Stevenage 75th anniversary magazine | biz4Biz - Magazine - Page 6
Adrian Hawkins
What a remarkable year 2021 has been
for Stevenage. And 2022 is shaping up to
be even more ground-breaking.
As independent chairman of the
Stevenage Development Board, I stepped
into the role little over 18 mouths ago to
harness the increasing potential of our
location.
My appointment heralded the release
of £19m from the Hertfordshire
LEP where my interest in Stevenage
regeneration and development was
greatly harnessed 6 years previously,
by plans for the Town, drawn up by
David Lock Associates the architects
responsible for Milton Keynes, alongside
the adventurous Stevenage Borough
Council and with clear assistance from
the Hertfordshire LEP, where I served as
Deputy Chair.
At the same time as our involvement
with a vast array of infrastructural
projects, we wanted to bring local
people with us rather than leaving them
behind. Parts of the dated infrastructure
needed to change, but our local people
also needed to recognise the very real
employment opportunities available to
them.
Our successful £37.5m Towns Fund
award from the Government in
March 2021 for innovation and skills
achieved just that, through a range of
interventions including delivery of
an innovation & technology centre
(SITEC), provision for innovative
commercial space, investment in the
town’s key facilities and unlocking
further large-scale regeneration being
delivered by the Stevenage Borough
Council.
Our vision was ambitious, our plan
deliverable, and the message simple:
investing money in the future of
Stevenage is an investment in the future
of our country, in the future of our
children, and will unleash over £600m
of additional private investment to
supercharge UK businesses.
I am deeply passionate about Stevenage
having been born here in the 1950’s in
my parents’ council house as life in the
UK’s first New Town showed positive
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signs of development. It provided the
safe haven for me, my siblings, and many
other families to develop and progress
throughout our lives.
I now see this second phase of
regeneration as an exciting opportunity
to guide the future direction of our town.
One of the key aims for the Stevenage
Development Board is to ensure that
we engage with the public and business
community to make certain that this is
a regeneration delivered for and by the
people of this town.
w w w. b i z 4 b i z . o r g
Decisions and investments made 9 years
ago by the Hertfordshire LEP encouraged
the establishment of the Stevenage BioScience Catalyst and the Cell and Gene
Catapult organisations alongside GSK in
Gunnels Wood Road. Today Stevenage
can proudly boast the largest Life Science
cluster outside of the USA and Life
Science companies that want to establish
facilities in the UK are requesting sites in
either Cambridge, Oxford, or Stevenage.
Projects which have been submitted
to Government by the Stevenage