It’s been a big week for the Universal Studios resort taking shape just down the road. Universal has now named the first companies appointed to actually build it, with seven main contractors: Bovis Construction, Galliford Try, Morgan Sindall, P.J. Carey Contractors, Sir Robert McAlpine, Wates Construction and Winvic Construction, joined by sixteen specialist consultancies covering everything from engineering and landscaping to archaeology and security. Twenty-three firms in total, all now signed up to a project that will shape this part of the country for years to come.

For anyone who’s been watching this one from a distance, it’s a reminder of just how real it’s getting. The 476-acre site at Kempston Hardwick, on the old brickworks south of Bedford, was granted planning permission back in December 2025, and enabling works have been under way since the start of the year. With the delivery team now in place, the main construction programme is expected to run for around five years, with the resort itself due to open in 2031.

The scale of it is hard to overstate. This is a £5 billion investment from Comcast NBCUniversal, backed by a further £1.3 billion of government infrastructure funding, including improvements to the A421 and upgrades at Wixams station, to handle the extra traffic and visitors the resort will bring. Universal expects around 20,000 people to be employed during construction and 8,000 permanent jobs once the doors open, with roughly 80% of that workforce expected to come from Bedfordshire and the surrounding counties. Bedford is barely down the road from St Neots, close enough that this counts as our neighbourhood too, and that catchment includes local trades, suppliers and businesses right here as much as it does Bedford itself.

It’s also exactly the kind of development we’ve been keeping an eye on through our work with the wider Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Local Visitor Economy Partnership. A theme park of this size on our doorstep will change how visitors move around the whole region, where they stay, and what else they discover while they’re here, and St Neots has every reason to make sure it’s part of that conversation as the plans firm up.

There’s still a long way to go before 2031, but this week’s announcement is the clearest sign yet that it’s actually happening. We’ll keep following the story and sharing what it means for St Neots as more details emerge.