Major setback for Prodrive's factory plans

Prodrive revealed plans to upgrade their current 200-staff factory to a facility that will house five times more employees, the new centre badged The Fulcrum.

However, shortly after submitting their plans for approval of local authorities, residents of the neighbouring towns begun a campaign against the expansion plans, saying it would destroy the local countryside.

And earlier this week, Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council has also registered its opposition.

"We have objected, because we feel it is an inappropriate development on green belt land," a council spokeswoman told the local newspapers.

"Developments on green belt land need to meet special circumstances, and we do not believe this meets that criteria. We also believe it will encourage car travel. This conflicts with policies for less reliance on cars."

Prodrive, in turn, said the downside of increase car travel was more than mitigated by the high number of jobs the expansion will create for the area.

"There will be more traffic created because there will be hundreds more jobs created," a spokesman for Prodrive stated. "It is one of those clouds with a silver lining.

"But certainly we have looked at minimising the impact of traffic. It is a shame that we have these objections, especially as a lot of the new jobs will go to the local people."

But that argument was also rejected by Chris Lewis, a local member of council, who said the area was not suffering from unemployment.

"The one redeeming factor with this scheme is the claim that it will create 800 jobs," Lewis said.

"But most of those jobs will be for people with specialist and specific skills that we do not have in this location.

"We also have full employment in our community. so the opportunities would not be beneficial for us."