A Cumbrian business leader said despite the county’s Freeport bid failing, there was still hope for a positive outcome.
Jo Lappin, chief executive of the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership, said there was a possibility a number of Cumbria’s proposals made as part of the bid could still be taken forward.
Freeports are areas such as airports or maritime ports designated by the Government to exist under special tax and customs rules.
Companies operating in these areas can defer paying tax until their products are moved elsewhere, or can avoid paying tax entirely if their goods are stored or manufactured on site then exported again.
In February, Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership submitted a bid to Government in response to its proposals for the creation of 10 new Freeports across the UK.
The bid had been prepared in partnership with Cumbria County Council, the district councils in Allerdale, Barrow and Carlisle, as well as the operators of Carlisle Lake District Airport, Barrow Port and the Port of Workington.
It proposed creating a Cumbria Freeport across these three sites.
The chairman of the Cumbria LEP, Lord Inglewood said following the bid submission that a successful Freeport bid could play an important role in the economic recovery and growth of the county.
During the presentation of the Government’s budget last week, Chancellor Rishi Sunak confirmed that eight Freeports bids had been successful, from more than 40 submissions.
However, Cumbria was not among them.
Speaking to Cumbria County Council’s LEP scrutiny board on Monday, Mrs Lappin said the preparation for Cumbria’s Freeport bid had been a considerable piece of work that complemented the LEP’s aims to encourage the growth of new supply chains and promoting the growth of internationalised businesses in the county.
“Sadly, we were not successful in last week’s Budget,” she said.
“But we do have a meeting booked with the Freeport team leads in Government next week for feedback.
“Out of that we hope that we will have some opportunities to explore how we might take forward some of our proposals outside of a Freeport initiative.”
Mrs Lappin added that the team behind Cumbria’s bid “realised when we put it in that it was going to be extremely challenging to be successful”.
“It was a very, very competitive process”, but she added that “we feel we have a really good platform to build upon.
