00:00Today's a brilliant day, the government have announced £2.5m extra development funding
00:04to the project, taking it to £5m in total. This is a huge signal of the positive intent
00:09of this project and really means we can start really motoring on to bring this project into
00:15delivery. It's in the delivery phase now and this further investment just really gives
00:19an excellent foundation for our design team and to get the project motoring.
00:24I think it's showing real support from the government for what we're doing here. It just
00:30means that the project isn't losing any momentum. I think some people have been a little bit
00:34frustrated, local people, that there hasn't been the big announcement that the £50m has
00:39been lodged in our bank account. But nothing has stopped over the last 18 months or so
00:47since the £50m was first announced. So Eden have not stopped designing and they have now
00:57gone out to tender for a number of really key contractual roles, in particular the design
01:04and the project management. And jobs have been advertised that will, as you've said,
01:09be based here in Morecambe. So it's just really positive. We've so enjoyed our partnership
01:14with Eden over the last few years and with the University and with Lancashire County
01:18Council. All four partners know that this is a transformational project for this town
01:25and the wider district. What we can say is that by the end of the autumn we're going
01:29to announce our project timeline. And all these things are indicative that things change
01:33all the time. But as we understand at the moment the project is moving from 2027 to
01:372028. We're looking forward to confirming that plan of what will happen and when it
01:42will happen in the really key moving parts, probably in the latter part of the autumn.
01:46And one of the things we've got to do is do the ground investigations, to get a spade
01:50in the ground, but to see what is the soil, what is the rock, what's there. We did one
01:54of those investigations earlier on in the year and we've got the second part of that
01:58to come. We know that weather in Morecambe can vary from day to day so we've given ourselves
02:01a really big broad window around from November to the beginning of spring. So this winter
02:06we want to try and do as much as we can do as part of our ground investigation. And that
02:10will be ahead of construction, again we'll announce that timeline later on in the autumn.
02:14We're all keen to see those structures start to rise above ground, but like Si said earlier,
02:20it's so important that we get the design right before we start putting anything above ground.
02:27Projects can be defined by their complexity, not just by their value. And I think this
02:30is a complicated project because of where it is, because of what it is, its uniqueness.
02:34And we want to build a world class eco-attraction and they're not off the shelf items. And also
02:39it needs to be inspired by Morecambe Bay, again something that is very unique. So we're
02:43going to take our time to design it really well, in detail, get the cost right and then
02:48build it really fast. That's our plan.
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