Haven Waterway SEZ Energy Sector 2024 – 30 x 24cm, acrylic, wire, on canvas
Tory MP Michael Gove introduced Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs) in his Levelling Up Bill in 2023. CPOs apply to business, agricultural, and residential properties. Private equity is making aggressive incursions into the public sector as engineered insolvency bankrupts councils, and public assets are sold off. It will be interesting to see Labour voters go into paroxysms of outrage once they realise that Labour fully backed Sunak’s deregulated 12 Freeports and 74 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) as board members of his nationwide free zones consortia.
UK Govt website – A common argument against Enterprise Zones is that they result in job displacement rather than job creation – i.e., existing local companies relocate to enterprise zones to take advantage of financial incentives, keeping their existing workforce rather than firms from outside the area relocating and creating new jobs. A 2011 report by the Work Foundation found that “up to 80%” of jobs created by enterprise zones in the 1980s were in fact “taken from other places.” The TUC and RMT are opposed to Freeports and Special Economic Zones