Whether you agree with ERP or not, surely it is time that they got their communications strategy over its implementation in place. However, that seems to be as much of a shambles as the initial launch and, yet again, there are mixed messages emerging from WAG.
For example, the Minister stated yesterday that “We are a small country and can’t give support to everybody and so we have to prioritise and we have made that priority the six key sectors,”
Yet in a recent presentation to businesspeople in Blaenau Gwent, James Price (the civil servant responsible for implementing ERP) emphasised that “There are over 190,000 businesses in Wales, but WAG only ever dealt with a maximum of perhaps, 10,000 of these businesses” and that WAG will now act as an enabler for all of these businesses, rather than just supporting the selected few.
So what is the strategy to be?
Focusing on a few businesses, as the Minister suggests, or helping the vast majority, as the civil servant suggests?
What is the business community to make of such mixed messages?
Yet again, it demonstrates the disconnectivity that exists between senior people within the Department of Economy and Transport and does not bode well for the ERP, regardless of one’s opinion of its relevance to the Welsh economy. If the senior people do not have the vision for their organisation, then how on earth can they implement a strategy for the business?
As someone suggested to me in an email yesterday, perhaps the best thing that WAG could have done in the recent budget is to just close down the entire Economic Development Department and put the majority of the savings made into business rate cuts.
Given their continuing poor performance regarding ERP, I am sure there are few in the private sector who would not sympathise with such a view.
