“Real shame” that £20m towns fund under threat says former MP

There are local concerns over a rumoured suspension of a large funding programme put in place and awarded to Wrexham by the former Conservative government.

Nation.Cymru reported how “Regional aid projects worth £80m affecting four locations in Wales have been suspended by the UK Labour government pending a review of how the scheme will operate”, which is believed to include the £20m Towns Fund that Wrexham had ‘secured’.

They add, “We understand there is no indication yet that the funding is likely to be withdrawn, and that more updates are likely around the time of the Autumn Spending Review, probably in October or November.”

The towns fund was part of a £3.6 billion fund investing in towns as part of the former Conservative government’s plan to “level up our regions”.

Last month, as is traditional to a degree with new governments binning projects not of their own making, the Labour Government said ‘levelling up’ was effectively dead as a brand and the words would no longer be used. PM Johnson changed the name of the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government, replacing “local government” with “levelling up”, – however that has now been rolled back.

As we have previously reported the Town Fund would be £20m paid in equal amounts over 10 years, and is 75% capital and 25% revenue.

Thus in the first year Wrexham would have received £2m – with £250k of that already taken up by Wrexham Council in ‘capacity funding’ and ‘…is advanced from the revenue element of the programme’.

The funding had been criticised at the time as being anti-devolution, with the funding direct from Westminster to the local council, and local decision making on where it would be spent thus bypassing Cardiff entirely.

The council appear to have been banking on the revenue element of the cash to possibly help part fund CCTV and the City of Culture bid among other projects, possibly meaning a sharp rethink of some council budgets in an already tight context.

We had been told that it was ‘business as usual’ on the local town fund activities as of Thursday afternoon with little awareness of any pending suspension or pause of the programme.

Yesterday morning we asked Wrexham Council if they had been notified of any pause, suspension or stopping of the town fund. We have had no response.

Sources in the council do appear to think the Nation.Cymru report is correct with it being branded a ‘huge let down’ and ‘disappointing’.

Wrexham’s former MP Sarah Atherton has also expressed her unhappiness, saying “It is a real shame that the £20 million that I secured as Wrexham’s Member of Parliament will now not be spent by local stakeholders who know best how to revitalise our town centre. ”

“This is in stark contrast to the Conservative Government’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which was worth £23 million.

“I was pleased that that funding, which I also secured for our constituency, was delivered by local stakeholders and spent in full.”

Welsh Conservative Leader Andrew Davies MS said yesterday, “To tackle economic unfairness, Conservatives invested in our towns. Merthyr Tydfil, Wrexham, Barry and Cwmbran were set to receive £80million to fund vital regeneration projects. But Labour has now suspended the scheme. Scrapping this promised investment would be a betrayal of our working class communities.”

(Top, archive image of Sarah Atherton)