Space South Central Kicks off with Inaugural Advisory Board Meeting

Space South Central held the first meeting of its Advisory Board on 26th September, hosted at the Surrey Research Park. Board members represent a terrific cross section of organisations from across the whole South Central region, all committed to contributing their time an effort to help translate Space South Central’s objectives (listed below) into actions relevant to the region, promote strategic regional coherence, set priorities and provide direction to ensure objectives are delivered. The underlying priorities are to increase economic growth, inward investments, private financial investment and the take up of skills relevant to the space sector. The Board will also help coordinate collaborative bids for funding, particularly bids aligned with the National Space Strategy and UKSA.

1. Mission Capabilities Ensure that UK scientists and entrepreneurs have access to end-to-end capabilities and the support that they need, to go from initial idea to completed project.
2. Skills Demonstrate best practices in inclusion, diversity, recruitment, retention and training to make space careers as attractive and rewarding as possible.
3. Outreach Connect, educate and inspire people of all ages and backgrounds so that we all appreciate the value of space in our everyday lives.
4. Sovereign Capability Strengthen space-related supply chains to make UK space activities resilient to external threats while protecting national interests.
5. Levelling Up by Promoting Growth Use our knowledge and expertise to increase growth across Space South Central to maximise economic benefit for the UK from its largest regional space cluster. To collaborate with other regions and create prosperity across the nation.
6. Maximising Service Capabilities Enable the growth of new downstream space application opportunities and boost space-derived revenue.
7. Securing International Partnership and Private Investment Proactively create collaboration opportunities and develop mutually beneficial relationships with partners abroad as well as leveraging more effectively on the region's potential to raise private investment.

Members of the advisory board are drawn from industry, regional organisations, national bodies and academia to represent the balanced mix of skills required to drive regional innovation in the fast moving and highly complex Space sector. Space South Central aims to be “institutionally agnostic” which is to say to always act in the interests of the wider region.

A number of important actions were agreed at the meeting, including putting together acoordinated plan to provide destination places to host inward investment visits, an early focus onthe Skills for Space agenda, and an emphasis on start-up and investment initiatives.

Organisations represented on the Board are: Airbus Defence and Space, UKSpace, SSTL, In-Space Missions, Farnborough Aerospace Consortium, Hampshire County Council, Surrey County Council,Enterprise M3 LEP. Solent LEP, University of Surrey, University of Portsmouth, South Coast Centre of Excellence in Satellite Applications.