Why the Milton Keynes tech community is important
Recently, I came across this news article that the city council will be collaborating with the community led group, Protospace. Milton Keynes Council will be providing the group almost £40K to support the tech community.
The group aims to bring people and businesses together to run events and programmes that help bring a vision for technology and innovation for Milton Keynes.
There are many events that are associated with the group. Such as Made in MK and MK Geek Night (one day, I’ll submit a talk. I’ve never done one before!)
I’m from Milton Keynes, born and raised. I’ve worked at a few companies based in Milton Keynes (the biggest being Domino’s Pizza Group), and I’ve seen how successful Milton Keynes has become when it comes to business.
Or so I thought…
Protospace worked with Whitecap Consulting to create the 2022 Milton Keynes Tech Ecosystem Report.
In this blog post, I’m going to break the report down and bring you the key points. Hopefully it’ll explain just how important the Milton Keynes tech community is.
The Summary (TLDR)
- There are 45K tech workers, which is 30% of the total workforce
- There are 2400 tech enterprises, which is 19% of the total enterprises in the city (yes, Milton Keynes is a city now)
- The tech sector has a GVA of £3.4bn, which is 23% of the GVA for Milton Keynes
- Milton Keynes has a very high startup activity
- Key strength in autonomous vehicles and robotics
- Milton Keynes suffers from a tech talent shortage (which is a national problem)
- There is a problem around attracting and retaining talent in Milton Keynes
- There’s a perception that Milton Keynes lacks a vibrancy that other cities have
So overall, a mixed bag. The biggest problem continues to be finding talent. This problem isn’t new. In fact, I wrote up a post about work done by the Learning and Work Institute in 2021, which you should totally read.
Let’s look into some more sections in greater detail.
Tech sector
Compared to other cities in the UK, Milton Keynes really stands out amongst the crowd. It beats larger cities such as Manchester and Birmingham, and is close with Cambridge and Oxford. Which if you think about it, it’s really impressive that Milton Keynes is catching up with Cambridge. Especially since that Cambridge is home to many big names in tech in the Science Park and Business Park. Such as; ARM, Qualcomm, AstraZeneca, Samsung and Citrix.
But what’s one of the reasons why Milton Keynes is so popular?
It’s geographical position.
Sitting between the Cambridge and Oxford arc, being close to the Silverstone Tech cluster, motorway access and trains to London give Milton Keynes a strong advantage in drawing business to the area.
In fact, research suggests that Milton Keynes is the best place in the UK for commuting. Plus, it’s home to the highest number of electric vehicle charging locations and an average commute of 14.1 miles.
If you live in Milton Keynes, you know of the grid road design and the Redways make Milton Keynes unique. And that has paid off as one of the cities key strengths is in robotics and autonomous vehicles. There’s no doubt that you’ve seen the Starship delivery robots going around.
If you look at the tech ecosystem in Milton Keynes, there are companies that specialise in creative works, education, finance and even sports technology. This is a reason why the tech community is important in Milton Keynes, it has a reputation for being a location for testing new technologies.
Talent and skills
Everyone knows that digital skills are now life skills. And demand for advanced skills is continuing to rise. This issue isn’t exclusive to Milton Keynes, this is a country wide issue.
According to the Disconnected report by World Skills UK, 92% of businesses require a basic level of digital skills and 82% of job vacancies now require basic digital skills.
FutureDotNow found that approximately 11.8 people million are lacking digital skills.
And the demand for advanced digital skills is growing. With 27% of employer’s are now asking for these skills.
This demand has affected businesses in areas such as:
- Increased workload for other staff
- Difficulties in meeting customer service objectives
- Increased operating costs
- Losing business to competitors
The South Central Institute of Technology found that between 2010 and 2020, the number of digital jobs increased by 21%.
In fact, the SEMLEP Local Skills Report found that vacancies for jobs in the tech/digital sector across the region have increased 68% from 2020 to 2021.
Plus, the highest number of vacancies being for software developers and engineers.
One of the biggest challenges however is surrounding the attraction and retention of talent within Milton Keynes. This is a particular problem for attracting young talent. The report also mentions that Milton Keynes lacks a vibrancy that can be found in other cities.
However, due to Milton Keynes’ geographical position, there are high education providers that offer a strong supply of talent (think of Cambridge and Oxford University). But, Milton Keynes is a city that doesn’t have a University, this could be a factor as to why there is a ‘brain drain’ and a shortage of talent.
Collaboration
Collaboration is one key suggestion that can help improve the tech community in Milton Keynes. The report found that stakeholder described the current tech ecosystem as “fragmented” and “disparate”.
Sure, there are events such as MK Geek Night, but stakeholder interviews found that reach and engagement was a problem. There is also a lack of awareness around the technologies, projects and the tech firms within Milton Keynes.
The report suggests that a platform or a forum might be useful. Where organisations and individuals can become members and share information to create an accessible platform. The report also found that there is an opportunity to create a physical space such as a technology hub.
What next?
The report makes the following suggestions:
- Create a Milton Keynes tech steering group
- Establish a tech ecosystem strategy
- Design and create a technology hub
- Create a tech accelerator as part of the hub
- Establish an education providers’ group to create tech talent strategy for the benefit of Milton Keynes
As described above under Collaboration, creating a technology hub, business/science park would be hugely beneficial. A good example of this would be the Cambridge Science Park (I’ve been there!) or even the Atlanta Tech Village (I have not been there!).
Giving startups and individuals a dedicated flagship quality space would attract, retain and inspire talent to Milton Keynes.
However, there is still a much bigger issue that remains to be solved, the issue about the demand for digital skills.
There’s a lot of work to do to ensure that the tech community in Milton Keynes continues to grow. It certainly seems that the city will be one to watch in the next few years.
