Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg will today announce a further two bidding rounds for cash after the Chancellor revealed plans to set aside a further £1bn pot of cash to create jobs.
Cities will be encouraged to put forward innovative programmes and packages of projects in future rounds.
Clegg said: “This additional billion pound boost for British businesses means the Regional Growth Fund will create an estimated half a million jobs before the end of this parliament.
“With this targeted support for companies we’re unlocking private sector investment, with at least £5 put in for every £1 of public money.
The Regional Growth Fund was launched in October 2010.
So far it has allocated £1.4bn through two bidding rounds. There were 50 successful projects in the first round sharing £450m. More than 50% of the projects from the first round are already up and running.
In the second round, 119 bids received conditional allocations of funding, with a further 10 requiring further discussion.
Of these 10, seven have funding conditionally allocated to them, increasing the number of bids receiving a share of £950m to 126, and the total of new and existing jobs supported to 244,000.
Of the 244,000 jobs created or protected, around 38,000 will be directly created jobs, and more than 170,000 will be in the supply chain.
- Tees Valley Waste Management Plant – Construction of a new waste management plant with a capacity of 50,000 tonnes per annum. The plant will process waste from both municipal and commercial sources.
- BF Biogas Limited – Project to build an anaerobic digestion manufacturing plant in Teesside, converting food and garden waste into biogas for power generation.
- Neptune Energy Park – Project to support brownfield remediation and infrastructure development works and factory construction on part of the former Neptune Ship Yard on the River Tyne.
- Newcastle – Central Gateway – improving access to key development sites in central Newcastle. In particular, it looks to address physical barriers that would unlock development in Newcastle’s Stephenson Quarter.
- The Enterprise Agency Consortium – Six of the country’s leading enterprise agencies have combined with The National Enterprise Network and Barclays Bank to produce a national business start-up programme.
Latest seven successful bids
- Avanti Goonhilly Development Programme – Creating a major satellite teleport at Goonhilly in Cornwall and improvements to Avanti’s existing facility to enable the delivery of satellite services to customers across the world.
- Goonhilly Space Science Park – A project to transform the former BT Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station on the Lizard peninsular, Cornwall, into a space science park.
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