New investment flows from Bucks LEP funding

Business and Economy

Buckinghamshire Local Enterprise Partnership (Bucks LEP) is delighted with the announcement today by Skyports to select Westcott Venture Park as its new home for research & development, training and flight operations.

This announcement follows Bucks LEP Getting Building Fund investment of £2.6m into the innovation ecosystem at Westcott including the new drone port testing facilities. Bucks LEP successful delivery of its Getting Building Fund programme shows this investment is having an immediate return through Skyports decision to choose Westcott as their research & development base.

Richard Harrington, CEO of Buckinghamshire Local Enterprise Partnership, said: “This announcement by Skyports is fantastic news, with yet another exciting company joining the growing Westcott Cluster capitalising on our Getting Building Fund investment.

“Our timely and targeted use of government finding into transformative research & development hubs is facilitating Buckinghamshire to capitalise on new rapidly growing business sectors to create hundreds of new jobs and opportunities for training and providing facilities for education and space for new businesses to develop their ideas.”

In partnership with the Satellite Applications Catapult, Skyports plan to use the state-of-the-art facilities at Westcott Space Cluster to remotely operate its Beyond Visual Line Sight drone flights. Skyports will develop the location as its global command and control centre for delivery, survey and surveillance drone missions, employing the site’s multi-redundant internet networking capabilities to enable remote flight operations anywhere in the world. In addition, the company will develop the site as a centre of excellence for its world-class pilots.

Bucks LEP success in allocating full funding to ten key projects from the Governments £7.7m Getting Building Fund is helping boost economic growth in Bucks.

All ten Getting Building Fund capital programme projects were allocated funding on schedule by 31 March 2022. Significantly, the Getting Building Fund leveraged over £14.5m of private match funding, which resulted in a total capital investment of £22.5m. The original allocation of £7.7m of the Governments Getting Building Fund to key projects to support economic growth in the county was announced in August 2020.

 

The Bucks LEP Getting Building Fund is having significant impact in its key sectors and offers exceptional value for money. Expected outputs from investment, include:

  • 467 new jobs created
  • 31 jobs safeguarded
  • 3,618 sqm new commercial space
  • 18,373 sqm research & development space
  • 836 sqm learning space
  • 3,492 learners assisted
  • 121 businesses Supported
  • 22,800 broadband connections

 

The funding is driving economic recovery and supports the continued delivery of Buckinghamshire’s Local Industrial Strategy and growth within Bucks LEPs four key sectors, Upstream Space, Creative and Digital, Advanced Engineering and Manufacturing and Medical Technology and Health.

 

Bucks LEP allocated Getting Building Funds to the following projects:

 

For details on all the above schemes please visit: www.buckslep.co.uk/our-projects/getting-building-fund-projects/