Councils complain of ‘damaging’ uncertainty after Treasury offers EU funds guarantee
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Photo: © European Parliament – Audiovisual Unit
Local authorities have expressed disappointment at the limited guarantees over future EU funding made by chancellor Philip Hammond this week.
Hammond said that all structural and investment fund projects which are signed before the autumn statement will be fully funded, even if they extend beyond the UK’s departure from the European Union.
But Lord Porter, chairman of the Local Government Association, said that the announcement falls well short of the full guarantee councils are urging from the government.
“Local areas need certainty around the future of all of the £5.3bn in EU regeneration funding promised to them by 2020,” he said.
“The continued uncertainty risks damaging local regeneration plans and stalling flagship infrastructure projects, employment and skills schemes and local growth.”
He said that the majority of EU regeneration funding remains tied up in thousands of proposals that have little likelihood of getting sign off by the end of this year.
Cornwall and the North East, he said, have only received 20% of their EU funding allocations earmarked for the period up to 2020.
Porter added: “The government must also use the Autumn Statement to guarantee that local areas will receive every penny of EU funding they are expecting by the end of the decade, as well as honouring commitments to match fund EU monies with domestic funding.
“This guarantee needs to be made regardless of whether the money comes from the EU or is replacement funding and even if decisions over which projects it should be spent on have been made or not.”
Julian German, Cornwall Council’s cabinet member for economy and culture, said without further guarantees, his county and the Isles of Scilly could lose out on £350m of funding.
He said: “The limited guarantee for some schemes leaves Cornwall hundreds of millions of pounds short of what we were promised we would receive by MPs who backed the Brexit campaign.
“Major funding streams such as contracts for EU structural funds and European maritime fisheries projects beginning after the autumn statement have no guarantee of continuation at all. This simply isn’t good enough.”
However, communities secretary Sajid Javid said: “Local Enterprise Partnerships are a vital part of our efforts to rebalance the economy, and have helped create thousands of jobs over the past five years.
“Guaranteeing EU funding will further support this work by enabling them to plan ahead with certainty so businesses, universities and local authorities across the country can enable economic growth.”
