Derry & Strabane Council forging ahead with next stage of City Deal

 

Derry City and Strabane District Council say discussions with third party stakeholders including the Irish Government are progressing with a view to establishing an overall eventual funding package leveraged by City Deal of between £250-300m.
Members of the Council’s Governance and Strategic Planning Committee met this week to hear how the local authority is forging ahead with the next stage of the City Deal and the City and Region’s Strategic Growth projects.
In a report presented to members, the Council’s Chief Executive, John Kelpie advised that the core focus of the £50M City Deal funding remains the delivery of the centres of innovation and excellence in data analytics and robotics and automation as well as the key smart/ digital City and Region initiatives.
While the £55m Future Fund and the further anticipated match funding from NI Government and other partners is said to be focused on advancing projects such as the Graduate Medical School.
The delivery of a Personalised Medicine Centre of Excellence at the Ulster university and Altnagelvin is also a priority together with the provision of an integrated, Council-wide, multi-skills employment pathways intervention support programme.
The report also explained that work on these projects and the proposed SMART and digital city projects were advancing while the strategic outline cases for major regeneration projects for Derry City and Strabane Town Centre are at an advanced stage of progress.