THE Government is aiming to make the North East a centre for designing new trains as well as building them, the Transport Secretary has said.
Japanese firm Hitachi has already committed to establishing a new European assembly and manufacturing plant in County Durham – set to create hundreds of direct jobs and thousands more in the supply chain – after winning a £4.5bn Government contract to build a fleet of new inter-city trains.
And Transport Secretary Philip Hammond has now revealed that the Department for Business (BIS) is working to persuade the company to build on its plant in Newton Aycliffe, by making the North East a centre for designing trains as well.
He said: “Once Hitachi establish their assembly plant here, the key to making that a sustained fixture of the UK economy will be eventually persuading them to tap into the UK’s undoubted expertise in train engineering and design to establish a design centre in the UK as well.
“And that would certainly be one of the objectives of my colleagues at BIS.”
Trains will begin rolling off the production line in 2016 and run on the East Coast and Great Western Main Lines. Some 530 carriages will be built, with 2,500 more peak-time seats every day on the East Coast Main Line.
The Transport Secretary’s comments came as he gave evidence to the Commons transport committee hearing looking at the Government’s decision to make German firm Siemens the preferred bidder to supply train carriages for the Thameslink route between Bedford and Brighton rather than Derby-based Bombardier. Siemens has promised up to 2,000 jobs will be created in the UK as a result of the £1.4bn deal, although train carriages will be built in Germany.
Around 600 skilled posts will be involved in making train components – with up to 300 at a plant in Hebburn, South Tyneside. Most of the jobs are expected to start in two years’ time, with the first new carriages arriving in 2015.
Bombardier has announced 1,400 redundancies as a result of losing out on the contract. The firm’s chairman told the specially convened transport committee hearing that he was “struggling to understand” the decision, which unions said could eventually lead to thousands more UK jobs being lost.
