The Prime Minister has today announced a New Deal for Britain. This sets out an ambitious economic strategy that will focus on rebuilding Britain right across the UK, putting jobs, skills and infrastructure investment at the heart of our economic recovery. As we emerge from coronavirus, this will help deliver this Government’s manifesto pledges to level up the entire country.
A focus will be put on the great unresolved challenges of the last three decades which successive governments have not dealt with. We will build homes, fix the NHS and tackle the skills crisis, while focusing on the gap in opportunity, productivity and connectivity between the regions of the UK.
Over the next five years, we will invest more than £600 billion pounds in our future prosperity, and today’s announcements bring forward £5 billion of capital investment projects, support jobs and economic recovery across the country.
We have confirmed a £12 billion affordable homes programme that will support up to 180,000 new affordable homes for ownership and rent over the next eight years.
In the Autumn, we will publish our National Infrastructure Strategy, which will set a clear direction on core economic infrastructure, including energy networks, road and rail, and flood defences. We will also work with the devolved administrations to accelerate infrastructure projects in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
We will reforest Britain by planting 75,000 acres of trees every year by 2025, pledging £40 million to boost local conservative projects and creating jobs. This will safeguard the UK’s natural carbon stores, our wildlife habits and local green spaces, which are central to capturing and removing CO2 from the atmosphere and protecting precious biodiversity.
A new fund of over £1 billion will fund the first 50 projects of a new, ten-year school rebuilding programme, starting from 2020/21.
Finchley and Golders Green will directly benefit from its share of the £434 million investment to expand classrooms, upgrade facilities and improve the education of children across the country. This will be provided through Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) that will ensure that schools have well-maintained facilities to provide students with safe environments that support high-quality education.
Here in Finchley and Golders Green, six projects across four schools benefit from this funding:
- Woodhouse College – Main Building and Hockman fire alarm upgrade works
- Woodhouse College – Heating Boiler Plant and Controls replacement
- Whitefield School – Urgent Fire Safety and Compliance
- Hasmonean High School for Boys – Urgent Replacement of Failing Boilers
- Hasmonean High School for Boys – Urgent Flat Roof Covering Replacements
- Bishop Douglass School Finchley – Fire Safety Improvements.
This New Deal is great news for the whole of the United Kingdom, and I look forward to seeing the Government begin levelling up and investing in the whole of the country.
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