Regeneration

Pleased to hear that an initiative I started off maybe 15 months ago is beginning to bear fruit - I refer to the Employment Accord in the waterfront (according to the long term forecasts the waterfront over the 20 years of its development will yield 30,000 + jobs) which I pushed to have taken seriously during my time as chair of WEL. The local community was rightly pressing for proof that the development was going to deliver the jobs promised at the start and despite high level consensus about the objective there was no strategy in place to make it happen. So I convened a summit of all the key employment players and from that a working group was developed. Then I persuaded the Waterfront Partnership partners to put their name to it and I understand the whole thing is gathering pace. Of course, it helps that key employers like Morrison's and TIE are prepared to commit and now, the developers and their contractors are joining the party...linking local labour to available jobs and making sure local people are properly trained and able to take advantage of the opportunities...I understand the Waterfront Recruitment Centre in a year of operation has placed 450 local folk into jobs...I want the uplift next year to be exponential
All we need now is the construction academy to be located in the Waterfront (as was mooted during my time on the WEL Board) and with a fresh refocussing through Craigroyston HS and Telford College on making sure local young people are equipped to join , we can be sure that they too can benefit long term from the massive development on their doorstep. I understand we're not too far away from reaching that either!
So, I say well done to everybody involved in keeping this project alive and moving forward. It would be easy for me or any other politician to take the credit but, in truth, it is as much down to those who put in the labour to make the political idea a reality.