North West Businesses Hear Multiversity Vision

B&FC’s plans for the Multiversity were highlighted at last week’s Blackpool Vision breakfast event.

 

The Backlot Cinema was packed with regional business leaders on Friday morning eager to discuss and learn more about the scale of the new opportunities in the town.

 

Jane Hugo, Blackpool Council’s Deputy Leader, opened the event by explaining how the new vision goes beyond the traditional sectors of tourism and leisure to encompass exciting new projects like Silicon Sands, a digital-led campus for high performance companies at Blackpool Airport Enterprise Zone.

 

Alun Francis, B&FC’s CEO, then joined a panel discussion alongside (pictured: left-to right) Nick Gerrard, Growth and Prosperity Director at Blackpool Council with

Alan McBride, Technical Director at Muse and Garry Bowker, Regional Managing Director at VINCI Building.

 

Alun explained why it is vital that Blackpool has a successful college offering people a range of tailored provision to deliver the skills needed to support emerging industries and developments. He also referenced the future changes to the Lifelong Learning Entitlement that will give adult new access to finance for learning opportunities and to take advantage of an exciting new alternative to traditional three-year residential university degrees.

 

“We will work with employers to deliver new talent or to reskill existing talent and the Multiversity will be key route through which we do that,” he said.

 

Blackpool Council and partners unveiled a new promotional video at this event which showed what the town could look like after this £2bn programme of new investments is delivered.

 

You can also catch-up by watching a recorded livestream of the Blackpool Vision Breakfast event here