£450M investment for regional jobs and growth
The first round of the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) sees £450 million invested in businesses across Britain.
The first round of the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) will see more public investment support 50 bids by companies and partnerships across Britain.
They demonstrated how they would create jobs and a high level of economic growth in their local communities over the coming years.
The RGF is a £1.4bn fund which is designed to encourage enterprise, growth and jobs in the private sector and support areas and communities that are dependent on the public sector.
The Government expects over 27,000 jobs to be directly created and safeguarded, with close to a further 100,000 jobs in associated supply chains and local economies.
The second round of the fund opens to bids today. This round will aim to allocate the remainder of nearly £1 billion.
Announcing the successful bids, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said:
“I was bowled over by the quality of the bids. This money will now help create and safeguard jobs in some of the communities worst hit by the economic downturn.
“Today is a step towards rebalancing our economy away from an unhealthy overreliance on a small number of industries and a few areas. We need to spread opportunity across the whole country, drawing on our many talents.”
Results of the 1st round
The successful bids include the development of a former eye hospital in Manchester into a biomedical centre of excellence; the construction of a manufacturing plant on Teesside to develop resins for food and drink packaging; development of a cutting edge factory & R&D laboratory for Holroyd Precision Ltd in Rochdale, and a proposal from General Motors to build the next-generation Vivaro van in Luton.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said:
“Supporting job creation in the regions is vital if we are to drive growth in our local communities.
“We have received a large number of ambitious and highly competitive bids to this first round of the Regional Growth Fund, which will help a number of businesses across the country to expand and create thousands of new jobs.
“The Regional Growth Fund is a competitive fund and we wanted to see proposals that created jobs in the private sector, in areas of deprivation and that is at risk of suffering from public sector cuts. I’m confident that the successful bids we have chosen will deliver on this.”