On the 18th of February in a major speech the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, announced that the county council, Preston City Council and South Ribble Borough Council had received the green light for our expression of interest in creating a City Deal which provides an  opportunity for about £400m of investment into the infrastructure within the wider Preston area.

The Preston area has been one of the fastest growing parts of the UK in terms of its economy, with around 30,000 jobs created in the last 10 years, and could be replicated over the next decade assuming that the highways and transport infrastructure problems can be solved.  The deal would entail the three councils (under the auspices of Lancashire Enterprise Partnership) agreeing a package of measures that could help reduce the scale of these problems and could result in:

• 23,000 new jobs
• 14,000 new homes
• An additional £1bn in gross added value (GVA) within the local economy

Details of the local will be presented it to a ‘Star Chamber’ chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister with a number of other cabinet ministers on the panel on the 20th of May.