Forward planning
GOVERNMENT coaxing of public bodies to bring forward spending plans has seen £360,000 of work start early on Teesside University’s Middlesbrough campus.
Accelerating planned maintenance work on the Cook Building on Borough Road, moved into the current academic year, would pump money into the local economy, said a spokesman. This was just one of many ways in which the university, voted one of the top business facing universities in the country, was helping pull firms through the recession.
“We can help businesses, but we are also a business ourselves and we can see if we can speed up our plans on construction projects and do little things like making sure we continue to be prompt payers.”
The spokesman added that the university would also press ahead with a £13m development of the School of Health, which included community dental health and sports therapy services, while multi-million pound plans to open a Darlington centre for the business school would be concluded soon.
“While some developers are getting cold feet, we are bringing forward programmes and not running shy of our commitments.”
