Basildon Town Centre finalists announced

The procurement process for Basildon Town Centre rolls on, with the four consortia that will progress to the next stage announced yesterday. They are all big hitters in large scale development and regeneration, and attracting bidders of this quality shows the confidence that business has in Basildon District and its community. It also shows that the Council was right to launch our regeneration programme with a high quality event in London and right to send members and officers to the MIPIM property development conference and exhibition in Cannes. We were criticised for doing both, as if the way to attract large multinationals to a billion pound project was to make them come to us instead of going to them. Basildon has huge potential; 30 minutes from London, a dynamic economy, and public sector investment already happening in the form of the University Hospital and the recently announced Further Education College. But potential is not enough, you also have to sell the offer and that is exactly what we have been doing. We also have very clear policies to support private and public sector development, and we made sure that we had the funding for the project management and support skills that you need for a development programme of this size. So, things are going well and the Council is on course to achieve our objective of changing Basildon for the better. Fortunately, that is also the objective of government when it comes to Basildon and funding has followed intent. Basildon politics is traditionally quite virulent, but on this there is broad agreement. Politics isn't always about kicking lumps out of each other.