I was pleased to welcome George Osborne to Thornton-Cleveleys yesterday. He joined me to visit an excellent local firm, Addison Projects, who do precision engineering. They have a wide range of clients from the aerospace sector to Formula One cars and even Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Mr Osborne had a short presentation on the firm’s development and then toured the factory, looking at some of the projects they are doing for larger clients. The firm’s MD Marcus Addison took the opportunity to raise a number of points with Mr Osborne about how government can best help the small business/manufacturing sector. As he rightly points out, there has been a lot of focus on making money out of money – banking – and less focus on making money out of making things, which is what Addison does. I was particularly interested to hear that Addisons have set up apprenticeship schemes funded out of their own pocket to cope with the local skills gap. With various branches across the north, Marcus also joined the long list of people in this part of the world stating the desperate need for a new road link to the M55.

Commenting on Mr. Osborne’s visit, Marcus Addison said: “It was a tremendous opportunity to demonstrate to a very senior politician both the reality of the recession in which we find ourselves and the creative approaches to business growth that financial adversity can stimulate. I hope that Mr. Osborne gained a good insight into how an engineering services company like Addison is coping with the significant challenges we face and, possibly, ways that he may be able to assist us in the future.”