FO REWORD
FOREWORD Reflecting the many different forms investment can take, we turn our attention this issue to some of the exciting developments currently reshaping this dynamic region.
he ground-breaking enterprise behind one of them, Suffolk’s Integrated Care Academy, has attracted global attention because of the potential health benefits its research could reap. The result of a partnership between a university, a council and a range of healthcare organisations, the academy’s research lead, Age Care Technologies (ACT), has won the international Information Society Prize for Innovation in Healthy Ageing.
A new cross-sector taskforce across in the Fens has, if anything, even greater ambition. Our cover feature this edition, the broad ranging Future Fens Integrated Adaptation project is designed to build resilience to the impact of climate change, stimulate housing growth and job creation, lead to the upgrade of transport links, improve biodiversity and support new opportunities for tourism. The project is described as radical and the first of its kind in the UK.
Having seen off competition from 80 digi-tech companies located all over the world, including technologies backed by Amazon, ACT chief executive Prof. Ian Philp said his approach was driven by the three key challenges he saw in older people’s care worldwide. Meanwhile, plans to transform the former industrial area of east Norwich into a highly sustainable quarter have taken a step forward with the appointment of consultants. Great Yarmouth Borough Council has started providing free public wifi that is part and parcel of its £4.6m Market Place redevelopment. And over in Cambridgeshire, the Growth Works Fund has awarded 32 business grants which are expected to generate more than 300 jobs and capital expenditure in excess of £11m. Growth Fund chairman Nigel Parkinson said: “With the economy beginning to open up and businesses looking to the future with growing certainty, these grants are being awarded at a time when they will have the most impact.”
Helen Compson Editor, East Anglia in Business
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