A Merseyside town has spent thousands “gambling” on a “broken and bent” funding system.
Sefton Council has spent more than £120,000 on its two most recent and unsuccessful Levelling Up fund bids, Freedom of Information requests submitted by the ECHO have revealed. £62,592 was spent on the first round in 2021 with £60,660 spent on the second round, with the successful applications revealed in January 2023.
Both of the bids focused on Sefton Council’s plans to regenerate Bootle Strand, the local high street and parts of Crosby. On both occasions the bids were knocked back by the Government, with council leader Cllr Ian Maher describing the decision in January as “another slap in the face.”
READ MORE: Most Merseyside areas miss out on millions from Government
Only two Merseyside areas were granted money via the latest round of the Levelling Up Fund, a £5bn pot set up to invest in previously overlooked areas of the UK in need of support with infrastructural and development projects. Money went to projects in Halewood and Earlestown, with Liverpool and Wirral both successful with bids focusing on their respective waterfronts in 2021.
The cash reserve is a key part of the government’s Levelling Up agenda which helped deliver the Conservative’s landslide victory in 2019. Local authorities are able to bid for investment, with government officials deciding where the money will be allocated.
However areas are placed in categories by the Government to determine their level of need for support. Liverpool, Wirral, and Knowsley are all in category one, the most in need, with Halton in category 2 and Sefton in category three, the least in need - alongside areas like Windsor and the City of London.
Category one areas receive a grant of £125,000 to help prepare bids, but this is not extended to areas like Sefton despite the levels of poverty in the south of the borough, predominantly around Bootle. Sefton Council was approached for comment on the disparity in support and the reality of having to pay to submit bids, only to see them rejected.
In the view of Bootle Labour MP Peter Dowd, who has supported the town’s bids, the outcome and process is a point of frustration. He described the Government’s system as forcing areas like Bootle to “gamble” with significant amounts of money, but that the authority is left with “no option” due to the nature of the process.
He told the ECHO: "[Sefton Council] has to bet on the hopes of winning some money, or don’t bet and don’t win anything at all. It’s not just a double whammy [having to pay for unsuccessful bids], it’s a triple whammy.”
The Bootle MP points to how PM Rishi Sunak’s own Richmond constituency is in category one and received millions in the latest round of the fund. Mr Dowd added: "In this bidding process you know the system is broken before you go into it.
“Councils are having to pay to take a chance. That shouldn’t be the case. The system is broken and bent.”
The outcome was also a point of frustration for Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram who compared the process to the “hunger games”. He said: “Not content with 13 years of slashing away at councils – the Liverpool City Region’s local authorities have collectively lost more than £1bn from Conservative austerity – the government has forced areas up and down the country to waste thousands of hours and resources they could ill-afford in Hunger Games-style contests for funding.”
When asked for comment on the money spent on bids, a Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson said: “The use of consultants is a decision for individual councils – we provide clear, straightforward guidance to support those applying for the Levelling Up Fund. However we recognise there are costs associated with bids which is why across both rounds we provided more than £20 million to help councils develop bids.”
Freedom of information requests were also sent to Wirral, Knowsley and Liverpool Council. Like Sefton, the requests asked to detail how much money was spent on council resources and consultancy fee when preparing and submitting bids.
Liverpool City Council spent £117,500 as Savills UK was commissioned to provide project development support and bid preparation for both of the bids covering Paddington Village and West Everton. The response to the FOI noted that an additional 10 days of council staff time went into preparing the bids.
Wirral Council spent around £140,000 on its most recent and unsuccessful bid. The FOI response noted that work with Corstorphine & Wright (including sub-contracts to Civic Engineers and Zerum Consulting) cost £71,202.50, Metrodynamics cost £30,372 and Walker Sime cost £38,562.50
Knowsley Council, which was successful with its Halewood bid responded to the FOI to say that “we estimate that we incurred around £68,000 in the costs of Council officer time and an additional £68,071 in external consultancy fees.” Cllr Graham Morgan, leader of Knowsley Council, said he was “delighted” to receive £15.3 million for Halewood, but noted the frustration of being knocked back for its other two, adding: “A lot of resources went into the development of our latest three submissions so it is frustrating that we didn’t secure funding for all three bids.
However Liverpool, Knowsley and Wirral were all provided with a grant of £125,000 to go towards their bids. Sefton and Halton had to pay from their own budget.
Echoing the frustration of politicians in Sefton, Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram added: “How can it be right that then Chancellor Sajid Javid’s constituency received more than £148 per head while Bootle got nothing? Where is the fairness is Rishi Sunak’s seat, dubbed the ‘Surrey of the North’ being awarded £19m when Huyton, a top priority area under the government’s own methodology, gets nothing?
“I completely agree with my counterpart Andy Street, the Tory Mayor of the West Midlands who has called for an end to his government’s ‘begging bowl culture’ that tells areas to be grateful for the thin gruel on offer. It is only by putting an end to these beauty contests, with needs-based funding settlements, that we will ever begin to address the inequalities that exist in this country.”
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