Oral Answers to Questions

Dan Jarvis Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend represents one of the most beautiful constituencies in the country, one with a very rich heritage, and I understand why he would want to see that preserved and enhanced, as do we. The developer community should now be engaging with our national model design code and his own local councils should now bring forward their own version of that. My Department stands ready, with our new place unit, to support local councils to produce high-quality, compelling and locally popular design codes. We will be piloting that over the course of the year—perhaps his local council might like to be one of the pilot areas.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

What steps he is taking to help ensure that local authority funding is used to tackle regional inequality. [R]

[Fay Jones (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

What steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to ensure that local authority funding is used to tackle regional inequality.

[The Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

This month, the local government finance settlement passed through this House, delivering a 4.6% rise in core spending power to councils across the country. For England, we are committed to putting funding where there is relative need, irrespective of the location, which is why councils in the most deprived areas of the country receive 16% more in grant funding than the least deprived areas.

[Dan Jarvis [V]]

Here in South Yorkshire, we used European Union and local growth funds to support our economy, attract investment and create good jobs. Now that they have come to an end, can the Minister guarantee that their replacements—the shared prosperity and levelling-up funds—will give local leaders the flexibility and capacity to invest that money to rebuild our communities?

[Luke Hall]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and for the constructive way in which he continues to work with the Government. The levelling-up fund is worth £4 billion. It will be invested in local infrastructure that will have a real and visible impact on our communities, whether that be a new bypass, an upgraded railway station, museums, more libraries, or better high streets and town centres. The fund will be allocated competitively and we will be publishing a prospectus for it soon. We are also providing £220 million of additional UK funding next year to support communities to pilot programmes and new approaches in preparation for the UK shared prosperity fund. We will publish the prospectus for this funding soon. I assure him that this funding will be at the heart of the levelling-up agenda, benefiting communities across the country. As always, I will be happy to discuss the detail with him when those prospectuses are published.