The new chief executive of Business Link WM has ‘huge faith' in the organisation believing it is well placed to support local businesses as they struggle against the current economic conditions.
Lorraine Holmes told Business Report that it is not just for professional reasons that she is excited about her new role.
"If you can't be passionate about the job you are doing go and do something else," Holmes said. "I am passionate about this region. I'm from here and all my family's here."
The organisation has hit the headlines in recent months for all the wrong reasons with chief executive Alison White stepping down after just over a year in charge. There were also trouble-shooters sent in and up to 25 people were made redundant.
But there was some good news when the local RDA, Advantage West Midlands (AWM), decided to extend its funding by another two years and so turned to former head of Business Link Shropshire Holmes to steady the ship as she held the post on an interim basis in the 15 months before White arrived.
With so much happening at the organisation recently and with the announcement of the contract extension continuity was an important factor when choosing the next chief executive.
"There is always a risk when you bring new people in," she said. "New people have new ideas. The thinking was let's get someone in that we know, a lot of the staff know, the region knows and is in tune with the thinking of AWM and the Business Link board so that we don't lose momentum as the baton is being handed over."
Despite the problems the organisation has had Holmes didn't hesitate to accept the role. "I care passionately about two things: The people at Business Link, who want to do a good job, and about the economy of the West Midlands."
Holmes' enthusiasm to support businesses in her home region is driven by her concern for a shrinking business base and a contraction of private sector employment. "It was this passion for where the future jobs are coming from that brought me out of the private sector and into this arena and I have never lost that."
Now that Holmes is in place she is clear on what her priorities are. "Fundamentally we need to help start more businesses, move existing companies up the value chain and support the development of emerging sectors.
"If we keep doing what we have always done then we will always get what we have always got and we won't be addressing this contraction of the income generating part of the West Midlands."
One of the big issues for Holmes is that the region has large service and public sectors which cannot be sustained without primary wealth creating activities. "If we get this right we can be part of actually stimulating the wealth creation machinery.
"More than any other region in the UK we have to do that here as public sector jobs are going to start disappearing and they are not going to be able to take the approach of just pulling jobs out of hats the way that they have in the past."
Business Link expects to help start up to 5,000 businesses this year, but recently the client group has changed significantly. "Most people before they talk to us have usually been thinking about starting a business for at least two to three years, so by the time they make that first move they are ready to go. What we are finding now is that it has become an option for people who have recently been made redundant. So we are changing our service to give them more coaching and support.
"That is why we are working with each sector, bringing in specialist help and focusing on digital and low carbon industries to develop more specialist services for them. So we can start to grow some of those enterprises in a more positive way."
The next step is to broaden the business start up offer and is meeting grass roots community organisations who are working with young people or women who might want to start a business. "We are getting together with them to join up what we are doing with what they are doing."
Holmes admits that Business Link doesn't always get it right but on an AWM survey it received a customer satisfaction rate of 90 per cent. "When you analyse the 10 per cent that aren't satisfied 80 per cent of that was because they didn't get funding. There are a lot of people who think, ‘I'll go to Business Link because I want some money', but they miss the point.
"The businesses that get the best out of Business Link realise that the real value is that objectivity. We hold a mirror up for them. Most people are so busy working in the business that they don't get the time to see where the threats are or spot the opportunities.
"The time that an adviser spends in a business is about that. It is about seeing what is going on in the business and what is perhaps holding them back and causing a lot of pain.
She agrees with many businesses that there is too much red tape to cut through when trying to get hold of funding from the organisation.
"The difficulty is that we don't get a nice little pile of money. We get some from the UK government, some from Europe and some from other government departments. Unfortunately, they have all got their own rules and regulations and we have to comply with all sorts of things."
This leads to Business Link having to provide an audit trail for all of this funding because it has to show a group of different auditors where they have spent the money.
"We know that is a pain, we hate it and our customers hate it. The best we can do is ask our customers to bear with us and be patient.
"We do lobby quite hard. Whenever we get the chance to get a government minister down we get our businesses into complain about the paper work and the bureaucracy. There is a fine balance as it is public money at the end of the day so there is a need to be quite onerous."
One of the most common complaints about Business Link is that failed businessmen are sent out to advise clients on how to run their business, a concern that Holmes takes seriously.
"One of the things that we are fundamentally changing in the West Midlands is the quality and relevance of our advisers. In Shropshire we were one of the first Business Links to introduce a robust assessment for our advisers. We put them in front of a panel of businesses as part of the assessment. So we have not only assessed their technical competence but also seen how they perform and get feedback from industry."
Despite the Tories threatening to abolish the RDAs, Holmes is not worried about what a change of government could mean for her organisation.
She claims that with market conditions predicted to be difficult for the next two years a government of any complexion will see that there is a need for business support. "There will still be a business support service in some form and it will probably be called Business Link. What that means for us, I don't know.
"To be honest one of the things in our environment is that you learn to stop worrying about things like that because it will drive you mad. Our staff are pretty pragmatic. If there's a need for it we'll stay, if not we'll go."
Whatever the future brings for Business Link WM, Holmes is clear on one point: "This will probably be the last job I will have and I would like to leave something good."

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