Durham Tees Valley chiefs angry at funding snub

Durham Tees Valley airport chiefs have expressed their disappointment that its Regional Growth Fund bid has not been approved, for a second time.

The airport was seeking £4.65million from the Government’s Regional Growth Fund to ‘pump prime’ an overall investment of £46.5million, enabling the construction of a new access road to land on the south side or the airport with the potential to create 1,400 new jobs over the next ten years.

In its bid the airport explained that opening up the Southside development would bring immediate and long-term benefits, including new facilities for the world-class SERCO International Fire Training Centre based at the airport, the opportunity for Sycamore Aviation to expand its decommissioning and recycling operations to handle the largest types of aircraft…and the provision of up to two million sq ft of high-quality business and logistics space.

Peter Nears, strategic planning director with the Peel Group, said: “This is an extremely disappointing announcement, especially given that we felt we had taken on board the issues raised in relation to our initial bid last year, underlining the plans developed in partnership with SERCO which would see them constructing a new purpose-built headquarters on the Southside, adjacent to the existing fire training ground and highlighting the major opportunities to attract a wide range of aviation-related businesses, such as Sycamore Aviation.

“The Southside can make a major contribution to driving forward the economic growth of the region, especially in sectors such as export-led advanced manufacturing and logistics but delivery of the project is dependent on the new road and services infrastructure.

“We believe that we made a very strong case for a project which could be of enormous benefit to both the airport and the area as a whole. Clearly in the light of today’s announcement we will need to consider the options now available to us.”