Basingstoke MP Maria Miller joined the Mayor Cllr Dan Putty, Sir George Young MP and a host of senior representatives of local businesses and other organisations last week at an event organised by Destination Basingstoke, to celebrate Basingstoke as a great place to live and work. The event was held at Airkix, the new indoor skydiving centre at Basingstoke Leisure Park.

Maria welcomed the guests and spoke about the vote of confidence in Basingstoke that recent major investments in the town have demonstrated. She highlighted TIAA-CREFF Asset Management’s purchase of Festival Place, Sainsbury’s £100 million new distribution centre, Network Rail’s £50 million signalling centre, Celador’s purchase of the local radio station, and the new Airkix facility itself.

Commenting on why businesses chose to locate and remain in Basingstoke, Maria said that location and transport connections were important, but so too were the highly skilled local workforce and the infrastructure – with investment in place to improve access to high speed broadband and other improvement in the pipeline. She also highlighted that Basingstoke was one of the top 10 employment centres in the south east, and unemployment locally was now at its lowest for some four and a half years.

Maria said: “I was pleased to meet up with many of Destination Basingstoke’s “Ambassadors”, to celebrate the town’s success stories – and look forward to an exciting future. It was good to hear from some of the new investors in the town what had attracted them to Basingstoke and hear their different perspectives.”