Metro mayor ‘disappointed’ at government for not promoting Cambridgeshire as world business hub

James Palmer, leader of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, was speaking at the authority’s meeting of the Business Board on Tuesday, Mayor Palmer said: “If you took a line across the country from Swindon to Norwich, you’d have the eighth largest economy in the world here.

“Yet our own government doesn’t recognise the fact that here in Cambridgeshire we have such rich resources of talent and possibilities, that we already have the world’s businesses knocking on our door.

“Why is it that when I went to Boston, USA, last year and stood on the UK stand, there was nothing there promoting the ‘Ox-Cam-Arc’ to the rest of the world?”

He went on to add: “The strength of Cambridgeshire’s economy has encouraged the world to look to come here, but we have to promote all the positives as much as we can and we need the government to help with that.”

Kim Sawyer, interim chief executive of the combined authority, said: “We must mention to government ministers the work we’re doing here, and get them on board more.

“I’ve heard our Prime Minister say that the Ox-Cam-Arc is all okay, but that government policy is to encourage other areas in the country to do the same as we have.

“Well I say that we should pressure the government as much as possible to look at and promote what we’ve already achieved here along the Ox-Cam-Arc, and invest in what we have, not in what we could have.”

Robert Alexander, Local Democracy Reporting Service