Birmingham City Council has unveiled a 37-acre jobs creation blueprint after the company behind Britain’s high speed rail network said it no longer needed the land for a train depot.
HS2, the firm behind the £18bn London to Birmingham rail project, had originally wanted the entire former LDV-Alstom site in Washwood Heath for a £200m maintenance facility. After a three-year wrangle, the company has now agreed to give up a chunk of the land for immediate development.
Blighted by long-term unemployment, low skills and poverty level wages the suburb would have benefitted from just 300-plus jobs had the rail scheme not been challenged. Under the city council’s East Birmingham Prospectus for Growth the site could potentially house dozens of businesses, generating thousands of jobs.
“This is the biggest plan for jobs in east Birmingham we’ve ever had,” commented Hodge Hill MP, Liam Byrne. “It was hard fought. But, by demanding the Government, the council and HS2 pull together, we’ve got an amazing plan for jobs and skills.
“It is an explicit recognition that Birmingham can reach its potential and bring jobs and homes to east Birmingham.”
Conceding the high-speed rail link and its spin-offs would attract billions of pounds worth of investment to the city, Byrne claimed salvaging something from the former factory site was “a once-in-a-generation opportunity” to transform the local economy.
“We took our fight to Parliament and we forced HS2 to look at new plans to ensure 2,500 jobs are created rather than a giant train car park,” he added. Under the new growth plan the site will also attract around £1m in development grants.
Neighbouring constituency MP, Jack Dromey, said: “We want Birmingham once again to be the workshop of the world, the city of a thousand trades and this bold joint initiative with Birmingham City Council will create badly needed jobs and transform east Birmingham into an economic powerhouse.”
In addition to the LDV-Alstom site, the prospectus also highlights around 3.7-million sq ft of development land in the area including the Birmingham Wheels site, Yardley Brook Industrial Estate and Windsor Gas Works. If implemented, it claims the master plan could create at least 9,000 jobs during the next decade.
