It was great to welcome my colleague the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport the Rt Hon Lucy Frazer KC MP to Historic Dockyard Chatham last week to formally open The Fitted Rigging House (South) hosted by Admiral Sir Trevor Soar chairman and Richard Mosley CEO, Paul Barnard, Nigel Howard, Olivia Horner and Lynnette Crisp. The project was aided by a £2.2m fund awarded to the dockyard as part of the £14.4m Levelling Up fund for a number of regeneration projects from Government that I, working with the then Conservative Council were successful in obtaining back in 2021. This support for the Fitted Rigging House which is a Grade 1 listed scheduled Ancient Monument has been brought back to life. The development will provide 1,900 sqm of commercial floorspace which gives us some of the greatly needed commercial space within Medway for businesses to utilise. It will benefit our local economy and will create and keep high value jobs within our Constituency, something I have been working on for some time. Some of the businesses who will be taking up this newly created space are Ward Security and Siemens.
The Secretary of State was also able to have a tour of the whole site, to see how the Dockyard has changed since its closure by the Navy in 1984 as a working Naval dockyard. The successive funding by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport over many years has enabled the estate to grow and become sustainable for the future and has also become a centre for culture enterprises having grown as a industry leading film Location.
I now look forward to seeing the outcomes of the rest of the Levelling Up Funding and Future High Streets funding which I was able to secure for the regeneration of this part of our constituency. #levellingup
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Culture Secretary officially opens Fitted Rigging House South - Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust (thedockyard.co.uk)
