After setting out plans for 21 Enterprise Zones in the March Budget, the government has announced a further eleven, bringing the total to 15.
The government claims the areas will provide companies with cheaper business rates, superfast broadband and lower levels of planning control. The Chancellor, George Osborne, expects that 50,000 new jobs will be created by 2015 as a result of the new zones. The coalition hopes that they will encourage the diversification of industry, and they are a hugely important part of the coalition’s growth strategy.
Mr Osborne said: “It is vital that we create balanced economic growth across the country. For too long there has been an over-reliance on the City and it is time for us to help every part of the country to grow and realise its potential.”
Prime Minister David Cameron said: “We are determined to do everything we can to make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business. These new Enterprise Zones will be trailblazers for growth, jobs and prosperity throughout the country.”
The scheme is similar to that implemented by the Conservatives, where zones were created in the Docklands and other areas of the country in the 1980s and 1990s. The government has made it clear that the Enterprise Zones are long-term measures, with a time-span of as much as 25 years.
The list of the 13 new zones is as follows: Daresbury Science Campus in Warrington; Newquay AeroHub in Cornwall; The Solent Enterprise Zone at Daedalus Airfield in Gosport; Rotherwas Enterprise Zone in Hereford; Discovery Park in Sandwich, Kent; Enterprise West Essex in Harlow; Science Vale UK in Oxfordshire; Alconbury Airfield in Cambridgeshire; Great Yarmouth in Norfolk; Lowestoft in Suffolk; Northampton Waterside and MIRA Technology Park in Hinckley Leicestershire; Humber Estuary Renewable Energy Super Cluster.
George Archer
