City rebirth 'will not be hit'

The mastermind behind the £1 billion revamp of Wolverhampton insisted today that the city's renaissance would not be damaged by the credit crunch.

Steve Catchpole, chief executive of Wolverhampton Development Company, said the impact of the economic crisis had been radically reduced because it struck during a lull in the rolling building programme.

Funding has already been fixed for developments such as the Summer Row shopping centre while others such as the Interchange city centre transport transformation are too far in the future to suffer. Mr Catchpole said: "We are still on track because of the point in the cycle which we had reached when this happened. By a fortunate accident it has occurred during a breathing space.

"Some of the plans were too advanced to be affected because much of the funding was already in place and the rest are sufficiently distant for financial conditions to have improved before they become a factor.

"The best guess is that it will be another 12 months before things start to return to anything like normal and, in the meantime, our job is to put everything in place to ensure that business will have confidence in our projects when the change occurs.

"We are very optimistic about the future growth prospects of Wolverhampton because the schemes that underpin the growth are longer term projects that do not depend on present market conditions.

"We are laying the foundations for a 20-year development programme."

The Low Level Station development in the Canalside Quarter has slowed because of the present credit crisis but building of the student village at Victoria Hall is going ahead. The Summer Row project is still set to start next spring while an application for outline planning permission for the Interchange and the identity of the main developer of the i54 technology park are both expected within the next three months.

The £1 billion rebirth of the city will create 30,000 jobs by 2031.

Wolverhampton Development Company is funded by the local authority and Government body Advantage West Midlands. The organisation is responsible for planning and delivering the projects.