Mayor showcases more than £19bn of opportunities to drive growth, jobs and homes to global investors
Mayor Richard Parker has today issued a call to global investors - declaring ‘now is the time to invest in the West Midlands’.
The Mayor offered up more than £19bn of opportunities to drive new growth, jobs and homes across the region as he launched the West Midlands Major Investments Prospectus.
He invited investors to share in the region’s future success with opportunities across infrastructure, regeneration and world-leading sectors.
The Prospectus showcases some of the region’s biggest projects including the £4bn Sports Quarter with its new Birmingham City FC stadium, the Sandwell to Dudley Metro Corridor and the region’s three key Investment Zone sites in Coventry and Warwick, Wolverhampton and Birmingham.
The Prospectus builds on the Mayor’s Growth Plan, a blueprint for how the region will grow its economy by £17 billion over the next decade, creating 100,000 new jobs and 120,000 new homes.
Richard Parker, Mayor of the West Midlands, said: “Our region is brimming with talent: We have brilliant people, globally renowned businesses and world-class universities. Yet there is so much more potential waiting to be released.
“This Prospectus shows the sheer scale of what’s happening across our region, offering investors the opportunity to be at the forefront of driving a new era of growth, good jobs and affordable homes – the things that really matter to people.
“We have a proud history of innovation and industry but now is the time to go further and faster than ever before. Now is the time to invest in the West Midlands.”
Several Birmingham schemes set out in the prospectus will benefit from a new Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC), the biggest and most ambitious of its kind in the UK. They include the Sports Quarter, the £4 billion Birmingham Knowledge Quarter, the HS2 station at Curzon Street, the £1.9 billion Smithfield development and a creative industries hub in Digbeth - all part of the Birmingham and North Solihull Gateway Project.
The Mayoral Development Corporation will give investors speed, scale and certainty, helping to deliver major schemes more quickly by bringing together planning powers, land, funding and delivery under one roof, cutting bureaucracy.
The Prospectus will play a key role for the region when the Mayor joins Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Secretary of State for Business and Trade Peter Kyle, in co-hosting the Regional Investment Summit in Birmingham on Tuesday October 21.
The Summit will give the West Midlands chance to showcase to global investors their potential for growth, innovation and talent.
Leading economist Bridget Rosewell CBE, who has been appointed by the Mayor to provide independent advice on aligning the region’s capital investments with his Growth Plan, said: “The West Midlands is a modern economic powerhouse with world leading sectors and an ambition and capacity to match.
“The Mayor’s Growth Plan provides us with a clear route to sustained growth. By bringing together transport, commercial development and housing in an aligned approach we can create dynamic new places, strengthen communities and give investors clarity on what’s coming, where and when."
