Spinning into overdrive

The Kent Science Park has continued to peddle its’ claim that they are one of the parties behind the funding of the Kent Science Resource Centre in this weeks East Kent Gazette. The reality is that the scheme is entirely funded by the tax payer and the Kent Science Park is simply the beneficiary of a government funded six year lease on one of their empty buildings to the tune of £957,625. However is doesn’t stop there as the tax payer has also met the £723,000 cost of the refurbishment and fitting out of the same building.

This claim has also been made in a briefing paper circulated to all Swale Councilors’ which was prepared by the Kent Science Parks’ PR company Maxim. Here it was also claimed that an investment of £2.87million was made, however Swale Forward who were behind this scheme, confirmed that the only two investors were Department of Communities & Local Government and SEEDA who are also based at the park and they jointly contributed the sum of £1.68 million.

Then in this week Kent Messenger we see that Kent Science Park have submitted an application for two further technology units which they state would accommodate 1,000 new employees. On this basis the previous four technology units currently under construction would accommodate around 645 employees. With all this extra space one wonders why there is any need to consider any further expansion, after all they will have trebled the number of employees on site. It’s just a shame that they only allowed for one parking space for every ten employees, or perhaps they have simply exaggerated the numbers by a factor of ten.

This is a blatant attempt to deceive the public and you have wonder why they should feel the need to do this if the park is as successful as they keep telling us it is.