Emma McClarkin MEP spends day in Northamptonshire

Conservative MEP Emma McClarkin visited the University of Northampton, the School of Science and Technology, and the iCon centre recently, as she spent a day in Northamptonshire.

The East Midlands MEP started her day in Northamptonshire at the iCon centre in Daventry, which is a national centre of excellence for sustainable construction and green technologies. The state of the art building contains an innovation centre with 60 small office units for businesses in the emerging market of sustainable construction, as well as a conference hall for up to 300 people.

Following this, Miss McClarkin visited the Portfolio centre at the University of Northampton. The Portfolio centre offers a supportive and stimulating environment to young companies in order to nurture talent and innovation, as well as providing its resident creative entrepreneurs with the advice, tools and resources that the need to meet their business potential.

Miss McClarkin’s last visit was to the Newton building, home to the School of Science and Technology, following an £11 million redevelopment of the building into a state-of-the-art technology and research centre. The building now houses NVision, which is a facility that provides specialist services to help companies develop and promote their products using immersive 3D modelling and visualisation capabilities.

Following her day, Miss McClarkin said:

“I was very pleased to spend the day in Northamptonshire seeing how EU funding has been used in the region. All 3 projects have opened up real opportunities in Northamptonshire for entrepreneurs of all ages.

“It’s clear to me that Northamptonshire is really putting itself on the map, both in terms of investing for the future and helping companies to develop.  It really has been inspiring meeting some of our local entrepreneurs and hearing of their plans for future developments.

“I hope that this investment of EU taxpayers money is seen as a great boost to the potential growth in the region and delivering value for money.”