£203m boost for East Midlands announced by Chancellor

Rishi Sunak (Credit: Flickr / HM Treasury)

The Chancellor has announced a series of investments across the Midlands in his Autumn Budget statement.

Some 10 places including Lincolnshire and Derbyshire are set to benefit from almost £203m in local infrastructure improvements through the Levelling Up Fund.

These include:

• Establishing a new science centre at Twycross Zoo.
• Revitalising Leicester Railway Station.
• Building a four-screen cinema in Gainsborough Town Centre.
• Completing the Southern Link Road between Farndon and Balderton.
• Building a new junction on the A50 in Derbyshire.
• Transforming the dilapidated Pilot House in Leicester into high-quality
accommodation.
• Remodelling Stephenson Memorial Hall in Chesterfield.
• Repairing streets across Nottingham.
• Improving the A16 corridor in Lincolnshire.
• Developing Pioneer Park in Leicester which supports a fast-growing space and
satellite technology sector

There will be £250,000 for the Hub Community Centre and Café in Thurnby from the first round of the
Community Ownership Fund to protect valued community assets.

Meanwhile, £7m has been announced for for the National Forest to support woodland creation in the East Midlands, covering parts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire.

Neil Berry, partner at MHA MacIntyre Hudson, said: “On the basis of the the Budget, the public finances seems to be in better condition than at first thought. The Chancellor is benefiting from the receipts from the tax changes brought in earlier in March and is transferring those into investment. It’s allowed him to take the handbrake off a little a bit little more bullish.

“The impact of Covid last year was doom and gloom, but it appears it wasn’t as bad as predicted. There’s a tendency that if we think worst, we think absolute worst. But it’s not been as bad as we were thinking in the boardrooms up and down the country. Rishi is mirroring that.”

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