I enjoyed speaking to several entrepreneurs at Springboard, a modern business centre in Stokeseley industrial park catering to small businesses. Springboard provides a one-stop-shop office solution for growing companies and after using springboard they can move on to either Momentum (a similar development) or elsewhere onto the industrial estate.
Opentree is a leading software business co-founded by Andrew Frank. They provide cutting edge document management solutions for large companies like Siemens, Tata Steel and National Grid. It was exciting to see a growing technology business doing well here in the constituency. Also on the digital side, I met with Phil Johnson the owner of yellowboxmarketing which is a successful design and marketing firm. I discussed with both businesses their ongoing need to attract high quality STEM graduates. As a country we do not do a good enough job of getting young people to study science subjects. I have spent a lot of my time outside business working with schools and educational charities to promote take-up of STEM subjects – I am a governor of a Science School and one of my initiatives has been to set up after-school science school clubs for primary school children which are a great way to engage them.
I also spent time with financial advisor Tim Jopling and we discussed the benefits of the Governments recent reforms to pensions which allow people to take control of their savings. Mark Dicken runs the large property company Terry Dicken which owns office space across the constituency. We talked a lot about business rates– as I have discussed elsewhere, these are often a strong barrier to small companies growing and empty property business rates serve as a deterrent for developers to create new office space.
Overall it was wonderful to see such a thriving entrepreneurial community here in Stokesley. It goes to prove that we can combine a wonderful rural quality of life with growing enterprises and employment.