Whitefriargate given £19.5m funding boost
CITY CENTRE DEVELOPMENT
A £19.5m funding bid to help regenerate Whitefriargate in Hull city centre has been approved by the Government.
Hull City Council submitted the bid to the Government’s new Levelling Up Fund after it was announced in March.
At the time, Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the £4.8bn fund would “support investment in places where it can make the biggest difference to everyday life”.
The fund is specifically aimed at town centre and high street regeneration initiatives as well as local transport and cultural and heritage projects.
In Wednesday’s budget announcement by the Chancellor, Hull was confirmed on a list of more than 100 places sharing an initial £1.7bn.
The council’s bid included plans to open a new business support, cultural and learning hub in Whitefriargate featuring a new home for the Hull-based arts company Absolutely Cultured.
The funding will also be used to continue offering grants towards property conversion work, including turning more vacant upper floor space in the area into apartments while some of the cash has been earmarked for the councilled Albion Square development.
The bid was a reworked version of an earlier unsuccessful bid to the government’s previous Future High Streets Fund.
That decision triggered anger at the Guildhall as many of the 72 winning bids announced on Boxing Day in 2020 appeared to be in areas with newly-elected Conservative MPS, including Grimsby and Scunthorpe.
After that bid was turned down, the then local government secretary Robert Jenrick wrote to council leaders and MPS saying the city council had failed to meet the Treasury’s “stringent test” on whether the Whitefriargate scheme would deliver value for money.
This week’s funding approval contrasts with disappointment expressed by Guildhall leaders over a recent £480,000 bid from
Hull for crime reduction funding to make the city’s streets safer for women and young girls being rejected by ministers.
Earlier this week, city council leader Daren Hale accused ministers of playing “idiot porkbarrel politics” by favouring Conservative-led councils over Labour-run authorities on key funding decisions.
However, the Whitrefriargate cash is now expected to accelerate improvement work along the route leading from Queen Victoria Square into the Old Town via Silver Street.