Client
Torridge District Council and Dover District Council
Services
The Appledore Clean Maritime Innovation Centre
We worked with Torridge District Council to prepare a £15.6 million Levelling Up Fund bid for the Appledore Clean Maritime Innovation Centre. This is an exciting project that will enable two universities to establish a presence in northern Devon, undertaking research and innovation activities in the clean marine sector, including floating offshore wind and aquaculture.
We showed how the Appledore project will deliver high quality, high value economic activity and employment, driving up productivity in a coastal town facing economic challenges. This provides an opportunity for real structural economic change and genuine levelling up. Our analysis quantified the economic benefits of new, better paid and higher skilled employment, including opportunities for graduates in northern Devon, local supply chain impacts, and the benefits of spin-out companies being established in the local area.
In the Budget of March 2023, a new Levelling Up Partnership for Torridge was announced, enhancing Government’s support for levelling up here.
The Beacon Project
In 2022, we worked with Dover District Council to help prepare a Levelling Up Fund bid for £18 million funding for the Dover Beacon project. The awarded funding will transform an eyesore town centre site into a new creative campus and business centre, expanding the capacity for higher level skills training across Dover to boost productivity and employment.
Our work demonstrated how the Beacon project would address key socio-economic challenges and deliver significant long term economic benefits to the area through increased higher-level learning and skills and high quality physical regeneration of a key site.
