News: Developers look to Europe to fund speculative development in Rotherham

Local developers are looking to secure European funding to enable speculative developments in Rotherham to progress.

JF Finnegan has submitted an outline business plan to Yorkshire Forward in a bid to secure £1.8m from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as gap funding to create an Advanced Engineering Park at the former Laycast foundry site at Fence.

Matched with £2.8m of private sector money, the developers would create 4,645 sq m of high quality, specialist business space for the advanced engineering and materials sector.

This would be the first phase of a £20m, 13,000 sq m development, set to be called Woodhouse Link, that has already secured outline planning permission and could create 450 jobs.

The plan states that: "The Advanced Engineering Park is required to enable Rotherham to attract investment in the advanced engineering and environmental technologies sectors, particularly those companies that have affinity to and are part of the supply chain to the nearby Advanced Manufacturing Park but cannot be accommodated on the AMP."

Although a speculative development, the business plan hints of two potential prelets that cannot be disclosed.

Across Rotherham, at Parkgate, Henry Boot are hoping to secure £1.09m of ERDF to create Northfield's Advanced Industrial Park.

The £3.3m project outlines plans to create three units totalling 4,000 sq m which could create up to 175 jobs.

The use of Eurpean funding would address the market failure and the lack of speculative development coming forward in the near future. Henry Boot states that there is still a demand from SMEs in growth sectors looking for high quality units.

JF Finnegan website
Henry Boot website
Yorkshire Forward ERDF website

Images: henrybootdevelopments.co.uk