London Southend Airport & Environs Joint Area Action Plan Issues & Options Paper

Greater Essex's broad and varied economy provides vast range of job opportunities and is a major economic driver in the East of England. The County is also home to a wide array of internationally renowned companies, many of which are highly R&D intensive, including e2v technologies, BAE Systems, Ford, GlaxoSmithKline, Nortel, Olympus Keymed and Britvic.



Government has defined significant growth targets for Essex which although often headlined in terms of housing numbers, are critically linked to challenging numbers of new employment opportunities particularly in the designated growth areas of the Haven Gateway, Thames Gateway South Essex and the Harlow/M11/Stansted Corridor.



Employment growth is driven in a number of ways including new starts, growth of existing businesses, and new investment from elsewhere in the UK and from overseas. This type of growth requires positive support from the public sector and associated agencies to ensure that local conditions exist to welcome new and growing businesses, including provision of suitable infrastructure, land and property.



Existing hubs and clusters such as Southend Airport and its environs lend themselves to such development, and if managed and promoted correctly can act as a magnet for positive and sustainable growth and the realization of the full potential of such assets.



The "London Southend Airport & Environs Joint Area Action Plan Issues and Options Report" outlines several low, medium and high growth options, with an analysis of the associated risks and opportunities. Of these, Option 3 (the high growth scenario) has the strongest strategic fit with the growth aspirations of this part of the Thames Gateway South Essex sub-region, positioning the airport as the central economic driver and creating conditions that are most likely to attract the required public and private investment in the immediate and surrounding areas, with up to 6000 jobs forecast as a result.



The importance of attracting new businesses to establish their operations in the Gateway growth areas is enshrined in the refreshed Essex Local Area Agreement which includes specific targets around inward investment, job creation and retention, new business formation, and so on. So there is every reason from an inward investment and economic development perspective to endorse Renaissance Southend's support for Option 3, to enable the realisation of the full potential from the JAAP.