Plan to create a British rival to Silicon Valley around Oxford and Cambridge are understood to have been shelved to prioritise “levelling up” spending in the north of England.
The “Oxford-Cambridge Arc”, a regional project designed to connect the UK’s two leading universities and the manufacturing and logistics centre of Milton Keynes by building east-west transport links, was a key priority of successive Conservative governments, until last year.
However, the project is no longer considered a priority by ministers.
A National Infrastructure Commission plan in 2017, had proposed that the Arc would deliver 1m homes and 700,000 jobs while boosting the average annual productivity of workers in the region by £6,000 by 2050.
