Use it or lose it: Will the £550m marketplace for Gloucestershire close?
Despite the eye-watering prospect of its online market place delivering an extra £550m of spending with Gloucestershire businesses, and deals already happening, its owners have warned it could close.
Dear reader,
I hope you’ve had a good week. Is it me, or does the change in the political climate into uncertainty, feel exciting? Or is that just hope?
Positive action came in the news that pubs are to get a business rate cut, one of the immediate wins dished out by our new prime minister. We cover some of that below.
But we go biggest on a story from the recent Driving Gloucestershire Investment conference at Patch at The Forum in Gloucester. This is the second conference I’ve attended this month at which lots of people got together to point out that working together is what we need to do to win as a county.
Perhaps nothing to date has made that point better than the potential of Together Gloucestershire, a digital marketplace putting vetted SMEs from the county in front of businesses and organisations with the very biggest procurement budgets to do deals.
Get this right and the remaining big businesses sign up, and small businesses do the same, the team behind the platform thinks an extra £550 million will be spent every year in the county.
Where they are currently helps point to just how difficult it is to turn that good will and big talk of working together into action.
But it doesn’t rule out that we can’t get there yet!
Have a great weekend.
Best regards,
Editor | 07956 926061 | LinkedIn: Andrew Merrell | andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk
Burnham puts a smile on the face of the pub industry
This week new Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced a 20 per cent cut to business rates bills for pubs, social clubs and live music venues in England from April next year. The Covid-19 pandemic brought the pub and hospitality trade to its knees, with businesses taking out loans to survive. Then fuel prices rocketed, the costs of the minimum wage and national insurance went up, those loans were called in.
Mark Terry-Lush, co-founder of Gloucestershire-headquartered HOOP (Hands Off Our Pubs) which has been calling for Government support, said this week’s news was welcome.
“Credit where it’s due, the tone from Number 10 (Downing Street) has changed, and £1,100 back in a landlord’s pocket is £1,100 they didn’t have yesterday. But let’s not kid ourselves. This is a down payment on a debt the sector is owed, not a settlement.”
Terry-Lush called on the business rates saving to be extended to include restaurants, cafés and hotels who get nothing under the scheme.
HOOP, which was founded in the Forest of Dean, calls for a cutting of hospitality VAT to 10 per cent, a reform of business rates, and a closing the supermarket alcohol loophole. It’s not alone. #VATsTheProblem, a campaign to get VAT cut from 20 per cent to 10 per cent across pubs, restaurants, cafés, hotels, nightclubs and wider hospitality venues has so far gained more than 270,000 signatures.
Briefing notes…
🎊 Chairman of Cheltenham BID, Alex Rose, has said the 945 responses from residents and businesses asked ‘what should be done to revitalise Cheltenham’s High Street and Promenade’ was encouraging. Key themes that emerged include: Fix the basics (paving, cleanliness, maintenance); improve visual quality (greenery, consistency, appearance); help restore vitality (shops, activity, vibrancy). Rose said the response showed “people are passionate about Cheltenham, its High Street and Promenade, its heritage and its future”. The BID will now work with the council and partners to make meaningful improvements.
📈 Unemployment rises in county but drops in Forest of Dean: The latest Department for Work and Pensions statistics show that the Forest of Dean has seen a reduction of unemployment by four per cent over the last year. The total number of jobseekers in that district is 1,295, down 60 from last year. But the number of claimants has risen by 11 per cent in the Cotswold district and 10 per cent in Tewkesbury to 1,100 and 1,445 respectively. In Stroud it’s risen by six per cent (85 more people) to 1,610 claimants. In Gloucester it’s up by 75 (two per cent) to 3195.
🛫 Skyborne, which describes itself as one of the world’s leading airline pilot training academies, is strengthening its leadership team by announcing three internal senior appointments. Neill Evans has become head of training at the Staverton-headquartered firm, Matt Yemm is now deputy head of training and Carrie Stringer is head of customer support. Lee Woodward, founder and chief executive officer of Skyborne, which trains pilots from many of the world’s biggest airlines, described the trio as “genuine, passionate leaders”. More here.
✈️ The BBC ran a story this week celebrating the choice of what it called ‘Coventry man’ Sir Frank Whittle being chosen to front a new set of Royal Mail stamps. Aerospace historians will know Whittle may have done a lot of work in Cranwell, but the first flight of the world’s first jet-powered aircraft, the Gloster E28/39, at the Gloster Aircraft Company factory in Brockworth in April 1941, forever cementing his connection to the county. Cheltenham’s Regent Arcade stands on the site of Whittle’s workshop too. One of the stamps pictures the Gloster Javelin FAW9. Quite rightly, it’s the First Class stamp. More here.
The Raikes Journal is a community interest company. Everything you read is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People, our sponsors, our Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.
Readers who upgrade to become a paid subscriber become part of this CIC too (from £2.30 a week). It helps make us sustainable, allows you to see past the paywalls, comment on our stories, and know you’re making possible the county’s only editorially-led digital magazine dedicated to delivering quality journalism for Gloucestershire about its businesses, charities, education and training sectors.
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Use it or lose it: Will the £550m marketplace for Gloucestershire close?
Despite the eye-watering prospect of its online market place delivering an extra £550m of spending with Gloucestershire businesses, and deals already happening, its owners have warned it could close.
A digital marketplace helping small and medium-sized Gloucestershire businesses do deals with organisations with major procurement budgets is warning it needs more support or it could close.
We trailed it on The Raikes Journal in 2024 – the prospect of an online marketplace putting SMEs in front of major firms and organisations with the biggest procurement budgets.
If it succeeds and helps those larger organisations spend just five per cent more of their budgets in the county the team behind Together Gloucestershire predict its marketplace will delivering an extra £550m spend in the county.
But not even a year after it launched – and despite a successful ‘meet the buyer’ event helping secure deals between county SMEs and a major business with £7m to spend (plus other deals done, and more events plans), the team running the marketplace are warning it could close.
Adam Vines, one of the founding fathers and driving forces behind Together Gloucestershire was speaking at the Driving Gloucestershire Investment conference at Patch at The Forum in Gloucester on Friday last week when he was asked about its future.
“Use it or lose it,” he said, echoing the comment made by the audience by another Together Gloucestershire board member, Qing Lin from Transphere Intelligence.
In a debate chaired by media consultant and former editor, Ian Mean, Vines said the project was working well – the recent Meet the Buyer event fronted by major civil engineering firm WSP proved it – but said the key was support and that needed to keep coming.
It was a reminder to everyone there, and everyone who was at the previous week’s Green Skills event at the University of Gloucestershire just across King’s Square, that talking about working together (and they did) is one thing – unless we also need to act or opportunities will pass us by.
Vines said Together Gloucestershire was working, but was run by a team of volunteers who had day jobs.
Vines himself runs Lounge Design, a Cirencester-headquartered creative design agency.
And unless that team can get Together Gloucestershire over its tipping point and into a sustainable place they would have to make the difficult decision.
Getting more SMEs and more big organisations to sign up, was key, he said. There is a small subscription for some. Getting commitment from some organisations that might be expected to welcome an easy opportunity to spend locally was a challenge, he said.
“We have great relationships with partners like WSP, like HBD (the developer charged with driving the major Golden Valley Development near GCHQ).
“We are working with every district and borough council in the county. The Forest of Dean District Council has been really responsive, as has the Cotswolds, but the public sector otherwise is difficult. They are hard to engage with,” said Vines.
Quite how devolution will impact that situation is unclear. The process is now underway to merge our six local authorities and county council into one entity in the next two years.
“What we need to survive is more engagement – from SMEs, big corporations, local authorities and we are looking for ambassadors to champion what we do. But we are gradually building momentum,” said Vines.
Lin said: “We need to all pull together as one county, and there is a bit of a way to go to achieve that.”
Partners already actively involved in the project include St James’s Place, Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), Spirax Sarco, Cheltenham Borough Council, Gloucestershire NHS Trust, Renishaw, and Gloucestershire County Council among others.
The county council alone has a strategic procurement budget of £1.3m, but an overall budget of £698.4 million.
“Together Gloucestershire is more than just another business platform. It’s a movement,” said Vines.
“It’s about creating real economic opportunities for SMEs in Gloucestershire and streamlining the procurement process for large businesses needing strong and ethical partners they can depend on.”
The first ‘meet the buyer’ live event staged in May, also at Patch, was fronted by WSP, one of four delivery partners for Gloucestershire County Council’s highways department. Meetings took place on the day between SMEs present and decisionmakers at WSP and deals are understood to have been done.
WSP is working alongside three other major contractors, Ringway, Tarmac and M Group on a £29m contract and supporting a wider programme of highways activity with c.£100m capital spend.
Over the course of its four-year contract (starting in April 2025 - with an option of a two-year extension) WSP said it aimed to deliver £7.1m of social value to Gloucestershire, with more than 11 per cent of the contract value returning to the county too (a figure it exceeded in year one). It saw Together Gloucestershire as a great tool for making that happen.
Anna Wilson, a contract director for WSP, said: “We have not been involved in anything quite like this ever before. I was involved in another region in something similar, but without the filter, and it was not successful.
“Working with Together Gloucestershire has really been worthwhile because it has already made sure the companies fit our criteria and are relevant.”
Vines added: “You can be really good at what you do, but unless you can demonstrate it – unless that big business knows you are there and can solve their problem, that you tick all their criteria for what they are looking for from a partner – you’re just another person knocking at the door and they probably won’t come out.
“When you become part of Together Gloucestershire (TG) the buyer can see who you are, they can see what you do and get an immediate idea of your business - whether you are a B Corp or not, for example.
“The whole thing about TG is about bringing these like-minded, ethical businesses together. It’s about connections. Large organisations need networks and this is creating one.
“It’s the old analogy that ‘people buy from people they like and can trust’. We are creating a network they can trust.”
The next ‘meet the buyer’ event is scheduled to take place on 30 September at Hartpury University and Hartpury College. There will be opportunity to secure one-to-one meetings direct with procurement teams on the day. Visit the Together Gloucestershire website to find out more.