Swansea Bay’s digital concept
The proposed £1.3bn City Deal for the Swansea Bay City Region needs to get back to its initial digital vision as outlined by Wales’ most successful ever entrepreneur Sir Terry Matthews, argues leading enterprise academic Professor Dylan Jones-Evans
IN the past 13 years of writing my Western Mail column, I have always believed in speaking truth to power, no matter how uncomfortable or controversial that may seem to some.
We recently had Professor Gerry Holtham speak candidly about the £425m Circuit of Wales project, but many do not always do the same, especially concerning large publicly funded projects that promise to change the Welsh economy for the better (but rarely do so).
Last year, I praised Sir Terry Matthews for developing an economic plan for the Swansea Bay region that many expected to be the blueprint for attracting City Deal funding from the UK Government.
Fast-forward to March 2017 and this vision has now been replaced by a new strategy – led by Swansea University on behalf of four local authorities – in which most of Sir Terry’s proposals have been abandoned for something that few would recognise.
Let’s recap the key objectives for Sir Terry’s original Internet Coast strategy, which had a digital revolution at its heart that would transform the Swansea Bay region. These included: Establishing an infrastructure fund to develop internet-based technologies for the benefit of the UK, Welsh and regional economies in partnership with the private sector.
Creating an investment fund to promote regional competitiveness in businesses through various interventions.
Investing in the skills base by building upon existing partnerships between firms and the higher/further education sector.
This focus on funding and skills for businesses has now all but disappeared. There is no longer an infrastructure or investment fund and less than 1% of the budget has been specifically earmarked for skills. In addition, the emphasis on new digital technologies that was at the heart of the strategy has been cut to a single funded project.
Truly revolutionary initiatives, such as digitally connecting the energy assets of Swansea Bay to create a “Future Energy System,” are only briefly mentioned.
More worryingly, there is no mention of any funding to support the proposed installation of a new transatlantic cable from north America to Oxwich Bay, a project with the potential to transform south Wales’ economic fortunes.
Indeed, it could be said that Sir Terry’s Internet Coast concept, which promised so much to the region, has now been reduced to an internet cove at best.
Many will be asking why the four local authorities have adopted a City Deal which seems focused instead on supporting highly speculative building projects – such as a £225m Wellness Village – rather than investing in the growing digital economy? The new plan seems to have largely reverted to the discredited “if you build it, they will come” approach which has been abandoned by most governments around the world.
What is most disappointing to those of us who have studied economic development in Wales over the past two decades is that this has worrying echoes of the disastrous Technium programme [Welsh Government industrythemed network of business incubators] which also promised jobs and wealth by building expensive incubators across the region but simply failed to deliver.
One of the claims made by the founders of Technium in 2008 was that it “represents innovative thinking at its best… a recent and independently-verified study cites a regional net economic impact value of £363.5m, even at its most conservative estimate”.
You have to wonder who wrote such a study, given that this “innovative thinking” came largely to nothing two years later when the