The Country Land & Business Association’s Corsham-based South West director, John Mortimer, has been appointed vice-chairman of Swindon and Wiltshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).
A LEP board member since February last year, John, pictured, formally took up his enhanced role today. 
During his tenure he is keen to make the LEP more relevant to the 25,000 businesses across Wiltshire – more than 95% of them small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and employing fewer than 250 people.
He said: “What I particularly want to achieve is a closer connection between the LEP and the thousands of businesses trying to make their way. It is important we reach and hear from more of those businesses as to how the LEP can benefit them.”
John said he joined the LEP board “as a way of making sure rural businesses have a voice”. He said he was passionate about trying to help all businesses in Wiltshire and Swindon reach their full potential.
“I think it is important board members bring their particular interest to ensure there is a good balance of experience,” he added. “However, it is also critical that we work in a collective way and act in the best interests of the whole business community and, indeed, the wider community.”
John has been South West director of the Country Land & Business Association (CLA) since 2002 and is based at Hartham Park, near Corsham.
He has had dealings with all the LEPs across the region – which runs from Gloucestershire to the Isles of Scilly – since they were set up in 2011.
A mining engineer by profession, John worked for 25 years in the minerals industry, latterly as technical and external affairs director at Hanson Quarry Products Europe Ltd in Chipping Sodbury. During that time, he was chairman of the British Geological Survey and also chaired the CBI Minerals Committee.
He is also a management board member on the South West Rural and Farming Network. He lives near Sherston after moving to Wiltshire in 1985.
LEP chair Barry Dennington said: “John joined our board to bring knowledge and understanding of the rural economy, which is a very important sector in Wiltshire.
“However, his experience of wider business will be invaluable as he takes up his role as vice-chairman and I am delighted that the board unanimously approved his appointment following a thorough recruitment process.”
The LEP has four priorities – inward investment; supporting and stimulating existing business growth and facilitating new business set up; job creation, education and skills; and economic infrastructure.
Over the past two years it has secured £141m of central Government capital funding through the Local Growth Fund as well as a further €70m (£49m) from the European Structural Investment Fund to support local business development.
It also won the City Deal for Swindon and Wiltshire, allowing the area to offer a new innovative approach to skills development, aimed at service leavers and civilian employees.
The LEP will soon implement its 2016 Strategic Economic Plan (SEP) – a blueprint for the area’s economic growth over the next 10 years.
