Looking ahead at Kent and Medway’s Future
What does a successful Kent and Medway look like in 2035, and what needs to happen now to get us there?
That was one of the questions highlighted around this year’s Kent & Medway Business Summit, which bought together discussions based on this years theme ‘Reset Kent and Medway’.
This year Director Paul Gannaway and Marketing Assistant Ella Eastwell attended the Summit, joining businesses, education providers and public sector organisations from across the region to discuss opportunities and challenges within Kent and Medway.
A word that was repeated throughout the day was ‘uncertainty’, a word, especially within the construction industry, we know all to well.
Getting Comfortable with Uncertainty
Rupal Patel, a keynote speaker, ex-CIA agent and CEO of The Global Leadership Lab, opened up conversation with her talk on exploring how businesses can navigate change and uncertainty. One of the many useful tools for navigating change and uncertainty was the ability to draw on streams of Intel. She noted that uncertainty didn’t need to result in inactivity for businesses, and actually can be used to fuel the business, through challenging the assumptions, working within constraints and making a series of informed decisions rather than waiting for perfect information.
It’s getting comfortable with the uncomfortable, particularly relevant within this current climate.
Patrick Campbell, the Bank of England Agent for the South East & East Anglia, then provided the wider economic backdrop, reviewing inflation, interest rates and the pressures that are affecting businesses and households. Patrick noted statistics have also suggested the general public familiarity with concepts such as CPI and Inflation, recognising this now as a part of everyday conversation.
What sort of Kent do we want?
With the emerging Local Growth Plan, it is clear that Kent & Medway is already a substantial economy, with around £50 billion of GVA, 71,000 businesses and 767,000 jobs. The plan looks ahead ten years, identifying strengths in agri-food and agritech, ports, transport and logistics, digital and technology and energy.
But, economic growth needs somewhere to develop. It needs premises, power, digital connectivity, homes, transport and the facilities in which to develop skills. That sits alongside Kent’s identity as the Garden of England, and the discussion was less about choosing between the two than about deciding what good growth looks like. . It also raised a question we recognise from our own work: how effectively is the infrastructure promised alongside development delivered?
Local Growth In Practice
One example was sitting within the discussion. Richard Peretti from Polyplay spoke about Docking Station in Chatham, a creative production and education facility that we know well through our work as Quantity Surveyor on the project.
This scheme is restoring and transforming what used to be an old ‘Police Section House’, a Grade II listed Scheduled Ancient Monument, and a completely new-build studio at the rear, into the ‘Docking Station’, a cutting-edge creative production facility with state-of-the-art facilities to nurture creativity and innovation, on behalf of the Institute of Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Kent.
Buildings are only part of the Picture
A big part of discussion was physical infrastructure, and the impact this type of expansion would have Kent & Medway’s development. Construction and the built environment is a huge priority sector in the Kent & Medway Local Skills Improvement Plan 2026-29 and the conversations at the Summit highlighted the demand for this.
We see this first-hand, and continue to invest in apprenticeships, work experience and engage with young people interest in working within the industry.
From plans to delivery
The Summit closed off with a discussion with Dr Joel Montgomery asking what foundations we can put in place now to lead the region towards successful vision for 2035, from economic and political changes to physical development that allow communities and businesses to function.
2035 may still feel some way off, but the decisions that will determine what Kent and Medway looks like when we get there are being made now, and that is what will shape what the coming years will look like.
