Swindon Eastern Villages growth deal
Every local enterprise area in England bid for a share of a £10 billion Local Growth fund as part of the government’s plans to build strong local economies. The first Growth Deals were announced today on 7 July 2014: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/growth-deals-firing-up-local-economies
Swindon and Wiltshire LEP and Central Government have agreed to co-invest in the following jointly-agreed priorities for 2015-16:
- Eastern Villages Infrastructure: A package of transport infrastructure schemes to enable the construction of up to 8,000 new homes by 2026 in a major new urban extension to the east of Swindon. Funding for 16/17 and beyond is conditional on a full business case.
- Porton Science Park: The first phase of a bold new science park at Porton, to help grow the emerging Swindon and Wiltshire life sciences cluster, delivering high value jobs and innovative commercial opportunities.
- Swindon and Wiltshire Skills Brokerage: Funding for the skills brokerage service to be delivered through the Swindon and Wiltshire City Deal, improving access to higher education for Service Leavers and other employees across the area. Government is funding the SWLEP Skills Brokerage in 2014/15.
- A429 Malmesbury Access scheme: Transport improvements to improve traffic flow and facilitate the expansion of Dyson at their Malmesbury site, supporting over 3,000 highly skilled engineering research jobs.
- Local Sustainable Transport (Swindon): A series of measures to encourage greater use of walking, cycling and public transport across Swindon.
Provisional allocations to projects starting 16/17 and beyond:
- Swindon Rapid Transit: A rapid transit scheme to deliver a step-change in the uptake of sustainable travel options in Swindon town centre in particular.
- Wichelstowe infrastructure: Project to provide additional access across the M4 to the Wichelstowe housing development, together with associated connecting infrastructure.
- Chippenham station hub: Redevelopment of Chippenham station including enhanced parking and retail offer and new railway crossing
- A350 Dualling Chippenham Bypass: Dualling the A350 north of Chippenham from Badger Roundabout to Chequers Junction.
Swindon and Wiltshire LEP and Central Government view this deal as the first step in a multi-year process that will enable the LEP to secure further funding allocations in future years. As part of this process, additional projects will be considered for funding. This includes but is not limited to LEP priority projects such as Corsham Big Data, a project to establish a state-of-the-art telecommunications network linking the Swindon and Wiltshire innovation hubs of Corsham, Porton Science Park and Swindon to create a world class asset that will drive highly skilled jobs and growth in cyber security, data science and other branches of the digital economy across the places it serves. The full paper is available here: