Swansea Council is putting the finishing touches to another bid for Levelling Up funding from the UK Government after missing out first time round. Projects in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are competing for £800 million of Levelling Up money between 2021-2022 and 2024-2025.
Some councils, like Carmarthenshire, secured significant investment last financial year, but Swansea wasn't successful. Phil Holmes, Swansea's head of planning and city regeneration, told a council committee that it was "in the throes of finalising" new Levelling Up project bids and that the council had learned its lessons from the first tranche of funding.
"Hopefully we will be successful next time round," he said. Mr Holmes said the council was also writing an investment plan to unlock a reported £138 million of separate Shared Prosperity Fund money over three years for Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire. This plan will be submitted on August 1. You can get more Swansea news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
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His comments about the Levelling Up and Shared Prosperity Fund money came in a meeting in which he outlined a new regional economic development plan for the next 10 years. It aims to establish a prosperous and resilient South West Wales economy, and will shape projects and policies.
The new plan has three so-called missions: establishing South West Wales as a UK leader in renewable energy and the development of a "net zero" economy; expanding the region's stock of businesses, creating stronger supply chains and driving forward technology adoption: and playing on the region's quality of life and environment to attract talent and investment. Mr Holmes said this quality of life and environment element was something he felt had been taken for granted, and that it could encourage people who could work from home from outside the area to Swansea.
He said the new regional economic delivery plan had a "fluid" action plan attached to it. The plan will be overseen by a regional corporate joint committee. Mr Holmes said projects put forward as part of the plan would not come cheap, so there was an eye from the outset on funding sources. The plan has similar objectives to the city deal for the Swansea Bay City Region, which comprises the same four councils. You can read more stories about Swansea here.
Cllr Stuart Rice, a member of the economic and infrastructure corporate development committee, said he believed there could opportunities for Swansea if it was granted "free port" status. Such status in Teeside, he said, had created 18,000 skilled jobs in that area in the last two years. Cllr Rice also said that major new projects in Swansea must not lead to record council borrowing.
The Shared Prosperity Fund is worth £2.6 billion over three years. The UK Government has said it has been designed to "succeed and improve" on European Union structural funds. Earlier this month Wales's Economy Minister Vaughan Gething expressed his misgivings about the fund to Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
Mr Gething said the Welsh Government had only had only been given two weeks of "genuine discussion" on the matter, and that there were aspects it couldn't agree on. The Welsh Government contends that Wales will be £1.1 billion worse off by March 2025 than it would have been when it received EU funding.
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