Council spent £97k on consultants for levelling up bid

Rochdale Borough Council spent over £90,000 on consultants to help try and obtain Levelling Up funding.

An investigation by The Northern Agenda politics newsletter has found that at least £23.4m has been paid by councils across the country to consultants, with £1.1m paid out by leaders in Greater Manchester.

Rochdale spent a total of £97,052 – but had its £40m bid to regenerate the borough rejected. Local leaders were hopeful their Levelling Up fund proposal – which would have seen £20m go to Rochdale and £10m to Heywood and Middleton respectively – would find favour with ministers.
 

Read more: Anger and disappointment as towns miss out on £40m in Levelling Up funding for deprived areas - but Prime Minister's own affluent constituency receives £19mPublished: 20 January 2023

Mark Robinson, director of economy at Rochdale Borough Council, said: “The choice facing councils was to either ensure levelling-up bids were submitted in the very short timescales defined by government or risk losing millions of pounds of additional funding.

“We were identified as a priority one area and encouraged to apply so, like many other local authorities, used consultants to enable us to put together the strongest possible bids in the short time available.

“Although our bids weren’t successful, the work undertaken helped ensure we were selected to become one of only 20 levelling up partnership areas, which should help us move our ambitious plans forward.

“The work has also helped us secure alternative funding, including over £30m of CSRTS (city region sustainable transport settlement) money and the combined authority’s brownfield land fund and opened up discussions with other funders.”
 

Read more: Rochdale one of six Greater Manchester boroughs to benefit from Jeremy Hunt’s surprise Levelling Up cash in Spring BudgetPublished: 16 March 2023

The Levelling Up Fund was launched by Boris Johnson in 2020 with the aim of investing government money into local infrastructure to support economic recovery. But the bidding process has been heavily criticised, with some likening it to a “beauty pageant” and a “begging bowl culture”.

Freedom of Information Requests were sent to 389 local authorities across Great Britain, 334 of which responded. A total of 283 confirmed that they made a combined total of 532 bids for £9.18 billion of funding, only £2.94 billion of which was awarded.

Lisa Nandy MP, Shadow Levelling Up Secretary, said: “This investigation by the Northern Agenda exposes the absurdity of the government’s Hunger Games-style bidding system. Communities have to compete with one another for permission to do what will work for them, with councils forced to spend millions of pounds in the middle of a cost of living crisis in the process.

“Labour will put an end to this broken system. Through our Take Back Control Act we will undertake the biggest ever transfer of power out of Westminster, putting communities in control of their own destiny and giving local leaders the tools and backing to drive growth in their local economies, without having to go cap-in-hand to Whitehall.”

The majority of the money spent on consultants did not even result in successful bids, freedom of information acts sent to local authorities reveal, including £2.69 million on “doomed” round two bids which were never going to succeed due to councils having already received money in round one.

The failures of the current system have been criticised by all sides, including by the government itself in the Levelling Up White Paper published a year ago. Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove says his department is reviewing the current bidding process and whether it can be streamlined.

As evidence of things changing, Ministers point to the recent devolution deals struck with the mayors of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands giving them a guaranteed £1bn devolved funding pot each to spend as they see fit.

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.”

George Lythgoe, Local Democracy Reporting Service