Yesterday afternoon, some of the Vestas Occupiers had a meeting at County Hall with officials from SEEDA (the South East England Development Agency).
We spoke with Mike Godley after the meeting which he attended with fellow occupiers Ian Terry, Chris Ash and Mark Smith.
Those following the situation at Vestas will remember that the company were awarded a £6 million grant earlier in the year for their new site at Stag Lane, near Cowes. It’s thought that another application for £4million has also been submitted by Vestas for the site.
The agenda for the meeting covered the issue of SEEDA providing grants to Vestas as well as exploring the possibility of encouraging new companies to the Island.
Mike gave us an update on the letter written by IWC and Island MP to SEEDA, urging a clause be added to the Stag Lane grant insisting that if that site is taken by Vestas then they must give up the plant at St Cross Park.
Vestas says that they do want to keep the St Cross plant to use as a prototype facility and between now and 2013 at least 390 positions will be created at Stag Lane and 90 at the St Cross plant.
Mike believes that these will be mostly administration or engineering roles and perhaps not available to Islanders.
Listen to the podcast to hear how the meeting went. [audio:http://otw-audio.s3.amazonaws.com/mike-godley-seeda-meeting.mp3]
