Broadland's own Enterprise Zone

Broadland District Council are actively seeking companies in the environmental sector to re-locate to Rackheath - a sort of Broadland Enterprise Zone. However, this report from the Work Foundation suggests that this might not be such a good idea.

Enterprise Zones have a number of weaknesses, including:

  • Most of the jobs created in Enterprise Zones are displaced from other areas. Evidence from previous Enterprise Zones suggest that up to 80% of the jobs they create are taken from other places
  • Enterprise Zones do very little to promote lasting economic prosperity. Most
    Enterprise Zones create a short-term boom, followed by a long-term reversal back
    into depression
  • Enterprise Zones are hugely expensive. Evidence from the 1980s suggests that
    Enterprise Zones cost at least £23,000 per new job they create.
Meanwhile, existing companies on the Rackheath Industrial Estate are being targeted with offers of free training. Apparently additional funds have been allocated for this project. Will it be this arm of Broadland's training team who will move to the proposed Eco-Education Centre on the estate?

6 comments:

  1. Here we go again. This is just EMPIRE building yet again. Amazing for a Council that cannot even empty the bins on a weekly basis.

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  2. And if BDC did do weekly bin collections they'd need to cut services elsewhere and therefore you'd be moaning about something else! When will SNUB realise that times change, things move on and our local councils need to plan for the future. It may not be a future that you like, or want but it's a future that will see your children able to find a job and a home locally if they wish to.

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  3. If BDC and everyone put in more effort to reduce waste there would be no case for weekly rubbish collections at all.

    I cannot see where all the jobs are coming from. The housing numbers planned for are too high.
    I would expect those homes to go to newcomers and not locals.
    I cannot see developers wanting to build houses at the bottom end of the market which the younger residents of Broadland will buy.

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  4. Our local councils need to plan for the future....

    That applies to everyone but it still does not give the Council a mandate to do whatever they choose. They already show considerable myopia and an unhealthy love of money.

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  5. The fuiture for our children and grandchildren will be very bleak if BDC carry out their plans. This area will change from pleasant countryside to something similar to the suburbs of Birmingham. The air will become foul from emissions from vehicles and incinerators and everyones health will be at risk. And what will they do for food when the enevitable world shortage comes and we have covered our food producing land with concrete?
    Ccuncils keep on promising jobs and prosperity but they are only thinking of themselves. They want the extra revenue that would come in from rates of new buildings so they can spend it on foreign trips, re-vamped offices, bigger and more departments, higher salaries and expenses. Jobs were promised with the outer harbour at Gt Yarmouth but few resulted, and we now see what a white elephant it is. Big expectations were pinned on renewable wind energy for local firms but that has now gone to Hull and Newcastle because they have the skilled workforce and the firms already in place.
    If we look back over the years there are lots of other crazy ideas promoted by councils that were unattainable and unsustainable and have now been consigned to history.
    This is a rural agricultural region with highly productive farmland and we should use it to the best advantage as we have done for centuries. Our future generations will need food far greater than "flash in the pan jobs" that come and go within a few years

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  6. http://www.norfolk.gov.uk/view/ncc078744

    • Norfolk’s total population change over the 25 years to 2033 would be made up of
    approximately 221,700 gain from net in-migration and around 2,800 loss from
    natural change (more deaths than births)

    http://www.norfolk.gov.uk/view/ncc078744

    Growth is the problem not the solution.

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