Levelling up: Rother wins a grant while Hastings prepares to bid

Rother is the only East Sussex local authority to gain from the second round of bids to the government’s Levelling Up Fund. Hastings, which has yet to submit a bid, will be relieved that a third round has now been confirmed. Text by Nick Terdre, research and graphics by Russell Hall.

Rother District Council’s bid in the second round of applications to the government’s Levelling Up Fund has been rewarded with a grant of £19.2m. It was one of 111 awards across the UK worth a total £2.1bn.

Overall £672m has been allocated to improve transport links, £821m for community regeneration projects and £594m to restore local heritage sites.

Welcoming the grant, RDC council leader Cllr Doug Oliver said: “This investment gives us the opportunity to harness the iconic De La Warr Pavilion, providing learning and skills opportunities as well as creating new jobs.

“It will also enable us to work with Heart of Sidley (Big Local) to develop a much-needed community and recreation facility in the heart of Sidley, which will support the local community.

“The funding will be transformative for our communities.”

Rother was alone among East Sussex local authorities in winning a grant in the second round. Eastbourne also submitted a bid seeking £26.5m for the restoration of the town bandstand and Redoubt fortress, but Cllr David Tutt accused the government of pulling a “cheap trick” in rejecting the bid.

“The email from government letting us know this decision basically said that as we were successful with our bid under Levelling Up 1, we have no allocations left to bid under LUF2. This was not communicated to us when we were invited to submit our LUF2 bid,” he said.

Whether it was Eastbourne or Whitehall which got it wrong is unclear, but what the rules do make clear is that each local authority is entitled to one bid for each parliamentary constituency it extends into, which in Eastbourne’s case is one, and that a bid, if successful, is used up, while an unsuccessful bid can be used again. Eastbourne’s first round bid, which gained a £19.8m grant, was therefore its only one.

Eastbourne is not the only council to have wasted time and money on preparing a bid, though the others presumably had eligible bids.  Only 111 applications out of a total of 529 were successful, a mere 21%. In round one the proportion was higher, at 34.4% (105 successful bids out of 305).

Not surprisingly this system of competitive bids, yielding a minority of winners, has come in for a lot of criticism given that the aim of the game is to tackle deprivation generally.

Since being raised by more than £400m, the Levelling Up pot is now worth in excess of £4.6bn overall. Of this, £3.8bn has been allocated, including £1.7bn in round one, leaving a balance of some £800m for round three. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has confirmed there will be a third round, though no timing for it has yet been given.

Hastings looks to bid

Hastings Borough Council plans to be among the bidders in this round, having failed to bid in the first two rounds. Other East Sussex councils able to participate in round three are Rother, Lewes, which was awarded £12.7m in round one, and Wealden, which so far has won nothing and has four bids in hand.

However, with an estimated 775 bids remaining, competition in round three for the remainder of the fund is likely to be fierce.

HBC’s draft 2023/24 budget report states that : “The council was unable to bid in rounds 1 and 2 due to capacity and the requirement for the level of matched contribution needed, however plans are being developed for a bid to round 3.”

In fact there is no requirement as such for a matched contribution – the government guidance says only that, “A local contribution of 10% or higher (local authority and/or third party) of the bid costs is encouraged.”

The council previously told HOT it did not have the capacity to bid in round one as it was occupied with the Towns Fund bid (as were other councils which did participate in both), while it decided to sit out round two rather than put in a rushed application.

The project which it hopes to see funded involves a new sports, cultural and health campus on the site of the Summerfields leisure centre. HBC is also engaged in lobbying the DLUHC to give more weight to health equity considerations rather than the purely economic outputs prioritised by the department. This request has not yet been agreed to, the council told HOT.

Shift of focus

‘Levelling up’ started life as a flagship Boris Johnson scheme to strengthen the Conservatives’ chances of retaining ‘red’ wall’ seats in the next general election. Following the intervention of Tory MPs with constituencies in the south who were unhappy to be excluded from the initiative, its focus on deprived areas has been watered down.

According to the Centre for Inequality & Levelling Up, second-round Levelling Up funding going to the 20 most deprived areas as measured by the Index of Multiple Deprivation has decreased by over £100m despite the increase in funds, while a greater proportion of funding has moved south.

Last year, before he became prime minister, Rishi Sunak’s commitment to levelling up was called into question when he was reported as telling Tories in Tunbridge Wells how as chancellor he had changed funding formulas inherited from Labour which targeted deprived areas so that areas like their own would receive more.

Viewed on a per capita basis, Wales came out on top in the second round, with £67 per head, followed by the North-West (£48) and North-East (£41). The South-East comes in near the bottom, with £23, ahead only of Yorkshire and Humber (£22) and London (£17).

In a tweet retweeted by MP Sally-Ann Hart, the chair of South East Councils, Cllr Nicholas Heslop, claimed that the North East had received over three times as much funding per head as the South East and London together, then said that it was “time to recognise that the funding model for English Local Government is broken” and “fiscal devolution should be at the forefront of the levelling up agenda.”

Other pots

The Levelling Up Fund is one of several government funding sources aimed at improving local conditions.

In addition to the Towns Fund, which has benefited both Hastings and Lewes, the East Sussex local authorities have each recently received £1m from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF),and Wealden £1.2m. Hastings and Lewes also received modest grants from the UK Community Renewal Fund, while Hastings has had its application for £85,000 from the Levelling Up Parks Fund approved.

ESCC has also received funding from round one of the Levelling Up Fund, the UKSPF and the Community Renewal Fund, as well as a £40.4m grant for improving bus services.

In their totality, however, these funding pots pale into insignificance compared with the cuts in council funding  since 2010 and the consequent deterioration in public services.

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