Supporting new businesses

In his latest weekly email, Mayor Dave has talked about the importance of supporting new businesses in Bedford Borough.

You can read the email below, and you can sign up to Mayor Dave's email's at https://mayordave.org.uk/SignUp.

Supporting new businesses

One of the most important parts of being Mayor is helping to support local businesses and developing our economy.

Over the last month I have visited a number of new businesses who have made Bedford Borough their home and are creating new jobs locally.

Towards the end of July, I visited the Council's Jobs Hub to mark their 10th anniversary. I am incredibly proud of the Jobs Hub and the results have confirmed how important it has been that we have invested in this service. In the last ten years the Jobs Hub has provided advice and support to over 50,000 people and helped over 4,000 people into work, education and self-employment. You can find out more about the Jobs Hub at https://www.bedford.gov.uk/jobs-and-careers/jobs-hub/.

I recently opened Symbiosis Care's new Head Office. Symbiosis Care provide care, support and quality accommodation for adults with mental health and/or learning disabilities who historically have had many placement breakdowns and long secure psychiatric hospital stays. Their expansion has also resulted in new jobs for a number of Bedfordians.

We have also welcomed IDC's new Menu Fresh Service to the Borough. Based at Fuse in Wixams Menu Fresh is a new and exciting service designed for independent restaurants, hotels, and gastro pubs. They have a simple ordering service for the reliable delivery of high quality, local food, all at very competitive prices.

Earlier in August I was at Stewartby Business Park to help launch Evios new HQ building. Evios designs, manufactures and distributes electric vehicle charging points for homes and business locations. It is great to have another company operating in the green energy and manufacturing sector locally and creating job opportunities for local people.

Bedford borough has also seen recent investment from a number of other businesses which have low carbon impact at the centre of their business model. I recently launched the Bedford Green Technology and Innovation Park which consists of over 8,000 solar panels and is capable of generating up to 4.2MW of electricity and is enough to power approximately 1,000 homes.

Best Wishes,

Dave