Outrage as areas left out of fund to replace lost EU cash
THE UK Government has been accused of discriminating against two Welsh local authority areas by excluding them from a list of “priority areas” earmarked for regional aid spending meant to replace EU funds.
Caerphilly and Bridgend county boroughs contain some of the poorest communities in Europe, yet don’t appear in the list of 100 priority areas published by Westminster.
When the UK was in the EU, a region known as West Wales and the Valleys benefited from billions of pounds of European aid because the earnings per head were less than 75% of the EU average.
The region included both the boroughs that have now been excluded from the priority list of places that will benefit from Westminster’s Community Renewal Fund.
Caerphilly Labour MP Wayne David said: “This is disgraceful. The Conservative Government in Westminster is giving resources to well-off areas like Richmond in Yorkshire, where Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, just happens to be the MP, and deliberately excluding needy areas like the Caerphilly borough. This is political bias at its very worst.
“The Community Renewal Fund is the precursor to the Shared Prosperity Fund, which will be the long-term replacement fund for the European structural Funds from which Caerphilly Borough benefited significantly.”
Welsh Labour’s Senedd candidate for Bridgend, Sarah Murphy, said: “We were told that Bridgend would not lose a single penny but now that money, and Conservative promises, have turned to dust.
“Over the last six years alone, Bridgend county borough has directly benefited from more than £26m in EU funding for community projects which include helping people get back to work and investing in our towns.
“The Community Renewal Fund was meant to replace that investment and give areas like ours a boost.
“We now stand to lose millions of pounds that could transform the life chances of people in our communities, especially for our young people.
“The truth is the Tories have never cared about places like Bridgend and will never stand up to their bosses in London, even when their policies hurt our communities.”
A Welsh Government spokesman said, “Based on repeated UK Government commitments that leaving the EU would mean not a penny less and no devolved powers lost to Wales, over the past three years we’ve been working collaboratively with organisations across all sectors to design a new framework for future investment that supports regional ways of working and will create jobs and prosperity across Wales in a way which is fairer, more inclusive and sustainable.
“As well as disregarding all this hard work, and unnecessarily duplicating effort and capacity across 22 local authorities in Wales, the UK Government’s recently published proposals also completely undermine the devolution settlement, as well as failing to give Wales its fair share of investment.
“Our analysis of the selection methodologies for the fund has highlighted concerns over the choice of indicators, particularly the omission of some indicators we would expect to see – for example indices of deprivation and transport data – to help prioritise funding to areas where it is needed most.
“We have requested access to the data used so we can better understand the UK Government’s priorities for levelling up and sharing prosperity across the UK.
“What is most concerning however is the UK Government taking decisions on devolved matters in Wales without being answerable to the Senedd on behalf of the people of Wales.
“We have also received no guarantee that Wales will receive its fair share of funding, with decisions being made in Whitehall departments with no history of delivering projects within Wales, no record of working with communities in Wales and no understanding of the priorities of those communities.”
A UK Government spokesman said: “The UK Community Renewal Fund aims to support people and communities most in need across Wales and the rest of the UK and will invest in skills, local businesses and supporting people into employment.
“To ensure the funding reaches those most in need, we have identified 100 priority places based on an index of economic resilience across Great Britain which measures productivity, household income, unemployment, skills and population density.
“This does not mean that other places should not apply and applications from outside the priority places may also receive funding.”