THE city could be in line for a fresh jobs boost if a new business park gets government backing, Worcester’s MP says.

At a meeting yesterday the councillors, company directors and council officers who make up Worcestershire’s Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) were telling minister Mark Prisk why a new enterprise zone in Kidderminster should get support.

Worcester MP Robin Walker, who was at the meeting with Wyre Forest MP Mark Garnier, said the zone would create jobs for city residents.

He said: “It will mean the development of the A449 from Worcester to Kidderminster as a place for jobs and growth, and Worcester will certainly benefit.”

Mark Prisk, business and enterprise minister, was wooed by the county’s public and private sector movers and shakers in a bid to get the backing for the South Kidderminster Advanced Manufacturing and Business Park.

If the zone is approved, business rates will be discounted by up to £275,000 over five years, planning rules relaxed, and super-fast broadband introduced.

Any increase in business rates will be kept by the local enterprise partnership to fund other projects and infrastructure.

The idea is to regenerate the manufacturing and technology area around Kidderminster, centred on the old British Sugar site on the Stourport Road. The zone will actually include several sites which together add up to the size of about 75 football pitches.

LEP chairman Peter Pawsey said firms wanted the planning process sped up so they could compete for global business. He talked about the fact that the Highways Agency had taken eight months to respond to plans to relocate Worcester Bosch to the proposed Worcester Technology Park. “How long would it have taken in China or India, or even France or Germany?” he said.

He also told the minister to lobby banks to release more cash for start-ups and established businesses which rely on loans to set up, expand and compete for new business.

And he urged the minister to take the message back to Government, businesses need skilled, trained workers, not necessarily just university graduates.

“We’re proud that the University of Worcester is Britain’s fastest growing university but believe government should look again at what kind of workforce higher and further education is producing,” he said.

“But have we got the balance right? Manufacturing businesses tell us time and again they have vacancies they can’t fill because they can’t find trained workers.”

Mr Prisk is visiting all 29 of the current enterprise zone bids nationally, from which 10 will go forward.

He said the “big difference” between Thatcher’s enterprise zones of the 1980s and the current day was that LEPs would be telling Whitehall “where these zones should be” not vice-versa.