The infant Hercules rises again


This is a decent summary document. A new 'free port' taking the best bits of the old free port regime and adding new bits of successful schemes isn't going to be a silver bullet or start a 'big bang' on Teesside, but its still a useful status to have and gives businesses another reason to move here, even if it is only relocating existing jobs from elsewhere. Patience is going to be key, and I'm hoping that funding to support the ports isn't going to be half-arsed (which is what happened in 2012) so the scheme is kicked into the long grass again.
 
Remove the politics and whatever political party we all vote for from this news.

I'd prepared myself for the naysayers, that's a natural thing in this part of world, but people need to get behind this free port plan. The potential for the area is huge.
Am all for investment in the area. I just want an explaination of what i am getting behind.
 
Like I've argued for a long time, Brexit will give the Governments greater opportunities to bring jobs and regeneration to places like Teesside. Some people just can't past the opinions of Southern based journalists and London centric obsessed media.

A great result
There's over 80 Freeports and tax free zones in the EU and we had some until 2012
 
Remove the politics and whatever political party we all vote for from this news.

I'd prepared myself for the naysayers, that's a natural thing in this part of world, but people need to get behind this free port plan. The potential for the area is huge.

Yeah exactly. Chalking this up as some Brexit dividend for a region that voted for Brexit is pretty disingenuous, but if it happens properly and isn't hijacked by the political whoppers on Teesside its something worth supporting and encouraging as a means of generating long term work and jobs for an area starved of investment and reduced to small businesses trying to get by and call centres.
 
Thanks for the link. It seems the plan is for these freeports to be a freeport/enterprise zone combined. What is to stop conpanies coming in taking the tax breaks and subsidies and then moving again once these stop.
 
Thanks for the link. It seems the plan is for these freeports to be a freeport/enterprise zone combined. What is to stop conpanies coming in taking the tax breaks and subsidies and then moving again once these stop.

I don't know, probably not a lot from a corporate point of view. But setting up base and then moving on because of tax restrictions isn't really viable, as the cost of doing this would dwarf the tax benefit. Also if you have a business in one of these zones that employs 100 people, and because of tax breaks etc can quickly invest in employing a further 50 people, then it is generating safe salaried jobs that can then be taxed elsewhere.

And those 150 people need somewhere to buy their lunch and their petrol, and they need somewhere to take their families on the weekend to spend their earnings, and hopefully there's a ripple effect on Teesside that you can see has transformed cities like Newcastle and Leeds in the last 30 years.
 
On Steph McGoverns show when they were talking about major parts of the budget it was announced Darlington will be the destination for the Treasury, she said that's great its close to where my parents live & finished with, 'Up the Boro', classic, well done Steph
 
Can no one else please comment on this post until they have ‘done their research’ and/or ‘read up’ on the subject.

Thanks on behalf of London Moggie 😁
 
Why would they buy raw materials from the uk rather than a lower tax country?
Companies are only going come here to avoid tax. They are not going to have to pay employee national insurance for 3 years on employees earning under 25k. A lot of other tax breaks are going to be on offer too. How are businesses outside of the freeport fence going to compete when they are going to be paying their fair share of tax?
So they get a break for investing a lot of money to set up a business? in 3 years they will pay ni on employees wages.
I don't think companies outside the area will compete with those within the Freeport area they will provide a service to them. The Freeport is built to capture export markets.

Look at the support jobs and industry that will be generated if a big manufacturing company comes to the Freeport?, for example look at the industry that sprung up around Nissan.
We now have one of the largest industrial investment sites in Western Europe in our area. We are about to get a share of investment that we haven't had for years. The place will generate jobs and skills for our region. It will allow our area to move on and forwards.
Today is a massive step change for our area.
 
Just as an aside on the Treasury jobs relocating, the 750 figure would have been a different proposition a year ago before the vast majority of office workers started working from home.

Read quite a few articles that offices generally will run at much reduced capacity in the future as people will continue to work from home 2 or 3 days a week and be office based 1 or 2 days. Will have a massive effect on the building of offices and employment patterns. Employers might not be restricted to employing people from the local area.

I work for a large local employer and we are currently looking at a total refurbishment of our offices and the design will allow for 50% occupancy at any one time. Plans totally changed within a year.
 
So it's very much the "levelling up" agenda by, for example, incentivising businesses to move from other parts of the country to the free ports?
 
Some people are just against change.

They'll moan that nothing ever happens round here, opportunities pass us by, everything always goes to Newcastle or down south.

Yet here we are with an announcement that the area is going to receive a very real injection of jobs, skills, future proofed industry and those same people will search until they are blue in the face for anything to **** all over it.


What do these people want? Who knows. To be enternaly miserable?
 
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