.

For example, we have the potential to become a leader in green energy supply with major developments in the wider region including Floating Offshore Wind, an EV Gigafactory and Gloucestershire’s potential to become a nuclear hub.

We also have strong technology and advanced manufacturing sectors, with recent major investments in health tech, AI, and aerospace and defence.

We call upon the new Mayor to work with the business community, which is ready and willing to collaborate, to make these plans happen. Our business community, with its abundance of insight and expertise, can help leverage the investment that we need.

International trade

The West of England industry produces £7.4 billion in exports, which boosts our regional economic productivity and is a key indicator of our region’s economic vitality. The next Mayor will face a tough geopolitical climate with the potential of increased tariffs and trade barriers.

Our Quarterly Economic Survey indicates that the region has faced sustained decreases in international trade, and this will hamper local growth ambitions. We would like to see the Mayor launch a tailored export growth programme to help support our regional businesses in reaching their full export ambitions.

This is an edited version of a longer article first published by Business West on March 25.