Consultant is hired to net levelling up money

REDCAR AND Cleveland Council is employing external consultants at a cost of £100,000 in a bid to achieve success with a second multi-million pound bid to the Government’s ‘levelling up’ fund.

Council chiefs are at pains to stress that it is not council tax payers money being spent and instead state the involvement of the company Cushman and Wakefield is being paid for by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities as part of financial support to assist local authorities to develop bids for later rounds of the fund.

And they say they are optimistic they will succeed where a bid last year failed.

Much is riding on the new bid, which among other things, is intended to pay for a revamp of Eston precinct – and a new replacement for the mothballed Eston pool on which it has budgeted to spend £8.6m.

Cushman and Wakefield were contracted earlier this year to provide external expertise for the strategic and technical elements of the bid submission, as well as developing a business case.

A report signing off the move said it was a one-off services commission.

The report said the specific expertise being called upon “doesn’t exist in house” at the council.

The council previously missed out with a £20m bid to the levelling up fund for various schemes in Redcar and Cleveland, while another £20m bid jointly with Middlesbrough Council, which incorporated MP Simon Clarke’s Middlesbrough South and east Cleveland constituency, was also unsuccessful.

The council has yet to divulge what other elements could be funded by a bid, which will incorporate Mr Clarke’s constituency, but it has been said Greater Eston – long thought of by many as a poor relation to other parts – will get its “fair share if not most” of any cash forthcoming. About £600m was made available from the £4.8bn levelling up fund last year.