Last week I was a keynote speaker at a local business event, on the subject of ‘supercharging the economy’.
The event was a great opportunity to talk about the huge (and growing) package of investments and projects across our region. It’s something I speak about a lot, because in truth we have so much going on here, such as the recently announced East Midlands Investment Zone, which offers £80m worth of incentives for businesses in science and clean energy to invest their money in our part of the world.
This new Investment Zone sits alongside our East Midlands Freeport, which helps to reduce the cost of business through removing tariffs and other barriers to trade.
I’ve spoken regularly about the £20bn STEP Fusion project in North Nottinghamshire, which is a world-first proposal to build a new, zero carbon power plant and will create over 1000 jobs in an amazing, future-facing sector. This project can act as a focal point for businesses in this sector to choose to locate themselves here.
We’re beginning to see the necessary infrastructure fall into place to make the East Midlands one of the best places to invest and do business in the UK, and end the decades long issue of being relatively under-funded compared to other parts of the country. Growth in new, high skilled jobs and new opportunities means better life chances for local people.
All this is wrapped up in our big plans to devolve powers from Westminster, putting decisions in to the hands of local leaders, with local people and businesses having more of a say in the things that directly affect them. We’ll have more clout and funding over our transport network, over how and where we develop jobs and housing, over the courses and training that is offered, and much more.
There’s still work to be done in terms of implementing a lot of this, including electing our new Mayor for the East Midlands in May 2024. The Mayor and Combined Authority will preside over all of these kinds of major projects, with the ability to wrap the right skills provision around it so that local people can train for these new jobs, and to wrap the right transport connectivity around it so that you can physically get there to access the opportunities.
I can’t emphasis enough how much of a big step forward all this will be for us once implemented. Over the decades ahead, we will see huge benefits.
This week I received a letter from the Prime Minister, where he reassured me, along with nine colleagues from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire who had written to him, of his commitment to supporting us in these opportunities; to delivering the investment and jobs, as well as the powers to make local decisions.
This reaffirmed commitment is fantastic news, meaning we remain on track for an election of our very first Mayor of the East Midlands in May next year. The sooner the better, because it will boost our ability to deliver exciting projects and investments for our town.
It is vital we stay on this course so we can realise all this potential coming our way. I’ll continue to push Government for more, bigger and faster, as I always have, so that towns like Mansfield and the whole East Midlands as a whole can thrive.
