Build Back Stronger, Smarter and Greener sets out a compelling case for a series of place based, transformational infrastructure projects for our area that will speed recovery and accelerate growth. These will address long term productivity challenges in our economy as well as the significant short-term impacts of the Coronavirus pandemic, identified in our Coronavirus (COVID-19) Economic Impact Assessment.
To build back stronger, Coast to Capital will support Crawley with a plan to grow and evolve the UK’s most COVID-19 impacted town into a more economically diverse and dynamic place.
To build back smarter, we will build upon the knowledge and innovation community which already exists in Brighton.
To build back greener, we will draw on the talented workforce and local business specialisms, to lead a green recovery across the whole region.
To enable our bold new approach, investment in physical, digital and intellectual infrastructure is essential if we are to adapt and thrive in a post COVID-19 world.
Transformational projects for recovery and future productivity
We have identified a series of investment ‘asks’ – transformational projects that will create economic growth in our region to recover from the economic and social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Headline projects include:
- Innovation Centre – to foster a new innovation ecosystem in Crawley which will connect international advanced engineering companies with local supply chains and skills.
- Quantum equity investment fund – to support commercialisation of ideas from the Quantum Technology Lab at University of Sussex.
- Natural Capital Investment Company – to create an investment vehicle to develop a long-term pipeline of biodiversity increase and carbon offsetting investment opportunities.
- Digital infrastructure delivery – to improve digital infrastructure across our area and align skills provision with industry specialism to create new jobs.
- Croydon Area Upgrade Scheme – to address the bottleneck on the Brighton Main Line at Croydon, increasing rail capacity across our region.
To learn more about the strategy, read the full document here.
We are working to develop individual business cases to identify necessary public and private investment to deliver our pipeline of projects. We will work with all of our partners to identify further, local projects that will help to achieve our regional aims and aid local recovery from the Coronavirus pandemic.
To follow our work on this programme please subscribe to the Coast to Capital newsletter
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