Brighton & Hove City Council leader Jason Kitcat on the City Deal
I’m delighted that after a huge amount of work with our neighbouring councils, local businesses, the Local Enterprise Partnership and national government; we’ve been given the go-ahead for a City Deal. We have won the resources to build on our city region’s strengths through the ‘Greater Brighton’ City Deal. Our partners include the University of Brighton and University of Sussex, plus companies investing in the area such as EON, American Express, Ricardo, and EDF.
The deal we’ve struck will bring over £170m of investment and 8,500 jobs to the city region over the medium term. This includes commitments from a range of public and private organisations to invest in environmental, digital and other business sectors.
The flagship development will be a £24 million investment to expand and upgrade one of the core sites for the city’s tech cluster, New England House. This alone will create nearly 900 new jobs.
Other plans agreed are a regional programme of business support, a new Central Research Laboratory at Preston Barracks; a ‘Digital Exchange’ to provide ultrafast broadband to small businesses at affordable prices; the expansion of the successful ‘Fusebox’ start-up space for creative digital companies; plus clean and environmental technology centres at Newhaven and Shoreham, as well as flood defence funding for those sites.
We welcome the government’s willingness to devolve powers and funding to city regions. This flexibility means we will now see millions invested in green technologies, the creative and digital sector, and business support for companies across the city region, creating thousands of new decent local jobs.
The Greater Brighton City Deal will mean working together for our common interest as a region, whilst still cherishing the unique character of every member area. Our residents and businesses live and work across municipal boundaries – so working with our neighbours is essential to building on the success we’ve had in recent years, and to developing our growing reputation as an economic powerhouse.
