A word from Councillor Tudor Evans

"Back Plymouth's bid for the City of Culture 2017 at Twitter and Facebook by searching @plymouth17 and saying why Plymouth should win!"

So says Councillor Tudor Evans, Leader of Plymouth City Council, as the city embarks upon an ambitious and exciting journey towards its future. The Plymouth Daily looks forward to being a part of it all. Cllr Evans has sent us the following message for the city and its people:

I love Plymouth. The people are warm and funny. It has depth and history, and big ambitions for the future. It is visually stunning and yet still very humble. And, of course, it is surrounded by some of the most beautiful locations the UK has to offer.
As a city, Plymouth has been accused of keeping its talents and charms secret from the rest of the country and indeed internationally. Well that is changing…

We recently launched our new city brand – Plymouth: Britain’s Ocean City. Some may say these are just words, but they are a sign that Plymouth has big plans. Every piece of work carried out over the years has promoted Plymouth’s location by the sea and its incredible maritime heritage. Britain’s Ocean City builds on this. It’s strong and confident. It means business and so do we!

We are leading the way nationally with our new branded signs at different entry points into the city, which just goes to show we aren’t wasting any time in delivering on our promise to shout about Plymouth.

Replacing the old, outdated signs was one of the 100 pledges we made when we took control of the Council and our new signs provide a much better welcome. Even those simply passing through will take away an image of the city.

Likewise, the new visitor guide will ensure that anyone staying in the city will have a little helping hand to discover all the great things there are to see and do, and will hopefully want to return. Or at the very least, help spread the word about what a fantastic place Plymouth is to visit.

I’m really excited about the opportunities that this stronger ‘Britain’s Ocean City’ brand will help to create. We are showing greater confidence in who we are and are already raising our national and international profile.

We are determined to create a culture of success in Plymouth. We know we’ve got to believe in our city completely before we can expect anyone else to. We need to be the ultimate self-publicists. We need to deliver on our clear ambition for Plymouth to be the wealth generating capital of the region and a strong tourist destination contender in the South West.

To realise our hopes we need wealth creators. We need a thriving private business sector. We have a real strength of feeling and commitment locally to growing our economy and we’re doing pretty well in achieving our aims so far.

The collective determination to make Plymouth THE place to invest for up and coming businesses is truly impressive. Already underway is the City of Culture 2017 bid, the City Deal, GAIN and the South West Marine Energy Park.

I’m all about job creation. It’s my number one priority. And since coming into power last May, we’ve launched the Plan for Jobs, including the highly-successful 1,000 Club for young people and the Get Plymouth Building campaign, which has so far seen building work agreed for 10 vacant Council sites.

If I’ve mentioned anything here that you want to know more about, visit the Council’s website. It has loads of information about all the on-going and up and coming excellent initiatives we are working on.

You have to admit, things are happening here and now in Plymouth and that feels pretty good.