The small Twin Bridges Estate contains a number of high skills businesses. However, as they are all owner managed SMEs, they needed all their available resources for company and product development to sustain growth.

The estate is conveniently located, close to the M25, M23 and the business hub of Croydon. However, the physical appearance of the access to the estate left a lot to be desired.

The freeholds on the estate are all held by the small companies, who lacked the resources for the necessary improvements.

The companies felt that whilst their premises are modern, the location let down their image.

"We have concerns about the effect the appearance of the estate has upon our customers" said Bernard Nelligan of SLE, the baby monitor manufacturer. "They are all larger organisations and public bodies, many from overseas"

"Also, we need to recruit the very best skilled people with the latest high-tech experience to support our products. We feel that visiting this environment for interview has a detrimental effect upon our ability to secure the services of the staff that we need".

The roadway was in a poor state on this estate and there were no pavements or street lighting. The companies feared for the safety of their staff that use public transport to come to work, especially on winter nights.

The companies on the estate were encouraged to form an estate management company and made regular contributions to build up a reserve to accomplish improvements. However, there were many things to do and, with their limited resources, it would take time.

As a first stage, they planned to make improvements to the road surface in the summer. However, then Soloman, through the Wandle Valley SRB scheme, provided them with a small grant which enabled them to bring forward their planned programme and install street lighting at the same time. This also saved them the expense of making good the road again next year, after the lighting installation.

Ian Andrews commented "We feel that this use of a small amount of funds to augment, bring forward and make more efficient the private initiatives is exactly the sort of scheme that Made-in-London's SRB initiative was set up to achieve."

The companies are encouraged now to consider the provision of better signage, both on site and, in co-operation with the local council, directing traffic from local access routes. This is especially appropriate since, as its name implies, access routes to Twin Bridges Estate is restricted for larger vehicles.

We all look forward to a little less local traffic congestion in the future.