We know Greater Cambridge is growing and as people know I’m very passionate about building infrastructure so our residents can be connected to the opportunities they deserve.

As part of this, it is important to me – as it should be to us all – that we encourage our young people to develop and enhance their skills which is absolutely vital to the continued prosperity of our area.

I recently had the privilege of opening a careers fair, run by Form the Future and Cambridge Regional College, which we at the GCP have funded for the fourth consecutive year.

In some respects, our work on skills isn’t really made of tarmac and steel in the same way transport infrastructure is. But what else are we doing if not building connections between young people and the opportunities they deserve? I see it as all being part of the same whole, an ambition to continue to build on the national and global success of Cambridge and its surrounding area through physical infrastructure and through giving people the skills to realise their potential.

The numbers are telling. When we started our work on skills, we had a target of 400 apprenticeships. We smashed that target, with thousands of young people undertaking apprenticeships. We’ve been bucking the trend in this area, which has seen a national decline in apprenticeships.

The skills programme has been hugely successful and it’s hard to see how funding access to skills to make sure that young people can access opportunities is anything other than a good thing.

I have seen personally the power of apprenticeships. A couple of years ago, I went to Form the Future’s office and was shown slides featuring pictures of children taking part in the programme. I realised I knew one of the children. When I next saw her, I asked her what she wanted to be and she told me she wanted to be an engineer. The programme she joined at school was instrumental in helping her to progress. She’s now almost graduated from university and I’d like to think that a teeny tiny part of what she did was part of our skills work.

This is why I am proud at our next board meeting that we’re being asked to approve the appointment of Form the Future for a further two years to deliver our skills programme. They have worked incredibly hard to develop the network which is making such a difference. So I would like to thank them, the schools and the employers for all the work they put in to make sure that we will be successful 50 years down the line.

As I write this, I’m thinking about some of the houses in my County Council division, where children can look out of their bedrooms and see the Science Park expanding. They can see labs and new places, exciting places of employment, being built. Places that could provide the jobs to make their future selves want to get up in the morning.

Our young people need to be able to access those jobs. They need to be able to feel that those jobs are open to them, even when you’re five, six or seven years old. With the right support, anything is possible.