POLITICS
Jeremy Hunt offers £500m to keep factory for Jaguar Land Rover in UK
The chancellor’s sizeable offer comes amid fears that car assembly plants could leave the UK if batteries are produced elsewhere
Jeremy Hunt has put half a billion pounds in subsidies on the table to stop a new electric battery “giga-factory” for one of Britain’s biggest car manufacturers going abroad.
Amid growing concerns in government about the threat facing the UK car industry as it transforms towards electric vehicles, the Treasury has drawn up a package of incentives to persuade the owner of Jaguar Land Rover to invest in the UK.
The parent company, the Indian conglomerate Tata, is weighing up whether to site a planned giga-factory production facility for future electric vehicles in the UK or Spain.
The Gravity Business Park near Bridgwater in Somerset has been identified as a possible giga-factory for electric Jaguar Land Rover batteries
GRAVITY BUSINESS PARK
The government package includes a mixture of a cash grant, reductions in energy costs and covering the cost of upgrading the power network around the site JLR’s owner
