Levelling-up Fund Round 2: Bidding Process

Giles Watling Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) for securing the debate.

I support the general notion of levelling up and am pleased that Clacton has won its most recent bid. It is set to receive £20 million, and my hon. Friend the Minister is well aware of how grateful I am. However, it has to be said that it is richly deserved, given the years of headlines we have seen about the decline of coastal towns. In short, we are too often overlooked. Furthermore, in my constituency is the most deprived ward anywhere in the UK—not a thing to be proud of, and something that must be addressed.

That levelling-up money very much chimes with my long-standing push in this place that it is unfair for the east of England to be treated in an homogeneous way. Yes, the home counties are rich, but not all their constituent parts are. Clacton has some areas of deprivation that easily exceed those anywhere else in the nation. We need to sort that out, so there is much further work to do and further bids that need winning.

From an infrastructure point of view, the district of Tendring is divided physically. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) and I—in Clacton—share the peninsular on which Tendring sits, but regular travel from his constituency to mine is difficult, to say the least. All roads lead to Colchester and not across the area. We have a new freeport coming at Harwich, with all its accompanying benefits, which is great news, but we need access from Clacton urgently. They need us and we need them.

The Essex County Council transport bid for levelling-up funding failed, as did the Tendring District Council high street funding bid. Improving Clacton town centre with the £20 million is a fantastic start, and we are grateful, but there is so much further to go. Transport infrastructure for Tendring has to be the long-term strategic goal.

If we see continued coastal decline in places such as Clacton, which is in one of our new, shiny freeport areas, the whole freeport agenda might well be seen as a busted flush. I am very happy to invite my hon. Friend the Minister to Clacton to see how poorly connected my town is to one of our new and much-anticipated economic engines. I would be happy to drive her around and show her exactly how the land lies. Further funding here will mean the difference between hitherto unimagined regeneration and an historic flop.

Finally, while this is not a Department for Transport debate, may I quietly mention the work at the Haughley and Ely railway junctions? The Department for Transport will likely be scouting around for significant savings, and as chairman of the great eastern main line taskforce, I am unaware of a project in the nation that would deliver so much for such relatively little. I would urge my hon. Friend the Minister to talk to colleagues in the Department for Transport about how levelling-up bids could bolster capital plans that are now stuck in the mud in my area.

[Several hon. Members rose—]