Swindon Seek £24 Million ‘Future City’ Funding Prize

Swindon is one of thirty lucky city and borough councils from across the UK taking part in a new government initiative.

The scheme will see only one of the chosen locations win the ‘future city’ prize and earn themselves a cool £24 million for future developments.

This is a huge coup for Swindon Borough Council. So far the town’s secured itself a government investment of £50,000. The funding comes from both the Innovation Agency and the Technology Strategy Board.

Town's and city’s including Cardiff, Brighton and Newcastle have also been given government funding to launch their feasibility studies.  

The money will be used to put together a study to show how we’d be able to integrate transport, communications and other infrastructure to improve the local economy and reduce our ecological foot print. It’s all about increasing the quality of life in Swindon in an ecofriendly way and how feasible it’s going to be for the town to achieve it.

A few ideas are being bounced around at the moment, but it looks as if our funding will be used to look at the potential Swindon has of integrating three current key projects, revolving around hydrogen, district energy and 4G WI-FI.

The study will also have to address the challenges we currently face in our society, some of which include the growth of the population in our area, how to tackle town centre traffic and congestion and dealing with the health needs of elderly residents.

Due to the number of high quality initial proposals received from councils across the whole country. The Technology strategy Board decided to increase the funding available so that thirty studies could be carried out.

The project is set to create many new jobs and businesses in Swindon as well as educating the town on how to be savvier when approaching climate change.

All of the feasibility studies will be submitted by the 14th November 2012. After assessment and interviews have been carried out the winning proposal will be announced in January 2013!