Blue

RECOVERY BEACON

Plymouth, Britain’s Ocean City - where the future of the ocean happens.

Our Blue Beacon will encourage recovery projects that focus on maximizing our strengths in the marine sector and opening up our waterfront for a more productive and broader economic impact. The new Plymouth and South Devon Freezone will energize our Blue Beacon.

Key Themes

Marine Autonomy and Technology

We’ll reinvigorate Britain’s Ocean City and spark innovation and help new businesses involved the Ocean sector to thrive.

We’ll further develop and strengthen our marine innovation assets of Oceansgate, the UK’s first Marine Enterprise Zone, and Smart Sound, our global leading marine technology proving ground.

We’ll be a UK National Centre of Excellence for Marine Autonomy and other Ocean Technologies. Making the most of being acknowledged as Department of International Trade High Potential Opportunity for Marine Autonomy.

We’ll play a central role in manifesting the marine and maritime sector’s strategy in the South West.

Clean Marine and Power

We’ll get Plymouth ready for the Celtic Sea offshore renewable energy programme.

We’ll lead the UK in clean propulsion and decarbonising leisure and work boats by developing facilities and operations around new fuel types.

We’ll do this by developing the UK response to the United Nations 2021-2030 Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.

Open Waterfront

We’ll allow everyone access to the waterfront for leisure, health and work.

We’ll develop Plymouth as a marine visitor destination, able to host marine events and make the waterfront more productive to provide a broad economic impact.

We’ll do this by creating the UK’s first National Marine Park in Plymouth Sound, developing a ‘re-imagined’ Mount Batten Centre and providing waterfront improvements.

In July 2021, Plymouth Sound, the home of UK’s first National Marine Park was awarded £9.5 million from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to make its vision of a park in the sea a reality.