I have just read Nigel Hastilows excellent summary on Advantage West Midlands demise and replacement by LEPS (here on ICAEW ION community site)

One thing  that Nigel’s summary shows is that the organisations wanting to create their own LEPs will have their own agendas and they will all have their own physical boundaries.

Being someone who has lived on the edge of the RDA’s since their creation I am now concerned more by the fact that the LEP’s might not reach all the parts they need to and that we will have a new generation of self inflicted “Not Spots” like we do with broadband.

The ICAEW have put together some good ideas regarding what to do next after the demise of the RDA’s.

See their press release on the ICAEW website Business support: ideas for the future 

The wait and see approach as to what aspects of support are retained in the centre has a great deal to be said for it. The LEPs could be toothless by the time the Coalition has retained all the juicy bits.

If you want a shiny PDF of the article use the contact page and I will email one.

Earlier in the month the Cabinet Office released a press release about the cost of some information web sites run by UK Government departments – see the release “Clamp down on Government websites to save millions” on the Cabinet Office Site.

A report published today by the Central Office for Information (COI) found that across government £94 million has been spent on the construction and set up and running costs of just 46 websites and £32 million on staff costs for those sites in 2009-10. The most expensive websites are:

• uktradeinvest.gov.uk which costs £11.78* per visit; and
• businesslink.gov.uk which costs £2.15 per visit.

Before we lose some of these sites perhaps we should have more information than just the headline grabbing cost per visit.

HOW MUCH REVENUE DID THE PUBLIC GENERATE FROM THE INFORMATION PER CLICK?

I recently commented to a post on the ICAEW ION ITCOUNTS website about the same report:

As with all statistics the headline is in the detail a big cost number divided by a small user number is always a big number, but over what period, equally have the websites been through a major re-write during the period all giving them a high rating,

Obviously some sites have had a lot of money spent on their pretty design (usability as well don’t forget) but we have to ascertain if the end-users of the sites have actually benefited the economy by using the information provided on the site. How would the Cabinet Office collect that information?

After all the information has to be made available, the issue is that they should not be marketing portals for government/party departments they have to be useful information for the citizens and business of the country.

I guess the policy decision was to make the information available on the internet, the civil servants (who are still in post) decided how and how much to spend of their finite resources (our tax pounds) creating the sites.

Well the first Coalition Budget scraps the RDA’s and wants “Local Enterprise Partnerships”. Lets hope these are big enough to have economies of scale and small enough to be approachable and really relate to “functional economic areas”.

Making some policies national will however mean that one primary advantage of the RDA’s will be lost, the local knowledge utilised for investment in the local economy. Who will advise the relevant Government Department that a local market town initiative in rural England is better than one in an inner city or vice versa. Market forces are good but only where there is a sufficient economy in place to allow it to happen. Seed corn investment is needed across rural and urban boundaries.

Coalition Letter to Local Authorities and Business Leaders

I wonder if the proposed meeting on 12th July between Cherwell District and South Northamptonshire Councils regarding a possible merger of their management teams will have an impact on this.

Cherwell District Council and South Northamptonshire Council consider benefits of working together.

One of my biggest gripes over the years is that I live on the border of several RDA’s – SEEDA, AVM, EMDA and SWRDA and not far from EEDA.

I really hope this “Local” idea helps the surrounding economy and doesn’t just add another set of conflicting boundaries.

As a member of the Institute’s member communications working group I would welcome your views on the revamped icaew.com website

I believe it looks crisper and fresher, but can you use it better than before?

The problem used to be that there was so much information on there that you couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

Another criticism was about needing to know your ICAEW membership number and password for some pages and not others, has this changed for what you need?

Why oh why do mobile phone contracts have to be so difficult to evaluate.

My contract is up for renewal, so far my provider has admitted to making several mistakes in the history he has pulled up making each quote he has given me next to useless. I make an enquiry about using a Blackberry and lo the cost is 5 times that given on a major providers website.

Is it so difficult to quote for five phones and a 3G broadband package, where I only want to replace 3 phones and have mobile email for two.

Now I need to do the call evaluations that I thought my supplier was doing, to ensure he has done it properly.

Phones I have been looking at range from my Nokia E61 replacement the E71, the Samsung Omnia, Blackberry Curve and a Nokia E66/6220.

I have just come back from a local Oxfordshire County Council initiative seminar entitled “Operation Ostrich”.

The breakfast time seminar was well attended by local Cherwell businesses and I think all learnt things that, though obvious, were not in their own business plans.

The event was run using an audience participation case study where a fire had started in a vehicle in your office/factory car park and gradually escalated until it had reached your own building.

As you no longer had access to the building for an unknown amount of time how would you run your business, who would you contact, how would you contact them. As remember when you evacuate a building you aren’t supposed to take anything with you or go back for anything.

So where is the backup of your laptop, mobile phone, time manager etc.

Now I think I have found a use for all that offsite disk space Microsoft/BT keeps inviting me to use at minimal cost. Just have to keep it in a format that is easy to move around and password protect it.

BT Digital Vault

Windows Live SkyDrive

This presentation was rolling whilst the attendees of this year’s agm were networking and enjoying a curry at the award winning curry restaurant at Baylis House, Slough earlier this year.

15^th May 2008

Thames Valley Society of Chartered Accountants
President’s Review of January 2007 – May 2008

Normally our formal financial year would span two presidencies however as I have been your president for two years I thought I would report on the eighteen months since my last report. Our strategies have been nurtured from infancy leading to a higher level of support for members than ever before.

Chartered Accountants in Business

Our CAB group goes from strength to strength, with quarterly meetings with various topics, again we have held some successful soft skills events, hosted by one of our members, Joy Ainley. More recently another of our volunteers, David Harmes put on a successful evening event (“Putting the Numbers Front Seat”). Our next CAB event has just moved from the planning board to the flyer, we are taking over the Oxford Union in June when we have four star speakers for and against the proposition “This House believes Corporate Responsibility will not survive the downturn”, you should find a flyer in the pack, my thanks to Michael Cooper for his efforts in putting this together.

Practice Support Groups

We now have four practice support groups with Newbury successfully joining Oxford, Reading and Thames Valley East, new members are always welcome. During the year, together with the group chairmen I attended two of the three Practice Advisory Group forums where the new group wanted input from the general practitioner, should any of you want to see what Moorgate Place has to offer for the practitioner I highly recommend these events.

Job Club

The job club has not met for some time, with the current “Credit Crunch” we might find it valuable to resurrect it..

Technical Advisory Committee

The TAC is kept busy with monthly meetings reviewing Institute pronouncements.

Continuing Professional development (CPD)

As can be seen in the Treasurer’s report the SESCA managed CPD programme runs from strength to strength, with over a 1,000 course seats in each year.

Annual Dinner

We held a successful annual dinner at the Ashmolean Museum and the Randolph Hotel, where the Randolph surpassed itself with the quality of the local Thames Valley sourced produce.

Annual Conference

The annual conference, held in Stokenchurch, again ran in two streams with delegates mixing between practice and business focused lectures.

New Members Dinner

This year the New Members Dinner will be amalgamated with the Annual Dinner at the Crowne Plaza in Marlow.

This is a presentation I made to the Ordre des experts-comptables in Orléans, summer 2007. I was part of panel that they had put together to discuss doing business with their neighbours, in this case the UK as a precursor to their national conference in September.