Nine successful North West bidders for RGF cash
A total of nine of the 89 bids submitted from the North West for the government’s new £1.4bn Regional Growth Fund (RGF) have been successful, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) confirmed this morning.
BIS has made £450m available in the first round of the three-year fund which is intended to stimulate private sector jobs creation in areas that have become overly dependent on public sector employment.
Successful applicants from the North West include Bruntwood and Manchester City Council’s planned £21m scheme at the old Manchester Royal Eye Hospital. The scheme to create a centre for bio-medical research will include laboratory space, clinical testing wards, offices, teaching facilities and other specialist space.
The 100,000 sq ft project comprises both new build and refurbishment work on the grade-II listed Victorian building. Insider understands the successful RGF bid is for £2m.
Muse Developments has also received good news that its bid for funding to complete the 25-acre industrial-led scheme at Ashton Moss in Ashton under Lyne has been successful. The ‘Plot 3000’ development could have an end value of up to £64m.
Darran Lawless, development director at Muse, said: “We can confirm that Muse has been successful in securing the initial approval from the RGF with regards to further expansion at Ashton Moss, which is great news.
“The details are commercially sensitive at this time but the funding will assist in delivering an occupiers need for expansion on a major strategic employment site at Ashton.”
However, Muse is understood to have failed in its bid to obtain cash for the Talbot Gateway scheme in Blackpool.
Meanwhile, Stobart Group and ProLogis have been successful in their bid for funding for the expansion of the inter-modal logistics park Mersey Multimodal Gateway (3MG) in Widnes.
Holroyd Precision in Rochdale, which was bought last year by Chinese company Chongqing Machinery and Electric, has also had its funding bid approved. The business plans to develop a new factory, research and development laboratory, and office facility.
Other successful applicants include funding for the development of a training centre at Bentley Motors in Cheshire; Kirkby-based silver nitrate supplier Ames Goldsmith UK; the Liverpool Echo; new metal coating equipment at glass manufacturer Pilkington UK; and a high-tech manufacturing plant at Rochdale advanced materials business Tygavac.
The government expects the RGF cash to support 5,533 direct jobs and 2,279 indirect jobs in the North West. All successful bids from round one are now subject to a period of due diligence.
Business secretary Vince Cable said: “We have received a large number of ambitious and highly competitive bids to this first round of the RGF, which will help a number of businesses across the country to expand and create thousands of new jobs.
“The RGF is a competitive fund and we wanted to see proposals that created jobs in the private sector, in areas of deprivation and that is at risk of suffering from public sector cuts. I’m confident that the successful bids we have chosen will deliver on this.”
The second round of the fund opens to bids today (12 April). This round will aim to allocate the remainder of the £1.4bn fund.
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