Phil and Kurt
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00:00Rising revenues for a Wales car dealership and a look at how and what we
00:05can expect from new mayors in the Midlands and the North East. Welcome to
00:10this morning's Insider Business Briefing.
00:17Well good morning, I'm Phil Cunliffe, I'm one of Insider's business
00:23editors and joining me this morning I'm delighted to say we have Kurt Jacobs the
00:28editor of the Midlands Business Insider. Good morning Kurt. Good morning Phil. I want to
00:33start with it with a story from Wales in fact this is car dealership company
00:40Gravels which has revealed a rise in revenues in its latest set of accounts
00:46and despite challenges in the sector the business has locations across South
00:51Wales and in Hereford on the England Wales border and the company
00:57has almost doubled its pre-tax profits to 4.6 million on turnover of over
01:04130 million. The company has not only maintained positive growth during the
01:09last 12 months but has introduced new value-added products as well and
01:14services to its customer base and continues to invest in the underlying
01:18system so it's really good news for the car industry and the automotive
01:22industry has suffered a little bit over the last year and you'll know about this
01:27in the Midlands Kurt because where the the sector is very prevalent. You're
01:32right Phil, I mean to some extent the automotive industry has been hit by
01:35three things simultaneously. One was obviously Covid, nobody wanted to buy a
01:38car. Secondly was the chip shortage which really hammered things in our neck of
01:44the woods and thirdly has been this continued uncertainty by consumers and
01:49car manufacturers. What do we go for? Do we go for electric? Do we go for hybrid?
01:54Or do we stick with our old gas and petrol guzzlers? And that's really
01:59affected consumer demand as well. So to produce
02:03results like that in a market of such uncertainty, that's a real result.
02:07But I think things are improving and 2024 results should be better for
02:12companies such as Gravels and others like it. Indeed you can see confidence
02:16returning to that market quite quickly. Yeah absolutely. Well it's great to have
02:20you in the studio this morning Kurt and we want to talk about devolution and
02:25there's some new mayors not only in the Midlands but also in the North East
02:28which is my main patch. So what's going on in the Midlands in terms of
02:33devolution and the new mayors? Well in the Midlands we've had devolution for seven
02:38years now in the West Midlands where we had the Conservative Mayor Andy Street.
02:41He's been replaced by a Labour candidate called Richard Parker on a fraction of a
02:46majority. But in the East Midlands in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire we have an
02:51entirely new mayor in Clare Ward and we've been following what they've been
02:55doing over the past few weeks with interviews and breakfasts. And what's
02:59really interesting is not only have they come into power but the government last
03:04week in its King's Speech promised it will be devolving yet more power, more
03:10responsibility both to them and the other 10 Metro mayors across the UK. So
03:15even more powers. Absolutely. And this is presumably going to benefit businesses
03:19in the Midlands as well. Indeed. Obviously they'll have more power, more
03:24funding. I mean in the West Midlands for example the mayor has 1.5 billion
03:29pounds to play with as they see fit. But what businesses are really looking for
03:33is leadership and direction. So the money's nice, the powers are nice but
03:37what they want is somebody who can, convening powers as well, to bang heads
03:42together to bring people to get consensus. So we can get an agreed
03:46industrial strategy which is really important for developing economic growth
03:51and then go out and sell it to be that figurehead. And if you don't mind I'll
03:55give some examples. Yeah. I mean in the West Midlands for example last year we
03:59were the head of only, only the South East was ahead of us in getting foreign
04:04direct investment. We got on 27 projects into our neck of the woods. We've got
04:10thousands of people being re-skilled through boot camps in digital skills to
04:14make them available for the new economy. And we have the best house
04:19building record in the UK. Admittedly we could do with more social housing but
04:24they're just little indications of how devolution can help drive a regional
04:28economy. It's interesting what you say about the industrial strategy and I think
04:32that's really been called for across the board in the UK and something I hope or
04:37everyone hopes that the government will take on board. Up in the North East
04:41Ben Houchen has been returned for another term for the Tees Valley mayor.
04:47While Kim McGuinness was elected for the first, as the first mayor for the
04:51North East, she now leads the new North East Combined Authority which controls
04:57an annual investment fund of 46 million pounds as well as dedicated budgets for
05:03transport, housing and a load of things besides. She's made a real clear
05:09commitment to grow the economy of the region and to tackle poverty and create
05:15opportunities across the North East. And part of this programme is social and
05:21affordable housing which is in great need across the country of course. And
05:27also she's wanting to highlight the Great British Energy which will, the
05:33organisation's recently been set up by the new government and this is going to
05:37turbocharge the North East offshore energy sector and create thousands of
05:43jobs besides. So it's a really interesting time. We'll be following in
05:46the North East all these happenings, what the mayors are doing and also in
05:53the Midlands as well. You've got a programme of events I'm sure that's
05:56coming up, we'll be following that Kurt. Yeah we're speaking to our mayors on a
06:00regular basis and we've also, we have these two events over the past two weeks.
06:03We'll be doing far more in the near future. I'm sure and Insider will be
06:08following what's happening across not only the Midlands but the North East but
06:12across the rest of the UK. So that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed it.
06:17We'll be back for more soon but in the meantime if you want to read all the
06:22news and views and everything else that Insider's got going on please go to
06:28InsiderMedia.com and have a good read. So I hope you have a good day and we'll see you soon.