Advantage West Midlands

Advantage West Midlands is the regional development agency for the West Midlands region. AWM was set up in 1999 and employs more than 300 people in Birmingham with a budget of of £200m for 2010/11.

In 2010's emergency budget, the government announced that AWM will be one of nine regional development agencies (RDAs) across England to be scrapped. The organisations will be replaced by Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs). While it hopes to continue with current projects, some may be scaled back or cancelled to meet current budget reductions. The date for the abolishment of the agencies has not been confirmed but could happen in 2012, an AWM spokesman said.

Geographical Coverage

The West Midlands comprises the counties of Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire; the unitary authorities of Herefordshire, Stoke-on-Trent and Telford and Wrekin; and the seven metropolitan districts of Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton.

High Technology Corridors

Advantage West Midlands has three geographical areas where the mix of business activity, academic expertise, research capability, infrastructure and development opportunities exist to encourage the growth of high technology businesses.

These are:

• The Central Technology Belt
• The Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire Technology Corridor
• The Wolverhampton to Telford Technology Corridor

Each corridor is managed a partnership team consisting of local organisations who can help with development, such as local authorities, universities, training providers and financial specialists. The role of the High Technology Corridors is to:

• develop and improve the infrastructure of the corridors, so that they offer a complete range of high quality accommodation that satisfies the demands of technology-led businesses

• promote and enable collaboration between businesses, academic and research institutions, to ensure businesses have access to, and benefit from, the local knowledge base

• provide integrated business support services and investment funds to support design, research and development and the commercialisation of research to create new products and services

• improve workshop and leadership skills so that existing and incoming businesses can recruit the high quality, highly skilled workforce they need

• market the corridors as prime locations for technology-related, design, manufacturing and professional service businesses.