Newport Council leader Dimitri Batrouni has said that relocating the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to the city centre would significantly boost efforts to revitalise the area. He is also calling for the rejected M4 Relief Road project to be revisited, alongside greater public transport investment to ease congestion.
ONS relocation and tech cluster growth
The ONS employs around 2,700 people at its Duffryn office campus near junction 28 of the M4. It moved its headquarters to Newport from London in 2007. Mr Batrouni, a Labour politician, said the city has the fastest-growing population in Wales and is well placed to be a key driver of the wider compound semiconductor cluster in south Wales. The city is home to major commercial players in the sector, including KLA, Vishay, Intertechnology and IQE.
If the ONS were to relocate, and potentially the nearby Intellectual Property Office too, it would be driven by the Government Property Agency (GPA), which oversees the Westminster administration's property estate. The agency has a live property requirement in the Cardiff market to bring three Ministry of Justice buildings under one new 140,000 sq ft location. It has also been considering a new, smaller headquarters in the city for Companies House.
Investment zone and semiconductor ambitions
Imperial Park, home to the city's tech cluster, and the nearby ONS offices are included in one of three sites in the UK Government-backed investment zone for Cardiff and Newport. The other two sites are the proposed Cardiff Parkway new train station and integrated business park at St Mellons, and land south of Cardiff train station and Cardiff Bay. The zone will receive £160m of investment and business support over the next decade, overseen by the Cardiff Capital Region, which covers the 10 local authority areas of south-east Wales. Mr Batrouni is also deputy chair of the city region, which now has statutory body status.
The issue of how much business rates the zone will be able to retain, as well as borrowing against anticipated increases in business rates for investment through tax increment financing, has yet to be finalised with the Welsh Government.
Mr Batrouni said it would be a 'no-brainer' for any freed-up space currently occupied by the ONS to be taken up by the compound semiconductor cluster. It is understood that a number of tech-related investments are earmarked for Newport. The compound semiconductor cluster in South Wales, from early-stage and academic research to commercial firms, is targeting employing more than 6,000 people by 2030 and generating combined revenues of £1bn. New research showed its growing importance to the Welsh economy, with it last year supporting 3,140 jobs and generating an economic gross value added of £436m.
M4 relief road and transport investment
In 2017, the then Welsh Government, led by Mark Drakeford, rejected a new M4 Relief Road, despite a recommendation from a planning inspector's report, on cost and environmental grounds. The 14-mile stretch of new motorway then had an indicative price tag of £1.3bn. With inflation, revisiting the Black Route now would have a cost well north of £2bn. Even if the Welsh Government were minded to look at the project again, it would need significant financing support from the UK Government and the utilisation of Welsh Government capital borrowing.
At the time, Mr Drakeford promised £1bn in public transport investment designed to reduce car journeys on the M4, where the two-lane Brynglas Tunnels in Newport can become congested, particularly at peak times. This included the delivery of the proposed five Burns stations between Cardiff and Newport – including new stations in Newport West, Llanwern and Somerton. However, there is nowhere near enough funding in the current spending review period for the proposed stations, let alone any investment in rail corridor work to support any privately financed Cardiff Parkway project.
While Sir Keir Starmer made a commitment of £14bn for rail investment in Wales just before the Senedd election, this was not a guaranteed Treasury funding commitment, but a political one. The test for new prime minister Andy Burnham in addressing fair rail enhancement funding for Wales will be in the next spending review, to see if more money is ring-fenced to deliver the Burns stations, which have a projected cost of £300m. In the current spending review, there is only £450m for all rail enhancement projects in Wales.
Local opposition to blue route and junction closures
On addressing M4 congestion, Mr Batrouni said revisiting the Blue Route – running through the city – is a non-starter. He said: "I am opposed to the original Blue Route [which Plaid were supportive of] for a very good reason. If you divert traffic from the Magor junction and put it through the Tata Steel Road, that goes past the new Glan Llyn estate which will have 4,000 homes when completed. That is part our population growth with young families and where we need to build two new schools and have already built one. They are commuters that go through that road and it is already at peak times hammered."
He rejected the case for closing motorway junctions in Newport as a way of reducing congestion. The leader said: "I would obviously love a solution, but I would be hostile to junction closures. Would you build a motorway now with so many junctions (six in Newport)? The answer is no. However, those junctions have become so integral to people's local transport patterns that closures now would mean even heavier congestion in the city, where our local roads are already under huge pressure."
Mr Batrouni also said he would be opposed to introducing tolls on any new relief road. He explained: "To be clear, I would be opposed to tolling. This is critical infrastructure which they should do anyway (government funded). Ultimately, a toll is a tax on the people of Wales and its economy and we need to be growing our economy."
University presence and future outlook
Mr Batrouni was also asked whether the city was being held back by not having a greater higher education sector presence. In 2013, the University of Newport merged with the then University of Glamorgan to create the University of South Wales. Mr Batrouni said: "There is a city centre campus that does host things like the cyber security. But are you saying to me I would like more of a university presence? Then, yes, absolutely and I will be meeting the new vice-chancellor of South Wales University soon to discuss that. We have the semiconductor cluster literally crying out for talented and skilled people and are trying to recruit at a rate of knots. Why aren't the universities, not just the University of South Wales, but others like Cardiff, saying we are going to fill that gap with our students? Bassaleg is the first comprehensive in the UK to become a compound semiconductor school, so why aren't the universities doing this?"
