McLaren invests in Woking. Ministers usually welcome such plans the same day.
The Abu Dhabi-owned supercar maker is putting £450m into its Woking technology centre. One day later, no UK department has said a word about it.
What happened
McLaren is to create 1,000 jobs as part of a £450m investment in its technology centre at Woking in Surrey, first reported by the Financial Times, days after Jaguar Land Rover confirmed 4,000 job cuts.
The technology centre sits beside the plant in Surrey where McLaren builds every car it sells. McLaren’s count of 1,000 jobs includes agency and indirect workers. The company employs 2,500 people and last year merged with Forseven, a young electric car company.
The money comes from the Gulf. McLaren’s car business belongs to CYVN Holdings, an Abu Dhabi government investment company. CYVN has said it will put $2bn into the loss-making group over five years.
The British government has said nothing about it. The Guardian and The Times reports name no minister, no grant and no award from the Automotive Transformation Fund. As of , gov.uk had no press release, speech or statement from a minister about the investment. For a car investment this size, that is unusual.
The news came in a bad week for carmakers. Days earlier Jaguar Land Rover confirmed it will cut 4,000 jobs over two years from a UK workforce of 34,000. Volkswagen said it would cut 100,000 jobs worldwide by 2030.
The Department for Transport is also asking for views until on the zero emission vehicle mandate, the rule on selling zero emission cars. Carmakers lobbied for this review and say it will shape their next UK model decisions.
The Pattern
Every government welcome we found came on the day itself. We looked at each UK car or battery plant investment of £100m or more that a company announced since . For each we asked whether a named minister or a government department welcomed it in public within 30 days, through a gov.uk press release, a visit or a named statement. The page shows the latest eight, newest first.
Show the other 6 cases
The Read
History points to silence. When ministers welcomed a car investment, they did it on the day of the announcement or not at all. The two plans that got no welcome, from Rolls-Royce and Jaguar Land Rover, were paid for entirely by a foreign owner, with no UK public money in them. McLaren’s £450m is part of CYVN’s $2bn plan, and no grant, guarantee or government award has been reported with it. That puts it closer to Rolls-Royce and Jaguar Land Rover than to Nissan and Tata. The welcomes also said little about what followed: the Somerset battery plant took nearly three years to reach a signed grant.
The politics may have changed since Rolls-Royce. The Department for Business and Trade is short of good car news after 4,000 job cuts at Jaguar Land Rover. The Department for Transport wants carmakers on side while its review runs to . A visit to Woking costs a minister little.
A minister’s visit, or one line in a department’s list of new investments, would settle the first question as yes. The reading also fails if the plan carries public support that has not been announced yet. In that case a welcome was always coming and has simply not happened yet.
Disclaimer
Hunch works only from sources that are publicly available, and publishes on the basis of analysis of that material. We do not form an editorial opinion or take sides, we give a simpler and wider view of news that already exists. If information in a source we used was inaccurate, distorted, or later disputed but had already entered our analysis, Hunch accepts no liability for that. Predictions are not advice. Phase 1 markets use Hunch Points, not money.
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