Initiative launched to boost East of England’s digital tech economy

TechEast, a four year initiative to create 5,000 digital technology jobs and drive £650m of economic growth in the East of England by 2020, has launched today.

TechEast will focus its efforts on three main tech clusters in the East: Cambridge (18,532 jobs), Ipswich (9,981 jobs) and Norwich (5,306 jobs), creating a tech cluster of approximately 38,819 jobs to rival both the Birmingham and Bristol/Bath tech clusters.

The initiative will focus its aims on supporting and investing in local companies, training and attracting new tech talent, and highlighting the region’s heritage and potential as a tech hotspot.

This summer will also see the launch of a TechEast embassy in London; which will showcase businesses in the East of England to aid their development and encourage inward investment.

Neil Miles, the chair of TechEast, commented: “For the last six months, tech businesses and supporting organisations across the East region have been working together to investigate the opportunities created by capitalising on the region’s existing success. Our ambition is to be recognised as one of the top five tech clusters in the UK.”

Gerard Grech, chief executive of Tech City UK, added:

“Tech City UK’s Tech Nation 2016 report showed that over 150,000 digital tech economy jobs exist in the East of England, contributing almost £5bn of Gross Value Added. […]We welcome the launch of TechEast to help continue growing this digital ecosystem and we look forward to working with them in the future.”