Grant to meet anticipated business demand from major projects (From The Advertiser Series)

Grant to meet business demand from major projects near Whitby

6:22pm Sunday 10th February 2013 in News By Emily Flanagan, Reporter

ABOUT £2.6m is to be invested into a business park in Whitby – in readiness for the creation of Europe’s largest offshore windfarm and a proposed £1.3bn potash mine.

The money is to be used to open up land at Whitby Business Park and improve infrastructure ahead of the two major developments.

Consultation is currently underway over the proposed £40m Dogger Bank project. It will involve erecting 2,600 turbines across an area of the North Sea the size of Wales in what is expected to become the UK's largest engineering project. It is projected to supply ten per cent of the nation’s total energy by 2020.

Detailed plans were also recently submitted for the York Potash Project, to mine the valuable potash mineral polyhalite from within the North York Moors National Park at Sneaton, near Whitby.

In order to attract companies likely to be involved in these projects, Scarborough Borough Council has been awarded £2.6m from the Coastal Communities Fund to develop the business park.

The grant will also be used to subsidise as many as 200 apprenticeships in engineering and manufacturing in the borough; fund training and business support for enterprises linked to the potash, renewable energy and other local industries and help fund the second phase of the council’s Jobmatch project, which in phase one saw more than 1,000 people recruited by 300 companies.

The council predicts a total of 206 direct jobs and 2,500 indirect jobs will be created in the local economy as a result of the Going for Growth project.