After a well-received piece of work to raise awareness of Climate Risks to and Opportunities for their SMEs, Cheshire and Warrington LEP have undertaken a third phase of activity.
This third phase aims to ensure that key strategic employment sites, and business sectors, in Cheshire & Warrington are resilient to the potential impacts of climate change and to identify opportunities for on-site energy generation, heat networks, green infrastructure and renewable energy.
North West businesses will see an increase in damage from flooding due to climate change; this is the most significant threat to our economy unless continual action is taken; A large proportion of our economy is located in the Mersey Belt, which will become increasingly prone to the climate risks of higher temperatures, flood risk, and extreme weather.
Two thirds of the region’s 230,000 small businesses are not currently taking action on climate change, though 95% of larger businesses are.
Several studies have shown that SMEs are less likely to have the capacity to, or have taken the steps to, adapt to climate change risks and opportunities, do not generally have comprehensive risk management structures in place, and are more likely to be under-insured against current and future risks of climate change. SMEs’ capacity to consider and deal with risk is frequently limited by more urgent issues of workload, finance and business survival.
The new Phase 3, funded by the Environment Agency and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), concentrates on improving climate resilience amongst small & medium enterprises (SMEs), key environmental sectors and large company supply chains. To support this work, the Cheshire & Warrington LEP commissioned the preparation of guidance for SMEs on climate resilience entitled "Weathering the Storm” under a separate contract. This booklet can be found at:
http://claspinfo.org/smeadapt
The work in Phase 3 includes:
• Collating baseline information on the Strategic Sites with large numbers of SMEs identified during Phase 1 and further information gathered during Phase 2.
• Development of a database of SMEs in the Strategic Sites and Sectors;
• A launch event for the project and for the "Weathering the Storm” guidelines for business intermediaries such as trade bodies, Chambers of Commerce and Local Authority Economic Development teams;
• Organising three Cluster Meetings – one for SMEs on some of the vulnerable sites, one for a potentially polluting sector (Chemicals) and one for the Automotive sector supply chain.
The results of this work will be used to refine the work programme for the second part of Phase 3 which will include:
• Preparation of an Engagement Questionnaire to gather feedback from a greater number of companies and to inform them of the support available;
• A package of Resilience Plan Development Support including Toolkits, Checklists, Case Studies, individual business meetings and further cluster meetings.
This work will take place between May and October 2014.