| What are the major issues
facing DTI cluster policy at present? Successful clusters cannot be developed in isolation. There are a number of cross-cutting issues which will have an effect on cluster development. These issues include:
Higher Education
Institutes
Exploiting science and technology has a crucial role in cluster development. In the future, the most successful clusters will be those which excel at generating and disseminating knowledge and exploiting it commercially.
The DTI is therefore encouraging higher education institutes (HEIs) to play
a more active role in the business world, primarily through the
work of the Office
of Science and Technology (OST) which is responsible for knowledge
transfer/exploitation funding programmes such as the Higher Education
Innovation Fund, the Science Enterprise Challenge and the University
Challenge, all of which aim to encourage greater exploitation
of science.
The publication Clusters: Higher Education
and Business Collaborating for Success  (1.1Mb)
provides further information on the kind of collaboration that
can take place between higher education and businesses from a
wide range of industrial sectors.
Skills
Business today demands people with high-level skills who can adapt quickly to changing requirements. Success in delivering those skills will depend on joint action from Government, employers and individuals: all must be actively engaged in skills development. New services have been created to provide timely and flexible solutions to support this change.
Examples of these services are:
Learndirect
The Learning and Skills Council
(LSC)
The Skills for Business Network,
which includes the Sector Skills Development Agency (SSDA) and
Sector Skills Councils (SSCs)
In July 2003, a new cross-government Skills Strategy was published
as the White Paper 21st Century Skills Realising Our Potential.
This was DfES-led, but written jointly with DTI. It sets out how
the Government, employers and individuals can create a demand-led
education and training system that will raise the skills of the
nation. It also identifies the importance of enhancing skills
and innovation within clusters and supply chains.
Access to finance
The Small Business Service (SBS)
operates a number of schemes and initiatives that are designed
to help small businesses in a variety of ways, including ways
to enable them to access finance more readily. Information on
sources of finance aimed specifically at small businesses can
be found on the Finance and Money section of www.businesslink.org.
Planning
In July 2000, the then DETR published a research report Planning
for Clusters which looked at the impact of planning on clusters.
This work fed into the review of the planning system now being
carried out by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM),
which led to the publication of a Planning
Green Paper in December 2001.
Further Information
|
