Council explain reason they ‘were not eligible to apply for this funding’ was because “we had no eligible scheme”

Clarification has been given on whether Wrexham Council was eligible for a Welsh Government road grant after almost £7m was awarded to other North Wales authorities.

Last week Wrexham.com reported how the council had received no money out of a grant allocation of £16m, known as the Resilient Roads Fund.

The article prompted a response from both the council and government.

The Welsh Government statement announcing the funding given was slightly unusual as it mentioned “all local authorities were invited to submit applications for funding and 21 applications were received from 13 local authorities”.

We noted that Wrexham did not appear on the successful bid list, although 13 local authorities did, the implication being they did not submit an application.

The council claimed they “were not eligible to apply for this funding”, while the government pointed out almost £7m of the money is being spent in North Wales.

Many people replied to the council’s tweet in response to our story (pictured above), asking why it couldn’t apply.

It prompted local Senedd Member Lesley Griffiths to issue the following reply:

We were later made aware that the council was unhappy with the article, so asked the government a set of clear questions to get to the bottom of the difference of opinion .

It included whether their statement that all councils were invited to submit applications was correct, and whether Wrexham submitted one, or if they were told they were not eligible.

A Welsh Government spokesperson said,

“All local authorities were invited on 9 January to apply for funding for 2020-21 from the Resilient Roads Fund, Local Transport Fund, Local Transport Network Fund and Ultra Low Emission Vehicle Transformation Fund.

“Invitations were issued to chief executives and copied to existing local transport grant project managers in technical departments.

“The information was also placed on the Welsh Government website. Applications had to be submitted by 14 February.”

“The objectives of the Resilient Roads Fund were set out in the guidance issued to authorities with the invitation and are as follows:

• Address disruptions caused by severe weather to the highway network
• Improve the performance of the highway network through better journey reliability and journey times to encourage people to switch to sustainable transport

“We understand the council did not have candidate schemes which would fit with the objectives of the Resilient Roads Fund on this occasion, however we have received bids from Wrexham Council for our other road funds, which we will be announcing shortly.”

We followed up after noting the council specifically mentioned eligibility and asked for a blunt yes/no on these two questions:

• Wrexham Council have said they ‘were not eligible to apply for this funding’, were they eligible to apply?
• If the council had candidate schemes and had been submitted, would they have been considered alongside the other authorities bids?

The Welsh Government spokesperson replied: “Yes and yes.”

We shared the above response with the council and asked a range of questions (posted below) to hopefully get their viewpoint.

• In light of the MS and Welsh Government position, does Wrexham Council maintain you ‘were not eligible’ to apply?
• If that position has changed, how did incorrect information get put into the public domain and will it be corrected in a similar manner?
• If Wrexham Council maintains you were not eligible, can that be clarified if that means you would have been unable to apply even if you had a perfect bid application ready to go?
• Did Wrexham Council have any candidate schemes that fitted the criteria for this funding?
• Did Welsh Government decline or dissuade any Wrexham Council proposals at any stage related to the Fund, and if so what was the reason given?
• If Wrexham Council had no schemes that would have met the criteria for funding, why was that, when 13 other local authorities did?

We also asked if there was any rejection letters or similar on the proposed schemes from the council, or similarly no feedback from the government.

The response, in full, from the council was from Darren Williams, Chief Officer Environment and Technical, who said:

“We have an excellent record of securing funding for projects of all types for Wrexham but can only bid for schemes if we have an eligible scheme to apply for.

“We had no eligible scheme for the Resilient Roads Fund.”

“We have however applied for funding for flooding schemes with the Welsh Government to the value of £370k and we are awaiting their response.

“Our transport plan is well documented and we have been successful securing funds relating to many of these projects, for example, Active Travel, Mold Road Gateway, Road safety projects, public transport Improvements, etc.

“We will continue to apply for further funding as opportunities arise and as we have appropriate schemes to submit.”

We also questioned Ken Skates – Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales – about the issue as he announced the grant last week.

We asked him if he thought the council’s tweet reflected the reality of the situation to the public.

We also posed a wider question on the several local authorities who apparently did not apply for the funding, and if it was frustrating when the government gets the blame for not supplying money despite applications not being received.

The Minister told us:

“It is really difficult this, because I know that people in any local authority area want investment from Welsh Government and we’re always coming under pressure to to explain why one local authority got more money than the other, and it always comes down to the same reason, which is that not all councils can apply for all of the funds on every occasion.”

“On this occasion Wrexham Council didn’t have what we call a candidate project that was shovel ready and could attract funding.

“I think the explanation probably could have been clearer. Eligibility versus criteria. It’s largely semantics.

“What we are keen to do is to make sure that we we invest in schemes that can be taken forward as soon as possible, that are that are viable, and will demonstrate value for money.

“On this particular fund I think 13 local authorities applied for project funding from that. That particular fund is only one of four local road funds that amounts to more than £50 million pounds.

“I believe every local authority has applied for at least one of the funds, some local authorities have applied for funding from each of the funds. It’ll be very rare for a local authority to apply and to be successful for every single fund. It does happen, but it all depends on whether they have appropriate projects that can be taken forward.

“The next round of funds that are going to be announced will concern active travel projects and also reprioritising road space for for active travel, so they are yet to be announced. I know that Wrexham Council have made a pretty significant bid for the active travel reprioritisation fund. We’ll be making an announcement about that very soon.”

The Resilient Roads Fund will support 18 schemes across 13 local authorities, and will be spent on projects to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change, including addressing disruption caused on the highway network by severe weather.

The full list of grants awarded is on this PDF on the Welsh Government website.

Projects listed include flood resilience/alleviation, highway drainage, work to stop carriageway flooding.