Hello and welcome to the June edition of Warwickshire Means Business.

This month we feature one of the most pressing challenges facing the local economy; the shortage of employment land for use by small and medium-sized businesses. The Coventry & Warwickshire area continues to be a magnet for Foreign Direct Investment, which is wonderful news, and all that investment is very welcome, but much of the associated new industrial development has been on larger units. Smaller units, appropriate to SMEs, are in much smaller supply, so in WMB we outline what WCC and our partners are doing to address this, and list developments locally where solutions are already in place.

It is one of the County Council’s priorities to provide premises that give SMEs the best possible platform from which to start up and grow. Our business centres across the county are currently being transformed by an improvements programme, whilst small businesses looking for a base in Leamington Spa have an appealing new option following the refurbishment of WCC’s Holly Walk House.

Also in this edition of WMB we turn the spotlight on WCC’s Regeneration and Place Shaping Team which does such excellent work with Warwickshire’s towns to identify and pursue opportunities for them to grow and evolve their offers. Our Talk Up Our Towns section this month focuses on Leamington Spa, a “a melting pot of exciting and innovative opportunities quietly changing the world.”