Councils to lend £6.6m to boost growth
THREE projects – the largest being Peel’s Port Salford scheme – are to receive loans of £6.6m from Greater Manchester’s Combined Authority.
A meeting last Friday (October 31) saw GMCA give “in principle” approval to the schemes which will create employment and drive economic growth in the city region.
The councils have agreed to support loan funding of £4.6m to Port Salford Holdings to deliver road improvements, reduce congestion and create better local transport connections to the new Port Salford National Import Centre.
The project will support the creation of hundreds of jobs throughout the Port Salford site and will directly create at least 40 temporary jobs in construction.
At the same meeting Leaders also agreed to support RealityMine, a technology based market research company based in Trafford, which will receive £1.25m in a second phase of funding to help grow their business. The company will use the funding to support the creation of 63 new jobs.
Finally, B&H Precision Tooling (Stockport), a specialist supplier of tooling for the aerospace industry, will receiev support to extend its current site – creating eight new jobs and retaining 20 existing positions within Greater Manchester.
Cllr Kieran Quinn, GM Lead for Investment said: “Greater Manchester has committed to support business growth and our investment framework is just one of the ways we are delivering against that promise. By providing loans to regional projects and businesses at commercial rates we can unlock development that drives economic growth and creates jobs for local people.
“These projects will together directly create more than 100 skilled jobs and through the transport improvements supported at Port Salford will enable the creation of hundreds more. Following this in principle approval we have asked that the Greater Manchester Investment team work with the businesses to ensure that they can access this funding, and deliver the benefits to local people, as quickly as possible.”
