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£3m business boost for town
From the Amesbury Journal, first published Thursday 3rd May 2001.
A WARM welcome has been given to plans for a business park near Tidworth which will create 1,000 civilian jobs.
The Regional Development Agency has acquired the 33-acre site off the A3026 between Ludgershall and Tidworth from the Ministry of Defence and is already promising to pump £3million into the project.
The aim is to make the area less economically reliant on the Army. Currently in Tidworth 85 per cent of the working population are directly employed in the defence sector.
Damien Telford-Wilson, principal economic development officer at Kennet District Council, said that six businesses had already shown a serious interest in trading at the site.
"We have had many, many enquiries," he said. "It is a ten-year project but we hope that building work can begin this year and new businesses can move in as early as next summer."
Major military expansion is also currently planned in Tidworth and the number of soldiers living in the town is set to rise from 3,700 to 5,100 by 2005.
Garrison commander Col Godfrey Tilney said that strong partnerships in Tidworth were leading to many valuable projects.
"The business park will certainly offer exciting and very welcome future employment opportunities for service dependants, particularly in the context of the increased number of troops coming to the area," he said.
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