HOMES MEAN BUSINESS - conference report

HOMES MEAN BUSINESS was held on March 17 2006 at Bristol's Watershed centre. The conference was jointly organised by Live Work Network and the Commission for Rural Communities to explore the needs of home based businesses outside the big cities.

At the event, the Commission launched a report produced by Live Work Network: Under the radar, tracking and supporting home-based businesses (available here in downloads)

• diversify and enhance rural enterprise
• revitalise the daytime economy and social activities in villages and market towns
• reduce air pollution and traffic congestion on the rural road network and motorways by eliminating the need to travel between home and workplace
• make more efficient use of existing and new buildings
• support pilot live/work developments to create clusters of visible home based businesses, to kick start modern rural economic renewal
• more effectively target investment in business support by central and local government and regional enterprise agencies.

In addition, Live Work Network is now working on statistical analysis of the impact of the home based business sector in the UK, in partnership with other expert agencies working in this field.

This follows a request at the event from Thomas Walker of the DTI's Small Business Service (above), who is responsible for overseeing the development of enterprise policy to meet the Government's ambition to make the UK the best place in the world to start and grow a business.

He explained to delegates that the Government's position was clear: if it can be shown that using the home enables more people to start businesses of their own - whatever their size - then policy responses should follow.

Chairing the conference, Live Work Network director Tim Dwelly (above) explained that evidence from emerging surveys showed that increasing numbers of businesses are now started at home: 'It is critical to ensure that the new home based business sector is not under the radar.'


SUMMARY OF THE EVENT
Philip Lowe, Countryside Agency board member with the economic development brief, opened the event by launching Under the radar and explaining the Commission's remit to tackle rural disadvantage. Action to support home based working and live/work should not only focus on those needing least support, he argued. 'We need a better understanding of  fledgling and established microbusinesses. There is a significant risk that they will become invisible as employers and employees. We’ve got to argue in favour of their getting on the radar of support agencies without getting clobbered.'

Max Comfort (above), business mentor and author of Portfolio People, amused the conference by mocking the notion of the 'lifestyle business' - in pyjamas and dressing gown. 'Stand up and give a round of applause to those of us who work from home' he told the unsuspecting office-based professionals present.

Roger Turner (left), head of skills and enterprise at the Commission for Rural Communities, summarised the findings of our report and other relevant research. 'Choosing to ignore the contribution to the economy made by home-based working in rural England is like ignoring the contribution of Glasgow and Birmingham combined. At 600,000, rural home businesses have a workforce the size of those two cities combined, or the size of the total labour force of England’s farms.'

Roger was later joined by the Commission's Paul Pennycook in leading a more involved discussion on this. 'Home-based businesses need to be confident,' he said, 'that when they knock on the door of their local authority, they aren’t just going to be exposed to local taxes, trading standards or health and safety inspections – they’re actually going to be helped and their needs understood in the same way that a large company would expect.'

 

Lynda Davis (above), director of Digital Peninsula Network, a project which supports over 200 mainly home based businesses in Penzance, Cornwall, explained the importance of face to face networking to encourage skills sharing and co-working to grow turnover. 'It is critical that you provide services and facilities that truly fit what home based micros say they really need,' she explained. 'It is no good expecting them to fit in with your existing models that were never designed with them in mind.' Lynda's presentation is available in our downloads area.

John Passmore (left), leading Ross-on-Wye's market town initiative in Herefordshire, explained how a live/work project is being pursued at Ross to create a focus for the town's renewal. Although there are very high levels of home working in the area, the sector remains very much hidden away. Learning lessons from places like Penzance, Ross hopes to use live/work property and a self-financed hub centre as a catalyst for wider economic realignment.

 

Members of Digital Peninsula Network answered questions from hub expert Toby Hyam (right of picture), whose Creative Space organisation runs centres including the Round Foundry in Leeds.

Paul Fong (above), director of Hunter Page Planning, told delegates how his company had steered through a successful application to develop the largest rural live/work scheme in the UK at Malmesbury Wilts. 'The planners were all too quick to recommend refusal because live/work just didn't fit their preconceptions of a separation of residential and employment land. But this zoning approach is now increasingly out of date.' Paul's presentation is in our downloads area.

Andy Lake, leading associate of Live Work Network, explained how local planning authorities need specific policies on live/work and homeworking if they are to have a meaningful response to such planning applications. He told delegates about Live Work Network's multi-client study to create  appropriate local authority planning policies - and about the pilot study the Network has written for Carrick District Council, the first non-urban authority to develop such a document.

Emma Jones (right of picture), head of Redbrick Enterprises and the Enterprise Nation website, spoke about the impact of the 'Enterprising Britons' project in Shropshire to support home based businesses. Emma's presentation is in our downloads area. Emma also interviewed a range of home based entrepreneurs including the owner of the Ashburton cookery school on Dartmoor, a Shrewsbury-based freelance business consultant and journalist and a leading light from Calderdale's new network of home-based micros in West Yorkshire.

During the break, delegates suggesting actions for government and other agencies at the event's Ideas Area. Their contributions will be included in our forthcoming paper Home enterprise - ideas for action.

In the afternoon, Tim Gray, estate surveyor for the Duchy of Cornwall, revealed plans at Newquay in Cornwall to create not only a live/work quarter in the 2,000 home extension being developed there, but also homeworking-enabled community. Susheel Rao, author of EcoHomes and adviser to the Duchy, explained how use of the home as workspace has been underestimated as a sustainability factor until now.

The new extension of Newquay is likely to be much discussed in the future, given previous interest in the Duchy's Poundbury scheme. The home working and live/work aspects are gearing up to be key aspects of this carefully masterplanned new community.

Home working support and live/work surgeries were also held, enabling all delegates to get answers to their own questions on these two related fields

Finally a session to conclude the event was held in which Thomas Walker of the DTI and Ian Edwards, rural regeneration lead at Advantage West Midlands, explained how central and regional government see the home based sector. 'The UK economy is highly polarised - a very small number of really big businesses and huge number of really small businesses,' Thomas Walker told delegates. 'This is a highly successful model, so unless we get more microfirms, we are not going to get more growth firms – it’s not an either/or choice.'

'Do we care if we have more enterprise in rural and urban areas?' he asked. 'Yes. It’s good in both contexts. Government policy is focused very strongly on increasing the flow of enterprising people in the economy. Jobs flow out of more enterprising people doing more enterprising things.'

Whether that came about through Whitehall encouraging or allowing more home-based working was a red herring, he suggested. 'A DTI study a few years ago followed people agencies had advised not to start a business. They’d done it anyway – that’s the British approach!’

'What would really provoke political interest, and potentially more government support for home-based enterprises, is this: can you show that working from home is a critical factor which encourages people to go into enterprise who wouldn’t otherwise do so? And if you can show that these people have reconciled being entrepreneurs with having a better lifestyle, better still.' His thinking - and the ideas of all the speakers an delegates who attended this extremely successful event - are now influencing our work to improve the framework for home-based enterprise in the UK.

View presentations in downloads
Download delegate pack containing draft ideas document
View delegate survey results

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