Seven projects win Regional Development Funding

The government has given the green light to seven more Regional Growth Fund deals, including two waste energy projects, a factory scheme and a science park.

The news came as deputy prime minister Nick Clegg confirmed that an additional £1bn would be allocated to support two further bidding rounds for the Regional Growth Fund.

Bidding will open in February, and cities have been invited to put forward innovative programmes and projects worthy of funding.

Chancellor George Osborne announced the extra £1bn cash in last week’ autumn statement. It is hoped the investment will create an extra half a million jobs.

The fund has already allocated £1.4bn to help stimulate business in areas that have been heavily dependent on the public sector. The first round of funding saw 50 successful projects share £450m, and over 50% of them are now up and running.

In the second round, 119 bids received conditional funding, and a further 10 were judged to require further discussion.

Of these 10, seven now have funding conditionally allocated to them, meaning 126 projects will share the £950m total.

The latest successful bids:

• Tees Valley Waste Management Plant - Construction of a new waste management plant with a capacity of 50,000 tonnes per year. The plant will process waste from both municipal and commercial sources.
• BF Biogas Ltd - Project to build an anaerobic digestion manufacturing plant in Teesside, converting food and garden waste into biogas for power generation.
• Neptune Energy Park - Project to support brownfield remediation and infrastructure development works and factory construction on part of the former Neptune Ship Yard on the River Tyne.
• Newcastle - Central Gateway - improving access to key development sites in central Newcastle. In particular, it looks to address physical barriers that would unlock development in Newcastle’s Stephenson Quarter.
• The Enterprise Agency Consortium - Six of the country’s leading enterprise agencies have combined with The National Enterprise Network and Barclays Bank to produce a national business start-up programme.
• Avanti Goonhilly Development Programme - Creating a major satellite teleport communication facility at Goonhilly in Cornwall and improvements to Avanti’s existing facility to enable the delivery of satellite services to customers across the world.
• Goonhilly Space Science Park - A project to transform the former BT Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station on the Lizard peninsular, Cornwall, into a space science park.