Each year, the Confederation of Danish Industry asks Danish companies what it is like to do business in their municipality. The responses, combined with a range of statistical data, are used to rank municipalities according to their business conditions.
This year, Lolland drops from 61st place last year to 82nd out of the 91 municipalities included in the survey.
Behind the result is one particularly clear message from companies: Lolland needs to prioritise access to labour.
A total of 56.3 per cent of the companies surveyed say that access to labour should be the municipality’s top priority. By comparison, 29.2 per cent point to education, which ranks second.
Mayor Marie-Louise Brehm Nielsen acknowledges the problem.
- That is the clear message from the survey. We need to attract more people to the area and get more people into education and training in the fields where labour is needed. The share of young people choosing vocational education has increased, so we are moving in the right direction, but companies are still crying out for workers here and now.
Lolland Municipality has also spent millions on recruiting international employees, an initiative which, according to the mayor, has been successful. The recruitment efforts will continue because the workers are not only coming to take up jobs, but also to settle in the municipality.
However, labour shortages are not the only factor pulling Lolland down to 82nd place. The municipality has fallen back in all four categories covered by the survey.
Particularly striking is the category of municipal administration, where Lolland falls to 88th place – a drop of 29 positions. The category covers a broad range of areas, from building permit processing to the municipality’s digital business services and several other issues.
- Processing times have fallen, and here we rank 25th. But DI’s survey tells me first and foremost that fast case handling cannot stand alone. The rest has to keep up, and we need to better understand what lies behind the companies’ responses in this category, says Marie-Louise Brehm Nielsen.
