First Universal theme park in Europe to generate ‘£50bn of economic benefits for UK’
New details have been unveiled for Universal’s first UK theme park – including plans for the attraction to be open 365 days a year.
Universal Destinations & Experiences – which is owned by Sky’s parent company Comcast – has bought land near Bedford as it plans to build Europe’s largest theme park with millions of visitors per year, as well as a 500-room hotel and dining area.
Economic benefits
Universal’s economic impact analysis, produced in line with HM Treasury guidelines on economic appraisal and published today suggests the attraction will generate nearly £50bn of economic benefits for the UK.
It said the net economic contribution of the potential project for the UK was forecast to be £35.1bn over the construction period and first 20 years of operation.
Up to a further £14.1bn was expected to be generated in extra taxes for the exchequer over the same period.
The analysis suggests the project will generate 20,000 jobs during the construction period which, at its peak, will see 5,000 workers on the site.
Once operational, it is expected to create an initial 8,000 new jobs, rising over time. The company has made a commitment to pay the living wage to employees.
‘The best location we’ve ever seen’
Universal has acquired almost 500 acres for the site, which is just south of Bedford between Kempston, Wootton, Stewartby and Wixams, with an option to buy up to a further 200 acres.
A map showing the land Universal has purchased
The new park, which would have a construction period of around six years, would be built on land once occupied by Kempston Hardwick brickworks, once the world’s largest brickworks in terms of output, which closed in 2008 and which was demolished in September 2021.
“I can tell you it’s going to be a world-class park with all experiences that people will love based upon the most popular films, video games and stories that people have enjoyed for decades,” said Page Thompson, the company’s president in charge of new ventures.
“We’ve spent the last decade looking all over Europe and the United Kingdom for locations, and we think this is the best location we’ve ever seen.”
Universal Destinations & Experiences currently has five theme parks around the world – in the United States, Japan, China and Singapore.
Disneyland Paris, which with the associated Walt Disney Studios Park is currently Europe’s biggest theme park, attracts around 15 million visitors per year.
New details
“Our phase one plans consist of a theme park, a 500-room hotel and a dining area that people can come to even if they don’t have a theme park ticket,” Mr Thompson told Sky News.
“Over time, I would expect the number of hotels to grow.
“Our intention is that this park would be open 365 days a year, just like all of our other major theme parks.
“We have a whole series of special events, like our Halloween Horror Nights and carnival parties… and it just allows us to attract people throughout this time.”
Universal said evidence from its other theme parks suggested that for every job supported within the parks at least 1.5 further jobs could be supported in the supply chain and neighbouring parts of the economy – leading to its expectation of a net additional 20,000 jobs.
Plenty of competition
The investment is not without risks and not least because of its scale.
Of Europe’s 20 most visited theme parks, four – Legoland Windsor, Alton Towers, Chessington World of Adventures and Thorpe Park – are in the UK, all owned by the former FTSE-100 giant Merlin Entertainments. Their combined visitor numbers annually come to around half of what Universal is targeting.
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There is also plenty of competition.
Locally, not far from the proposed Bedfordshire site is the Harry Potter Experience at the Warner Bros studio tour near Watford, while there is Woburn Safari Park to the immediate north and Whipsnade Zoo to the immediate west of Luton.
There is no shortage of quality options for family days out. Further afield Europe already has more than 1,000 theme and amusement parks, many of them owned by Merlin, renowned for its astute management.
The weather issue
A third factor, potentially, is the weather. This is something that already handicaps a lot of theme parks in northern Europe, such as Liseberg in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, the Tivoli Gardens in the Danish capital Copenhagen and the original Legoland, in the Danish city of Billund, which close for some or all of the winter. So does Phantasialand, one of Germany’s biggest and most popular attractions.
Universal Destinations & Experiences, however, is thought to be undeterred by the English weather and points to the fact that the weather is not always perfect in other parts of the world in which it operates, most notably China and Japan.
The Paris experience
The company also appears undeterred by the experience of Disney in Paris.
The original Euro Disney was loss-making for many years – partly due to mismanagement and partly due to a misunderstanding of what European and particularly French consumers were looking for – and it has only really been since it was fully consumed by the Walt Disney Company, in 2017, that it has been effectively run.
Transport challenges
Another big risk is the transport links. Universal Destinations & Experiences – the name was changed last year from Universal Parks & Resorts to better reflect the kind of services customers will be offered in future in both the physical and virtual worlds – has selected the site primarily for its rail and road links to London and, with one in three visitors expected to come from overseas, for its proximity to Luton Airport.
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Yet those links are not currently up to handling the kind of visitor numbers Universal Destinations & Experiences is expecting.
The M1, the main road link to London, is frequently congested around the Luton turn-off at junction 10 and the road links from there to the site in need of improvement.
Accordingly, Universal Destinations & Experiences will be seeking government incentives to invest in local road and rail links.
Support could also come from East West Rail, the proposed new main line railway connecting East Anglia and South Wales, the first phase of which is a line between Oxford and Cambridge and for which a new station at Kempston Hardwick – whose existing station backs onto the land the park would operate – has been proposed.
The planning process
Riskiest of all, perhaps, is the planning process. Local businesses and MPs are supportive while both Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor and Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, have been briefed on the project. Planning proposals have been submitted and Universal Destinations & Experiences has held talks with Bedford Borough and Central Bedfordshire Councils.
However, Mr Thompson confirmed that Universal Destinations & Experiences is seeking planning permission via a so-called special development order – which would take the decision out of the hands of the local authorities and instead leave the final decision on planning consent with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
A roll of the dice
So this is a big roll of the dice by Universal Destinations & Experiences.
The investment – the first phase of which will be several billion pounds – will take many years to pay off while thrill-seekers should probably not expect the resort to be up and running much before the end of the decade.
However, starting with a blank sheet of paper as it opens its first European venue, Universal Destinations & Experiences has the opportunity to bring something genuinely new not just to the UK but to Europe.
The name change made by the business last year reflects the fact that, in future, the business expects to be offering branded entertainment, culinary, gaming and consumer product experiences that go a lot further than the traditional theme park and resort offerings.
There could even be experiences at the resort which have yet to be conceived. It could be quite the ride.
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JPMorgan Chase unveils plans to build new £10bn ‘landmark tower’ in London – double the size of The Shard
Plans have been announced for a new “landmark tower” in London with double the floor space of Britain’s tallest building, The Shard.
JPMorgan Chase unveiled details of the proposed office block after banks escaped having their taxes raised in the budget earlier this week.
The US multinational bank said the new building in Canary Wharf, in the east of the capital, would have a floor space of three million square feet. The Shard, in London Bridge, covers 1.3 million square feet.
However, the final design of the tower, including its height, is still being finalised.
A spokesperson for the firm told Sky News that they hoped to have clarity “soon” on how tall the building would be and the number of storeys. But it is expected to be one of the biggest office blocks in Europe.
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JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon reportedly signed off on the plans late last week.
It came after Sir Keir Starmer’s business envoy Varun Chandra flew out to New York to personally “offer assurances about the government’s business-friendly policies,” the Financial Times reported on Friday.
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The company also warned in a press release that its plans were “subject to a continuing positive business environment in the UK”, as well as planning permission from local authorities.
JPMorgan Chase said the project could contribute up to £9.9bn to the UK economy over six years, including by generating 7,800 jobs, many of them in the construction industry.
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The tower would house up to 12,000 people and serve as JPMorgan Chase’s main UK headquarters and its most significant presence in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The firm, which employs 23,000 people in the UK, said the tower would be “one of the largest and most sophisticated in Europe”.
The building is being designed by British architects Foster and Partners, known for landmarks projects including the new Wembley Stadium and London’s Millennium Bridge.
Mr Dimon said: “London has been a trading and financial hub for more than a thousand years, and maintaining it as a vibrant place for finance and business is critical to the health of the UK economy.
“This building will represent our lasting commitment to the city, the UK, our clients and our people.”
Mr Dimon added: “The UK government’s priority of economic growth has been a critical factor in helping us make this decision.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves said she was “thrilled” about the announcement, while Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan said it represented a “huge vote of confidence in the capital’s future”.
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‘Sticking to Labour manifesto pledge costs millions of workers’, Resolution Foundation says
Sticking to Labour’s manifesto pledge and freezing income tax thresholds rather than raising income tax has hurt low- and middle-income earners, an influential thinktank has said.
Millions of these workers “would have been better off with their tax rates rising than their thresholds being frozen”, according to the Resolution Foundation’s chief executive, Ruth Curtice.
“Ironically, sticking to her manifesto tax pledge has cost millions of low-to-middle earners”, she said.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in her budget speech that the point at which people start paying higher rates of tax has been held. It means earners are set to be dragged into higher tax bands as they get pay rises.
The chancellor felt unable to raise income tax as the Labour Party pledged not to raise taxes on working people in its election manifesto.
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But many are saying that pledge was broken regardless, as the tax burden has increased by £26bn in this budget.
When asked by Sky News whether Ms Reeves would accept she broke the manifesto pledge, she said:
“I do recognise that yesterday I have asked working people to contribute a bit more by freezing those thresholds for a further three years from 2028.”
“I do recognise that that will mean that working people pay a bit more, but I’ve kept that contribution to an absolute minimum”.
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The Resolution Foundation thinktank, which aims to raise living standards, welcomed measures designed to support people with the cost of living, such as the removal of the two-child benefit cap, which limited the number of children families could claim benefits for.
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The announced reduction in energy bills through the removal of as yet unspecified levies was similarly welcomed.
The chancellor said bills would become £150 cheaper a year, but the foundation said typical energy bills will fall by around £130 annually for the next three years, “though support then fades away”.
More to come
This budget won’t be the last of it, Ms Curtice said, as economic growth forecasts have been downgraded by independent forecasters the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), and growth is a “hurdle that remains to be cleared”.
“Until that challenge is taken on, we can expect plenty more bracing budgets,” she added.
It comes despite Ms Reeves saying as far back as last year, there would be no more tax increases.
Ultimately, though, the foundation said, “The great drumbeat of doom that preceded the chancellor’s big day turned out to be over the top: the forecasts came in better than many had feared.”
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