Lincolnshire to get £6.5m for vital housing and commercial projects
This is a fascinating story. It suggests to me that there is very little planning and much irrational use of resources in this era of financial restraint. All LEPs have been handed a windfall running into several million from this funding which I understand is based on 2011/12 under-spends arising from the technical challenges of implementing round one of the Regional Growth Fund.
The article explains how: The Greater Lincolnshire LEP is expected to receive £6,493,608 by January and will soon begin putting together a plan on how best to spend the money to benefit communities.
David Dexter, deputy chair of the Greater Lincolnshire LEP, said: “The Government has provisionally allocated around £6.5m toLincolnshire. Whatever the amount we manage to secure, it will provide a valuable boost to the local economy and help kick-start business growth.
“And, of course, residents will also benefit from the infrastructure improvements this funding will enable. Once we receive the full details from the Government, we’ll start putting together a plan on how this money can be used to best benefit our local communities.”
The cash, which is part of the national £500m Growing Places Fund, can be used to fund strategic links that will open up access to key development sites, used for flood storage capacity to enable the development of homes and retail space, or to ease congestion on major commercial routes.
If like me you thought the Growing Places fund was something you had somehow missed as a green oasis in thisdesertofGovernmentfunding for economic development don’t worry – it is a newly invented and some might say cynical way of avoiding the first year failure of the RGF process to take root as planned.
I am not fully up to speed with what it means for rural areas but it will be interesting to keep an eye on how it ends up being used by LEPs which in most cases according to our article for RSN last week, even where they have a significant rural component are urban focused in their priorities and activities.