100 towns to receive slice of £80m Towns Fund cash

The government has announced over 100 towns in England will be given up to £1m each to kick start regeneration projects, as part of the first round of its Towns Fund.

The funding, which ranges from £500,000 up to £1m per town, will be used to support various projects around the country.

The recipients include Burton on Trent’s High Street regeneration scheme, which been awarded £750,000 and will see improvements to make the high street a more pleasant place to visit with new bus access and cycle lanes so the public can more easily visit.

Newcastle-under-Lyme has been awarded £1m to help boost the town’s regeneration plans, helping to demolish unloved buildings to make way for a new chapter in the town’s history.

‘Our Towns Fund will help to share prosperity across the country and level-up,’ said housing secretary, Robert Jenrick.

‘This £80m funding for immediate investment is a real boost for our towns and will help them thrive with investment in transport, technology, skills and culture.’

The National Audit Office published a report in July into the selection process behind the Towns Fund after concerns of a lack of transparency were raised by opposition MPs.

In September 2019, the government published the list of 100 places that would be invited to develop proposals for the fund.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s permanent secretary, Jeremy Pocklington, who was grilled by MPs last week about the selection process.

Mr Pocklington said the government took a ‘deals-based approach’ to the Towns Fund rather than a competitive process that towns could bid for.

‘The reason for doing that is that we thought that the towns most in need of investment may be least ready to prepare a competitive bid and we did not want to have a process that was unfair on those towns,’ Mr Pocklington told MPs.

‘And that was because that we judged that many of these towns, some of them are relatively small, may lack the resources, the capacity and the experience of working with the department.

‘What a deals-based approach based on a selection does is that enables us to provide advice and support to help towns develop their beard and build capacity.’

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