Market potential is good news for town

Market potentialTHAT work is now to start on the old market site is very good news for Littlehampton. Too many years of dithering and carping about the exactly what and how is ended – let’s just get on with it now.

However, your article (Gazette, April 21) touched only briefly on what I think is an important aspect of such large infrastructure construction jobs – local involvement.

Perhaps unhappily, there is no contractor in West Sussex able to take on such work and companies like, say, Morrisons, for good reasons use contractors with whom they have worked for years.

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The river flood prevention scheme is highly specialised, so inevitably an “outsider” has to be appointed. The appointed contractor for the market is based in Fareham and will do us a very good job, no doubt, but its workers will mostly travel daily, surely, only a very few staying occasionally in local B&Bs.

So just how much local involvement is there in these jobs? How much material comes through local suppliers? How many workers, if perhaps only temporary, come through the Littlehampton JobCentre?

How much money is spent with Littlehampton sub-contractors, bricklayers, electricians, plumbers, joiners etc? Is there any involvement with a local college and an apprenticeship scheme? How much will visiting workers spend in our shops?

You said that Arun District Council was pressing for local contractors to be involved – we should be told how successful that is.

John Morris

Maltravers Drive

Littlehampton