Find out more about the East Midlands vision with our at-a-glance Q&A
Q: What is the proposed East Midlands Development Corporation?
A: It is a new type of locally led urban development corporation designed to provide the capacity to fully exploit large-scale economic development opportunities whose scale goes beyond local authority boundaries. Setting up this new statutory body will require Parliamentary approval.
Q: What are its initial projects?
A: There are three – at Toton station and Chetwynd Barracks, Ratcliffeon-soar Power Station and East Midlands Airport.
Q: How much will it cost?
A: The initial ask is £235 million so that an interim body can begin the development corporation’s enabling work ahead of formal Parliamentary approval. The interim body will build momentum, provide confidence for investors, and enable the development corporation to hit the ground running when approved.
Q: What value will it deliver?
A: The programme is forecast to deliver 84,000 jobs and add £4.8 billion of value a year to the East Midlands economy. Informally, it will create confidence in the East Midlands as a long-term investment destination and address historic under-investment in transport and under-performance in productivity and growth.
Q: What policy agendas does it address?
A: Levelling-up – these proposals provide an ambitious vision for the future, which delivers jobs, business and growth accessible across the region; Skills – proposals include a new National Skills Academy at Toton which will focus on the economy’s future training/retraining needs; Net carbon zero – individual developments and the ZERO Centre at Ratcliffe-on-soar Power Station itself will target realworld progress in reducing emissions; Transport – a detailed connectivity strategy means the new capacity created by HS2 will open up better local and regional transport services which will connect more communities to growth.
Q: Who are its key partners?
A: The proposal for the development corporation has been brought forwards by a partnership of local authorities across Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire, the cities of Derby, Nottingham and Leicester, supported by businesses, universities and the Midlands Engine, Midlands Connect and local enterprise partnerships. They are working with Government departments to finalise proposals.
Elected leaders, chief executives, senior executives and officers of all the partners are represented on an oversight board, which has been steering progress of the proposals.
Q: Who are the key people?
A: The development corporation’s oversight board is chaired by Sir John Peace, chair of the Midlands Engine, and led at executive level by Anthony May, who leads the Midlands Engine’s operational board.
It is supported by a small programme office and a team of specialist consultants developing the programme, the structure, the sites and building the profile of development opportunities.