Make Your Mark Blog

I’ve been on a tour around the UK over the past few weeks to help our fabulous panel of judges find the most enterprising place in Britain (or rather the UK) and as always the nominees are as diverse as they are geographically disparate.

Here at Make Your Mark we’ve been working closely with the BBC on Village SoS (www.bbc.co.uk/villagesos/) so I’ve been particularly keen to see what is being done in rural locations to tackle the enterprise challenge.

Enterprise HQ (EHQ) in Coalport, Shropshire is a little gem of a project and the regional winner of Enterprising Britain for the West Midlands. Nestled within the Shropshire countryside, EHQ provides support to the thousands of home-based enterprises that project lead Fay Easton notes are ‘isolated, invisible and operating under the radar.’

National research has shown that 2.5 million businesses are based within UK homes, a growing figure, and EHQ has capitalised on this trend to provide an incubation centre for thousands of surrounding businesses, covering 250 square miles.

Training sessions and tailored advice are on offer, alongside facilities for hot-desking (e-pods) and super-swanky spaces for client presentations (beats the kitchen table) but the best aspect for Shropshire home workers is access to peer support, networking and feeling connected to a thriving hub of creative, mobile professionals.

Fay Easton steers this project and is a champion of home-based enterprise, full of enthusiasm for the sector and for its potential to drive economic activity. Fay has developed a clear vision and with a strong team and a number of partnerships with enterprise agencies, EHQ has addressed the needs of rural home workers, increased the number of business start-ups in the county and helped young people realise the freedom and flexibility of home enterprise through the Business in a Box toolkit.

The Local Government Association deemed Shropshire the most advanced area in the UK in terms of supporting home enterprise - which makes EHQ a good model for other rural areas wanting to develop a vibrant enterprise culture.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Enterprise in the UK, Enterprising Britain, Enterprising places, Entrepreneurship, Village SOS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.