PLANS to improve Andover’s industrial estates and at the same time maintain substantial rental income for the borough council have not been dashed by the recession, Test Valley’s head of estates Brian Nicholas said this week.

In a presentation to Andover councillors Mr Nicholas said a ‘soft testing’ exercise carried out by property market specialist King Sturge had found six organisations that had expressed an interest in partnership working with the council to upgrade what are now called ‘business parks’.

The next steps are to be outlined in a hefty 79 page report to Test Valley Borough Council’s Cabinet on 18 February, but Mr Nicholas seemed confident that some of those who had expressed an interest would be able to come up with the funding.

“Times are really, really hard but from a property point of view it is a long-term investment,” he said.

“Commercial property will still be needed and the companies will be looking at this in a long-term way.”

Over the past decades the estates had proved to be a boon for Andover in providing jobs and the council in providing income – but now some of the buildings put up in these areas by the leaseholders are not in tune with the needs of modern business.

“The reason we are looking at partnership is we need to put a lot of money into estates,” said Mr Nicholas.

“We may need to buy up some of the leases and redevelop sites ourselves.”

The effect of the partnership deals would be to release ‘latent value’ from the sites.

Mr Nicholas added that one long established Walworth company would soon be announcing a further 40 jobs as operations moved here from elsewhere.

One businessman present at the meeting, Ivan Collins, thought the council would do better for the area if it looked at releasing the freeholds of some sites to help businesses in their dealings with banks.

“The usual attitude of Test Valley Borough Council is ‘what are we going to get’ all the time,” he said.