Prime Minister Theresa May and the members of her Cabinet held their first regional Cabinet meeting at Sci-Tech Daresbury on 23rd January 2017 and saw launch of the Government’s new Industrial Strategy green paper. The strategy includes plans for investment into research and innovation, development of technical skills in science, technology, engineering, maths and digital proficiency, and supporting businesses and entrepreneurs as they start and grow.

The Prime Minister met with several business leaders to discuss challenges and opportunities facing high growth manufacturing and technology businesses. Tom Dawes, Valuechain CEO, discussed the industrial digitisation strategy with the Prime Minister and the importance of integrating the UK’s traditional high value manufacturing sectors with digital technology entrepreneurs and leading academics to establish cross-sector collaborative ecosystems. Tom emphasised the need to create a multi-disciplinary workforce that combine skills such as electronics and mechanical engineering, operations management, computing and data science.