The Coast to Capital Local Enterprise Partnership, supported by Crawley Borough Council and Thales UK Ltd, has provisionally secured up to £8.6 million of government funding from the Getting Britain Building programme to invest in the design, construction and delivery of Crawley’s first Innovation Centre, proposed to be located in Manor Royal.
The purpose of the Crawley Fusion Innovation Centre would be the following:

• To provide a physical commercial space environment in which small businesses operate alongside larger organisations to deliver research and development, innovation and prototyping activities with a technical focus on digitisation and cyber security; transportation technologies; clean energy and power.
• To seed an enhanced business innovation environment within Manor Royal that will help consolidate Manor Royal’s cluster of advanced engineering employers and grow its green technology business base.
• To build a learning environment in which technical skills development and knowhow are nurtured and deployed, opening up career opportunities for Crawley residents.
• To forge stronger links across the wider sub-regional business innovation ecosystem, developing strong business to business co-operation between the Innovation centre and digital small businesses and micro-entrepreneurs across the Coast to Capital area.

In order to determine whether the development and delivery of the Crawley Fusion Innovation Centre is viable financially and operationally, the Coast to Capital LEP has ring-fenced up to £250,000 partly to pay for the costs associated with drawing up a comprehensive business case, which:

• Presents in full the strategic rationale and benefits of the Innovation Centre to Crawley’s future economic prosperity and that of the sub-region.
• Explains the economic benefits of the Innovation Centre and how it will help facilitate economic recovery from the COVID pandemic.
• Provides a commercial case to demonstrate business demand for the take up of occupancy at the Innovation Centre.
• Evaluates in full the financial case / viability of the Innovation Centre, providing a range of financial models based on robust evidence, calculations and forecasts.
• Advocates the most effective and efficient future governance model for the future operation of the Innovation Centre, setting out in full the justification for the model and explaining how it would be realised.

Subject to business case approval (a key decision to be decided by Members), the funding would also be used to pay for the detailed designs costs for the Innovation Centre facility and the costs associated with the preparation and submission of a planning application.
The completed full business case will be presented to Cabinet and Full Council for consideration.

Option 1 – to accept and sign off the funding agreement offer to receive up to £250,000 of funding from the Coast to Capital LEP in order to pay in full for the costs of drawing up the Crawley Innovation Centre business case, which will be presented when ready to Members - and to pay for the detailed design costs / planning application subject to business case approval.