Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what plans his Department has to support industrial maritime projects in coastal communities.

The recently published Levelling Up White Paper outlines the roles of the public and private sector in supporting coastal communities; for example, port and maritime specialisms in the Solent. The transition to net zero presents a real opportunity to support communities impacted by climate change and drive levelling up across the country.

Given the joint Cities and Local Growth Unit between the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, there are regular discussions between the two departments on how government as a whole can best to support our maritime clusters and coastal communities.

One example of our commitment to unlocking the growth of our coastal economies and communities is with the announcement of eight Freeports from eight regions of England and a commitment to establishing one in each of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as soon as possible. These will be national hubs for international trade, innovation and commerce, regenerating communities across the UK, including coastal areas.

And we are already taking steps to support industrial maritime projects in coastal communities, for example with the £33m worth of funding for the Humber’s Zero Carbon Initiative. Alongside support for the East Coast Cluster, this is a collaboration between the Humber and Teesside to capture emissions and store them safely, which has the potential to remove around 50% of total UK industrial emissions.

In particular, Maritime UK Solent will bring together the Solent’s maritime strengths and champion the region as a globally significant maritime cluster, built upon the region’s natural assets. The Solent Freeport in Hampshire will capitalise on the area’s existing maritime strengths to unlock investment, create thousands of new jobs, and help attract new businesses in high growth sectors.

Support for offshore wind is also creating major opportunities in coastal communities around the UK. In the last year, we have been able to announce circa £1.6 billion of investment to develop major port infrastructure and manufacturing capabilities for our offshore wind sector, which could create and safeguard up to 4,100 jobs. We estimate that up to 60,000 direct and indirect jobs could be supported by the offshore wind sector by 2030.