Green light is a must for park

The green light for the International Advanced Manufacturing Park is hopefully a mere formality.

The plans being submitted to Whitehall are dripping with fantastic figures. They simply cry success. This infrastructure work around the £92million development will help the park secure an estimated £300million in private sector investment and create 5,200 jobs over 10 years.

These may be dream figures from the overactive minds of developers, but even if they delivered only half that they’d be a runaway success. That said, we trust the figures are based on sound analysis.

Certainly the key players in this project hope so.

Sunderland council leader Paul Watson is in no doubt of the importance of this development.

He dubs it a “gamechanger.”

He added: “The IAMP is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform not only the Sunderland and South Tyneside economies, but the economic health of the North East region.”

If there’s fly in the ointment, it’s the fact that this development - covering the equivalent of 140 football pitches - encroaches on Greenbelt land.

As we know only too well, many a project has been scuppered by environmental concerns - we hope this isn’t one of them.

We are told that as long as the plans are signed off as ‘sound’ by Government planning inspectors the land can be removed from the Greenbelt.

Sunderland City Council and South Tyneside Council back the project and it has secured £42million in Government funding.

If we are all singing from the same hymn sheet, then surely the green light for building on Greenbelt is, as we say, a mere formality.

Fingers crossed.