Executive Board set to green light Shared Prosperity Fund bids but ‘there will be tears’

Wrexham Council will green light the next part of a process to enable over £19m of funding as part of Shared Prosperity Fund process.

The Council has an allocation of £22,684,206 for the County Borough from the UK Government’s Shared Prosperity Fund. This is considered the replacement programme for Structural Funds previously available from the EU.

The application window for Stage 1 applications closed on 24th February 2023 and Wrexham received 109 applications. The applications were appraised by members of the Wrexham Officer SPF Technical Panel in March 2023. Following assessment, they were ranked in order per SPF theme; Community and Place, Supporting Local Business, People and Skills and Multiply

On 5th and 6th April 2023, the Wrexham City and County Borough UK Government Shared Prosperity Fund Stakeholder Group met and the Application and Assessment Forms were presented to the Group for them to make their recommendations to Executive Board tomorrow.

Council Leader Mark Pritchard said, “There will be a lot of celebrations, but there will be some tears from some other organisations and individuals who have not been successful. We knew this from day one but it is just the process, we have to follow it and we will follow it to the letter.

“What I am pleased with is that the money is here directly with us, that’s a big thank you to UK Government and Westminster, who allocated it into the region. Now it’s in our gift to say where that money is spent.”

The report goes before the Executive Board which is Chaired by Cllr Mark Pritchard, and Deputy Leader David A Bithell. As we understood both were on the ‘Wrexham City and County Borough UK Government Shared Prosperity Fund Stakeholder Group’ we asked if they were proverbially marking their own homework, and if there was enough distance in the decision making process.

Cllr Pritchard said, “It is a good question, and we took advice from Legal on this. I’m very comfortable with my position on the stakeholder group, that was made up of not just us, there were other members on it. I’m comfortable that we followed the process, and other authorities have done exactly the same thing. So we’re not out of place with anybody else.”

Cllr David A Bithell expanded on the point, “We have challenged regularly to make sure that we are squeaky clean because we don’t want to put ourselves or the council in difficulty. The reality is, even in a private meeting, we are obliged to declare a personal or prejudicial interest, even though the meeting as the stakeholder group meeting was private. We’ve done everything in accordance to make sure we don’t break or breach the code of conduct, or clearly, if we had a personal or prejudicial interest on any of the debates, we would have left a meeting and not taken part in it. We do exactly the same with the executive board.”

Who applied for what, and who will be allocated what percentage of that ask, is as yet unknown as the details of the range of applicants will be discussed in ‘Part 2’ secret session of the Executive Board.

Councillors will approve a list of bids so applications can progress to the next stage of the SPF process to submit a Stage 2 Application Form, which gives a more detailed overview of the project. Should they pass the due diligence checks following the Stage 2 application then progress to receiving funding.

A second ‘reserve list’ will also be approved, so if any recommended projects don’t go ahead for any reason and funds are available to reallocate, they will be reallocated.

Gwynedd Council will administer UKSPF funding on behalf of itself and the other Parties in accordance with the Memorandum of Understanding dated 15th December 2022 issued by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – and it appears they get “a 4% management fee (from the core SPF element) allowed as per the SPF prospectus” and in Wrexham this is £750,674.