11/02/13

£1m extension for Marlowe Innovation Centre

by business editor Trevor Sturgess

A £350,000 cash injection could bring up to 75 jobs to east Kent.

Planning minister Nick Boles was in Ramsgate today to announce the grant from the Coastal Communities Fund for the Marlowe Innovation Centre.

The investment will enable the centre to build a £1 million extension that will double its accommodation and support services to small businesses and start-ups.

The expansion could lead to the creation of another 75 jobs. It currently offers 25 workspaces - a mix of offices and light industrial premises - with 75 people and 25 organisations based there.

Profits from the centre are ploughed into an endowment fund that helps the neighbouring Marlowe Academy to motivate and mentor young people and expand their career horizons.

The extension is due to be completed by June 2014.

Roger De Haan, the former Saga Group owner whose family’s charitable trust has been a key supporter of the centre, welcomed the announcement.

He pledged that the trust would pay for the balance of the construction costs of £1m to ensure the project went ahead.

“This is good news for jobs and businesses in Thanet,” he said. “Perhaps equally as important, any profits made from renting space at the centre go towards the endowment fund at the Marlowe Academy.

"This fund enables the school to provide intensive coaching in small groups to students who need it, and helps provide bursaries to students who succeed in going on to university.”

The centre is run by a limited company the Friends of the Folkestone and Marlowe Academies (Trading).

All tenants allocate time each month to working with the students of the Marlowe Academy, and more than 150 have benefited since the centre opened.

They are helped with CV preparation, interview practice, careers advice, mentoring and special projects.

Students are exposed to enterprises specialising in branding, app creation, printing, physiotherapy, dentistry, finance and electronics.