The key role business can play in tackling city’s inequalities

On Wednesday evening, Marketing Derby held its latest London Embassy event, which saw Bondholders, investors, ambassadors and politicians descend on the Guildhall, the City of London’s civic and ceremonial centre. The theme of this year’s event was how inward investment and our academic institutions can help bring down the barriers to social mobility and tackle the city’s inequalities. The 2023 London Embassy was kindly backed by headline partner Smith Partnership. Here, in his own words, Kevin McGrath, the law firm’s managing partner, explains the key role the business community can play in helping the city address these challenges.

I am not ashamed to admit that one of the greatest pleasures of supporting Marketing Derby’s Embassy events over the years is the opportunity to have our firm’s logo prominently on display inside some of London’s finest buildings.

This year, we got the pleasure of seeing our signage inside the Guildhall’s Old Library, which once again made me feel like a graffiti artist who has managed to tag some of the most iconic architecture the country has to offer.

The Embassy event is always a standout occasion in the Marketing Derby calendar, and we were thrilled to be the headline partners once again, welcoming Derby businesses, large and small, ready to meet ambassadors and investors and showcase the very best that Derby has to offer.

This year, I was particularly proud to support the event when the focus is very much on how generating investment for the city can help tackle the problems we have locally with social mobility.

While it is absolutely right to celebrate everything that Derby has to offer, including its thriving business community, industrial heritage and the fact it is home to word leaders such as Rolls-Royce and Toyota, we cannot ignore the challenges that we face as a city, one of the greatest of which is social mobility.

Everyone who attends the Embassy event cares for our city and its people, and while the wonderful team at Marketing Derby will do everything they possibly can to attract investment to our city, I believe there is a huge amount that we, as businesses and individuals, can do to help address the problems that we have.

The statistics don’t lie. While Derby has the highest average salaries outside of London, we rank 303rd out of 324 areas in terms of social mobility, according to data compiled by the Social Mobility Commission.

The contrasts across our city are stark, with a child born in Arboretum ward today now likely to have a life expectancy of 10 years less than a child born in Allestree.

While I may be romanticising about the past, I don’t remember things being so bad when I was young.

I was nine when I made up my mind I wanted to be a lawyer after watching an episode of Petrocelli.

From then on, I pretty much took it for granted that was what I would become.

The nine-year-old me took a lot for granted – and not just that Derby County would always play topflight football.

I took it for granted that if I got toothache I could see a dentist, and if I got ill I could see a doctor.

It was a given that my family would always have a roof over their heads in decent accommodation provided by the local council and that my local school would provide me with a first-class education in buildings that weren’t falling down.

And I also knew that as long as I worked hard enough, my family’s circumstances would not impact on my ability to go on to university and eventually qualify as a lawyer.

Sadly, I doubt very much if I was nine years old today, I would be quite so confident.

I know from personal experience how crucial access to education is to improving social mobility and across Derby educational establishments, including the University of Derby and Derby College, are making determined efforts to make education more accessible.

The fact Derby has been acknowledged as a UNESCO City of Learning is testimony to the efforts that are being made, but businesses can also help.

As managing partner of a law firm, I’m very aware of how difficult it is for many to afford the costs of following the more traditional routes towards a legal qualification.

At Smith Partnership we now actively encourage our staff to consider other routes to qualification, including apprenticeships and providing the funding for staff to pursue qualification while they are working for us.

It allows us to identify and nurture talent not necessarily based on academic qualifications.

This is a rewarding experience for all concerned and we have realised the difference this approach can make, often in ways we couldn’t have appreciated at the outset.

By opening up opportunities to people of different ages and from many different backgrounds, we have managed to find people with different views on life, with new ideas for our business and new ways of relating to our clients, all of which is helping our firm to grow.

As a business we have also committed to helping to support those organisations who are actively involved in the efforts to improve social mobility in the city and our senior staff are encouraged to share their skill sets more widely with local charities and other organisations.

We have colleagues who sit as trustees on the boards of a number of local charities, including Derby County Community Trust, Enthusiasm, Direct Housing Advice and the YMCA.

Charities are always looking for experienced businesspeople to join their ranks.

From a business perspective this gives our future leaders the opportunity to be involved in the management and governance of organisations very different to our own and to learn from them.

We understand that all of our staff feel just as passionately about the city as we do and we have committed to giving them both the time and resources to play their part, whether that is pro bono work with organisations like Down to Earth or Safe and Sound or cooking lunch for 80 people at the YMCA.

Please trust me when I say that from a business perspective there is nothing altruistic about this.

The team spirit, sense of belonging and pride that they promote within our business is invaluable.

While we are not going to solve all of our problems overnight, if we all play our part, I have no doubt that there are nine-year-olds out there from all over our city today who will have the privilege of attending wonderful Embassy events in years to come.

Now, if only the Rams can get back to the Premier League…