Eden Project Morecambe gets £2.5m government cash injection

Lancaster Guardian

Si Bellamy, the Eden Project’s chief transformation officer, and Coun Catherine Potter, Lancaster City Council cabinet member with responsibility for the visitor economy, community wealth building and culture, discuss the latest developments on the Eden Project Morecambe scheme.

Transcript

00:00Today's a brilliant day, the government have announced £2.5m extra development funding

00:04to the project, taking it to £5m in total. This is a huge signal of the positive intent

00:09of this project and really means we can start really motoring on to bring this project into

00:15delivery. It's in the delivery phase now and this further investment just really gives

00:19an excellent foundation for our design team and to get the project motoring.

00:24I think it's showing real support from the government for what we're doing here. It just

00:30means that the project isn't losing any momentum. I think some people have been a little bit

00:34frustrated, local people, that there hasn't been the big announcement that the £50m has

00:39been lodged in our bank account. But nothing has stopped over the last 18 months or so

00:47since the £50m was first announced. So Eden have not stopped designing and they have now

00:57gone out to tender for a number of really key contractual roles, in particular the design

01:04and the project management. And jobs have been advertised that will, as you've said,

01:09be based here in Morecambe. So it's just really positive. We've so enjoyed our partnership

01:14with Eden over the last few years and with the University and with Lancashire County

01:18Council. All four partners know that this is a transformational project for this town

01:25and the wider district. What we can say is that by the end of the autumn we're going

01:29to announce our project timeline. And all these things are indicative that things change

01:33all the time. But as we understand at the moment the project is moving from 2027 to

01:372028. We're looking forward to confirming that plan of what will happen and when it

01:42will happen in the really key moving parts, probably in the latter part of the autumn.

01:46And one of the things we've got to do is do the ground investigations, to get a spade

01:50in the ground, but to see what is the soil, what is the rock, what's there. We did one

01:54of those investigations earlier on in the year and we've got the second part of that

01:58to come. We know that weather in Morecambe can vary from day to day so we've given ourselves

02:01a really big broad window around from November to the beginning of spring. So this winter

02:06we want to try and do as much as we can do as part of our ground investigation. And that

02:10will be ahead of construction, again we'll announce that timeline later on in the autumn.

02:14We're all keen to see those structures start to rise above ground, but like Si said earlier,

02:20it's so important that we get the design right before we start putting anything above ground.

02:27Projects can be defined by their complexity, not just by their value. And I think this

02:30is a complicated project because of where it is, because of what it is, its uniqueness.

02:34And we want to build a world class eco-attraction and they're not off the shelf items. And also

02:39it needs to be inspired by Morecambe Bay, again something that is very unique. So we're

02:43going to take our time to design it really well, in detail, get the cost right and then

02:48build it really fast. That's our plan.

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