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Cranfield University is both pastoral haven and industrial hub. Set in the heart of Bedfordshire, the campus features its own airport and hotels. An adjoining technology park houses several entrepreneurial businesses, while the internationally-recognised Cranfield School of Management and its engineering faculty are located on the campus, surrounded by acres of fields. The nearest town, Milton Keynes, is more than 20 minutes’ drive away. It’s safe to say students aren’t coming for the nightlife.
Nor are the ministers. But senior coalition business minister Michael Fallon made the journey north from Westminster to officially open the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), the government-backed centre that hopes to keep the British industry ahead of the aviation game: the UK currently has the second largest aerospace industry by value in the world, after the US. The ATI will help allocate £2 billion of funding – evenly split between government and industry – to research, develop and exploit technology projects across the country.
On the morning of his visit, Fallon attended the Aircraft Research Association in nearby Bedford, which is receiving £2 million in funding from the ATI to boost facilities that will help the industry to test greener, quieter aircraft. Technology at the site includes an 8ft by 9ft wind tunnel that runs at up to 1,000 mph, 1.3 times the speed of sound.
The sleek, modern ATI headquarters at Cranfield is not employing vast numbers of engineers: there are some 30 staff currently. Rather, the aim is to ensure that the centre helps the British aerospace engineering sector develop technologies that help it remain competitive in a fierce global market – where there are also enormous opportunities. As things stand, the industry has a backlog of work that will keep it busy for the next decade.
Fallon denied that the government had become interventionist through initiatives such as ATI. “This is about government working with industry in a new form of collaboration, to develop cutting-edge research programmes,” he said. “We are getting industry to take ownership of its own future. We have the strongest aerospace industry in Europe and we want it to remain in front.”
Funding for the ATI lasts seven years – that is, for the duration of the next parliament. Fallon said he was “optimistic” that the government’s industrial strategy would survive because it had the backing of the CBI, TUC and “broadly” the Labour Party, he claimed.
He says: “I think Labour politicians will now concede that during the boom years manufacturing did get slightly neglected. The more honest Labour politicians from that time concede that the economy was roaring ahead, but it was not sustainable. Now there is fantastic enthusiasm for making things again.”
ATI chairman Stephen Henwood, who was appointed earlier this year, said that the level of government support for aerospace is “unique”. He added that there had always been “conversations” about an industrial strategy. “The difference this time is that it has been thought through – and it’s being funded. An industrial strategy without a way of funding it isn’t an industrial strategy at all.”
He added that when initiatives such as the ATI were considered in the context of the Catapult centres it was “a big commitment”. “It is certainly not something I’ve seen before.”