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.

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.

One of the architects of the Post Office Horizon accounting system has admitted there were “discreet” bugs but it generally “worked well”, dismissing suggestions he had knowledge of widespread flaws.

Gareth Jenkins, who was a lead engineer at Horizon supplier Fujitsu, told the public inquiry into the IT scandal that while pilots for both Horizon systems encountered troubles, systemic issues he was aware of were ironed out.

Under questioning from counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC, he believed the scale and seriousness of the bugs in the system that have been complained about was inconsistent with his own understanding of Horizon’s integrity.

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He said that applied to both the original software, now known as ‘legacy Horizon’, and the later Horizon Online system which, he pointed out, was still being used to this day.

Mr Jenkins was in the paid employment of Fujitsu from 1996 to 2022.

He was utilised, by the Post Office, as an expert witness in prosecutions of sub-postmasters on charges such as theft and false accounting.

He gave evidence in the pivotal 2010 trial of Seema Misra, who was jailed while pregnant.

It has been alleged that Mr Jenkins failed to disclose then the existence of a known bug in the accounting system that had the potential to clear her name and halt other prosecutions.

In addition to knowledge of flaws in Horizon, he is facing further claims relating to the ability of Fujitsu personnel to access the legacy system without the knowledge of sub-postmasters.

He is being investigated by police on perjury grounds.

The law states that expert witnesses in criminal cases must be impartial.

The inquiry has already heard Mr Jenkins was used on multiple occasions to provide information as the Post Office took sub-postmasters to court.

He said on Tuesday he was among individual engineers who would be asked to investigate a potential bug should an issue arise, describing one such occasion.

“There was a mismatch in the Post Office back end accounts,” he said, explaining how he realised the problem was due to it taking the “accounts at different times”.

“One was taking the cash positions at 7pm in the evening and the other was taking the cash position at midnight, and this accounted for the mismatch they had in the accounts,” he said.

Mr Jenkins denied having knowledge of bugs other than those he was personally asked to investigate.

“I’m not sure that even today I understand what bugs actually did cause the problems that people suffer from,” he added, saying that those he was alerted to were “discreet” and “well controlled and managed at the time”.

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Asked if it had occurred to him that he should have made sure he knew about the problems that had not been referred to him before he went to court, Mr Jenkins replied: “That didn’t occur to me.

“I was confident, possibly wrongly so, that if problems did occur they were quickly fixed and not left to fester in the system to have a large impact.

“With hindsight I would have done things differently,” he added, saying he would have asked wider questions.

He also told Mr Beer he did not understand his duties of disclosure until 2020.

More than 700 sub-postmasters were wrongly convicted of crimes linked to their use of the Horizon systems.

Mr Jenkins is scheduled to give four days of evidence.

Weekly wages have increased by just £16 in 14 years when inflation is factored in, according to research from living-standards think tank the Resolution Foundation.

Workers have experienced an “unprecedented” pay squeeze since 2010 with real weekly wage growth of £16 due to two crises and Brexit, the foundation said.

The sum factors in price rises across the time period.

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Slow wage growth

Economic challenges in the form of the financial crisis of the late 2000s and the current cost of living crisis coupled with Brexit’s economic effects have acted to suppress wage growth, it said.

It’s a significant slowdown from the rises seen in the 14 years up to 2010 when wages rose £145 a week. It’s also small when compared to other large economies.

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If wage growth had been at the level of Germany and the US, people would be earning £3,600 more a year, equivalent to £69.23 a week.

While wages have been rising faster than inflation in the past few months they haven’t been high enough to overcome a nearly two-year period where the price of goods was going up more quickly than pay packets.

While the latest official inflation reading showed prices rose 2% and wages rose 6%, price rises fuelled by high energy bills after the invasion of Ukraine had been eroding the benefits of salary increases.

Those high energy costs followed pandemic-era price hikes after lockdowns caused problems in product supply chains. Households have been struggling with high bills particularly since energy bills skyrocketed in the early months of 2022.

Improvements for the lowest-paid

Wages have, however, increased more for the lowest earners as the minimum wage has been raised, the Resolution Foundation said.

Those in traditionally low-paying jobs such as cleaners, bar staff and shop workers have seen their typical hourly pay rise against inflation and is now 20% higher than in 2010. It’s significantly higher than the typical pay growth across the workforce, which is 1.6%, the thinktank said.

A rise in the minimum wage in 2016 was credited for this.

It’s resulted in hourly wage inequality between low and median earners reaching the lowest level since the mid-1970s.

The minimum wage is now one of the highest in the world, the foundation added.

Employment gains and losses

Gains were also made in the number of people at work in the UK, though it is one of just six countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) group of nations that has yet to return to its pre-pandemic employment rate.

Of the 38 OECD countries only the UK, Latvia, Iceland, Chile, Colombia and South Africa have fewer people in employment than before the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.