Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Campaigners – backed by the local business community – have also secured pledges of a further £320,000 towards the cost of progressing plans for the freshwater science facility proposed on former brickworks land at Stewartby.

Nirah Holdings, which is steering the research initiative, claimed last month that the council was taking the £300k loan it originally promised out of reach by tieing it into unacceptable legal conditions.

The company immediately began a public appeal, which Bedfordshire’s business community has backed with gusto. A recent meeting between the two sides may have resolved the impasse and a second legal opinion is now being sought.

The council had feared the loan might contravene Euro-pean law on ‘state aid’, which limits the ways in which the public sector can invest in private enterprises.

Both parties now say that their summit was extremely constructive and that a definitive road map could be produced by mid-September.

Peter May, chairman of Nirah Holdings, said: “The meeting was helpful, and the position we are now in is encouraging. I hope we can make real progress over the coming weeks.”

Nirah is being bankrolled in its early stages by a consortium of the county council and the East of England Development Agency.

The county council has so far advanced £1 million to Nirah and EEDA has provided £2 million of an agreed £4 million loan. Local business leaders are aware that Nirah has been holding talks with Liverpool city chiefs and don’t want to risk the financial and jobs boost the research hub would provide for Bedfordshire.

Bedford’s Mayor, Frank Branston, has pledged £50k of his own cash and warned the council it will not be forgiven if it lets the scheme slip away to Merseyside. Hundreds of jobs and millions of pounds in annual revenue will be generated by the scheme.

The much vaunted Eden project in Cornwall, for example, has benefited 3,000 local firms to the tune of £700 million over the last five years according to research by the BBC.