Date of the report
November 2006
Author of the report
Forum for the Future
Purpose of the report
Forum for the Future undertook a futures project as part of their partnership work with Advantage West Midlands (AWM). The project aims to deliver part of AWM’s sustainable development policy on ‘Future proofing – using longer-term thinking to prepare for the future and drive innovation’. The first stage of this project was to identify the future drivers of change and uncertainties that will affect the West Midlands economy. This report is the output from this initial stage. It identifies and addresses in detail the main key drivers of change, which are the factors that influence the region’s performance economically, socially, and environmentally. Futures thinking is about looking to the long-term, thinking about what drives change and how we prepare for 25 years and more into the future. It is a good way of bringing key issues into the mainstream debate, such as sustainable development and demographic changes.
Relevance to the region
Through research, expert interviews and workshops, Forum for the Future identified 19 key future drivers as having a significant impact on the West Midlands Economic Strategy (WMES) and economy of the West Midlands in general. Out of those, several are of particular importance, e.g. aging population and workforce. Also, West Midlands lags behind the national average on a range of skills and there is a real need to up-skill or re-skill the workforce in a number of areas. This need will become increasingly urgent, as there will be fewer opportunities in the future for people with low level skills. Investing in skills is a key to developing business competitiveness within the region, nationally and internationally. The West Midlands is at the heart of the UK transport network. However, the continuing growth of the volume of traffic over the last several decades is increasing transport infrastructure stress. The growing demand for cars means congestion will continue to be a major problem. Diverse economies, increase in the knowledge economy, climate adaptation, increasing pressure on natural resources, energy supply and security as well as lack of regional identity are among the crucial factors that will have implications for a range of business sectors.
What SWM liked
We liked that report identified a number of drivers of change, gave an overview of each with the relevance to the WM region, presented impacts and raised noteworthy questions to be considered when looking to the long-term development of the WM region. These drivers have been used to help future proof the review of the WMES which runs to 2020, and have informed our 2020 vision for the region.
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