THREE COUNTIES TO HOST NEW DEFENCE AND SECURITY CLUSTER TO DRIVE ECONOMY

Following the growing success of the Three Counties Defence and Security Expo, which first launched four years ago as a stand-alone annual event, the organisation behind it, the Three Counties Defence and Security Group (3CDSG) has revealed plans to launch a Regional Defence and Security Cluster

A new Regional Defence and Security Cluster, covering Gloucestershire, Worcesteshire and Herefordshire is to be set up to drive collaboration and innovation across the region and the sector throughout the year. The group will tackle key strategic challenges and capabilities detailed by organisations such as GCHQ and DASA (the government’s Defence and Security Accelerator which identifies and funds exploitable innovation to make the UK a safer place).

The new cluster will bring together members of the existing Three Counties Defence and Security Group (3CDSG) with industry, regional business agencies and academia – with government support to ensure innovative defence and security SMEs are helping to tackle the issues of the 21stcCentury and boosting the region’s economy.

The Three Counties Defence and Security Group was set up in 2012 by Richard Morgan, Partner at law firm Harrison Clark Rickerbys, after he went to work in their new office in Hereford.

Richard said: “Some of our new clients were special forces personnel who’d left military service and set up in business. Most of them were tech experts, but there was little networking, and when I discovered that some of them were supplying similar software to the same branch of the MoD, I began introducing them to each other.

“We realised that there was a large group of such people across the county who didn’t know each other. Bringing them together could create opportunities for joint ventures or consortia which could bid for bigger projects than the sum of their parts.

“We started Three Counties Defence and Security Group and began arranging events. What soon became obvious was that these needed to be larger, to create the biggest shop window we could for their capabilities.”

The first expo was in February 2017 in Hereford, with 35 exhibitors and 400 delegates. It sold out.

Among the delegates were procurement teams from Special Forces Hereford. They offered to help planning future events, and that also meant they engaged with their supply chains which helped it scale up fast.

The 2018 one-day expo attracted personnel from the special projects division of the UK Strategic Command in Whitehall who have since adopted it as the vehicle for their commercial briefing to industry.

The pandemic grounded the physical event for two years, but this year it returned to the Three Counties Showground in Malvern. The two-day event attracted 136 exhibitors, almost 2,000 delegates and international government defence delegations.

Richard Morgan, who is now President of 3CDSG alongside his Harrison Clark Rickerbys duties, said: “It is now the leading expo for the special user group of the UK defence and security industry. It promotes business networking and shares innovative thinking across the industry.

“The geography in this area is important. You have industry around special forces in Hereford, GCHQ in Cheltenham, QinetiQ in Malvern and the cyber security corridor.”

With the annual expo now attracting big companies such as Thales, Ultra Electronics, BAe and Leonardo, the Three Counties Defence and Security Group’s new cluster will help maintain this innovation and networking throughout the year.

The Group is now developing a secure online platform for the cluster so that members can take advantage of opportunities on an ongoing basis.

“This is a real opportunity to drive the region’s economy in this sector throughout the year, rather than annually,” he added.