A NATIONAL archaeological firm is setting up its northern England branch in Barnard Castle in anticipation of billions of pounds of “levelling” up cash coming to the region.
Red River Archaeology already has offices in Worcester, Edinburgh and Cardiff, and its newest office, based at Enterprise House, will cover a wide area including Cumbria, Northumberland, the Scottish borders and North Yorkshire.
The firm’s head of business development, Craig Huddart, said the town was an ideal place to operate from.
He added: “Barnard Castle is a great location. With the A66 being so close you can get across into Cumbria quite quickly, and up into Scotland quite quickly as well.
“For us it is great, and especially with having an Irish arm, it is quite close to airports as well.
“It is strange that somewhere so small is actually quite pivotal to what our plans are – where we are in the UK is more-or-less half way on the map between Scotland and the south of England. It is an ideal location for us, it is like a jumping off point all across the north and into the Scottish borders as well.”
Its proximity to transport routes will also support the company’s plans to operate in Europe as well, he said.
Mr Huddart described himself as an “advance party” setting up logistics and the ground work for a larger north east team to move in the near future.
He said: “This is us cementing ourselves in the region and we are looking to expand in the next six months.
“We have options to take bigger spaces here [at Enterprise House], which is in a great location and everything you need is here. One of the main advantages of working here is that they have superfast broadband plugged in, so it is a great communication hub for us as well.”
While he could not reveal some of the projects the company has in the pipeline in the North East for confidentiality reasons, Mr Huddart described the future as exciting and positive.
He added: “Because I am from the North East and passionate about the North East I really want to push how good our region is and the money that is going to be spent in this region is going to be quite big – the biggest chunk of money that has come for years, I think.
“There’s billions of pounds coming in the ‘levelling up’ so it is a good time to start up here. At Red River we have a slogan ‘managing risk and delivering quality’ – we manage risk for the clients and we deliver quality for a good competitive price, so we get a lot of repeat clients. And because of that we get some really big, nationally important infrastructure projects.
“We do all sorts of archaeology work all over the country including major infrastructure like roads and rail and residential and commercial developments as well, but we also do work as small as someone’s back garden.”
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