Cllr. Jim O’Boyle, the Cabinet Member for Jobs, Regeneration and Climate Change, will be deciding whether to invest a further half a million pounds into the Gigafactory at a meeting on 5th July.
Planning permission has already been granted for a huge battery plant that is planned for the site of Coventry Airport, potentially creating 6000 jobs. A further £500,000 is to be invested over the next two years to keep the project progressing.
The money is additional to the £1.75 million already committed by the Council to the project.
The money will be matched with a further £500,000 provided by CAL, the Council’s development partner.
The money will be used for:
- Employing consultants to do more work on the planning application, meeting the conditions imposed and preparing the Section 106 agreement.
- Retaining architectural services to do master planning and layouts.
- Employing technical support and advice on the global context of Gigafactories, the market they operate in and the technical requirements of potential occupiers.
- Technical support for work with National Grand and Severn Trent to develop the necessary infrastructure.
- Ground investigation and sampling to understand any contamination and necessary remediation.
- Continuing with detailed design of off-site highways.
- Quantity Surveyor support with estimating demolition costs, infrastructure costs and producing project programmes in support of occupier enquiries.
- PR support, marketing, and enquiry response material design / production.
- Battery and recruitment experts to provide ongoing technical support and expertise to all elements of project realization.
It is hoped that this money will be recovered from the capital receipt obtained when the site is disposed of to an investor.
Last month the Government backed the establishment of a gigafactory for Jaguar Land Rover in Bridgewater in Somerset. However, it is estimated that the country will need about six such factories if the UK is to retain its role as a car manufacturer.