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Eric Pickles visits East Anglian Enterprise Zone

Eric Pickles has visited Beacon Park, the Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft Enterprise Zone, to see what progress has been made.

The New Anglia Enterprise Zone is part of the first wave of Local Development Orders (LDOs) which have been approved in enterprise zones across England.

Beacon Park has one office unit, soon to be completed, with further industrial units in the pipeline. An engineering training centre on the site will also be managed by the local further education consortium.

A major factory has also been completed by Norfolk Capacitors, enabling a doubling of the workforce.

Norfolk and Suffolk Energy Alliance are marketing the zone globally, building relationships with 45 companies which are considering inward investment.

Mr Pickles said: “Local business and private sector commerce turn the wheels of our economy creating the jobs this country needs.

“This Government has set about fostering local enterprise and creating the conditions for businesses to thrive.”

“This week our low tax, low regulation, Enterprise Zones with superfast networks are going operational with live deals and incentives now available to entice new companies to the area.”

“We’ve planted these economic incubators all across the country to help accelerate growth, rebalance our economy with thousands of new businesses and local jobs in each location.”

“Enterprise Zones are set to become the crown jewels of how we make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business.”

Next week, the Enterprise Zone will be marketed at a UK Trade and Industry hosted event on off-shore wind in Copenhagen.

The meeting with Mr Pickles was attended by Blair Ainslie, managing director of Seajacks, who owns and operates self-propelled jack-up vessels for offshore wind farms.

Mr Ainslie said: “We could have set up our business anywhere in the world, however, we will expand our operation and move to new premises in the Enterprise Zone (South Denes) to house more than 100 employees.

“It’s a no brainer”, he added, “with round 3 of the development of offshore wind farms imminent and the range of benefits in the Enterprise Zone, such as simplified planning, reduction from business rates for 5 years and the roll-out of superfast broadband means that we are committed to growing jobs in this area.

“We’d also like to act as a catalyst to encourage other companies to join us in the Enterprise Zone.”

Andy Wood, chairman of New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership added: “It was great to have the opportunity to show the Secretary of State the rapid progress of our Enterprise Zone in Suffolk and Norfolk.

“To have Seajacks on board, as well as Norfolk Capacitors and the engineering training centre, Nexus at such an early stage is a great achievement and we’ve already attracted interest from companies, globally.

“Our aim is to attract up 180 energy-related businesses to the area and generate up to 10,000 jobs by 2025 and we’ve made an excellent start in achieving this goal.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .