Amanda Milling, Member of Parliament for Cannock Chase, has once again raised the redevelopment of Rugeley Power Station in Parliament as she continues to call for strategic plans which will attract innovative/high tech businesses that will create high skilled, high paid jobs for local residents and future generations.
Amanda Milling said: “The power station site would be an ideal place to develop a high technology/science park, which would attract innovative businesses which offer higher skilled and higher paid jobs for the local area. With excellent connectivity with access to the National Grid and Fibre Optic Broadband networks, this would be a place to home engineering, manufacturing and digital businesses. This is a vision that local planning authorities have to buy into if the low wage employment cycle is to be broken. The future of the site rests in the hands of the local planning authorities and it is time to decide if Cannock Chase deserves more low skilled employment or a real step change in our employment offer."
She added: “After the revelations that distribution and warehouse employment is marketed to national business on the basis that wages in Cannock Chase are lower than the regional average, this has to be treated as a wakeup call to the local councillors in charge of the planning authority. Future generations are being sold short by a drive for quick employment, that offers neither improvement in local wages or the ability to increase local skills.”
Supporting the Cannock Chase MP's calls, Andrew Jones MP, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, urged all parties to be as ambitious as possible in the site's regeneration during Treasury Questions in the House of Commons.