Community Renewal Fund and Levelling Up Fund in Wales Debate

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Department: Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities

Community Renewal Fund and Levelling Up Fund in Wales

Simon Baynes Excerpts
Tuesday 8th June 2021

(2 years, 10 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Simon Baynes Portrait Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con) [V]
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones), a fellow member of the Welsh Affairs Committee, on securing this debate.

I strongly support the key principle that lies behind these two funds—namely, the UK Government’s commitment to levelling up the whole of the United Kingdom, all parts of the Union, to ensure that no community is left behind. A very important feature of the funds is that they involve decentralising power and working more directly with local partners and communities across Wales and the UK, who are best placed to understand the needs of their local areas and are more closely aligned to the local economic geographies to be able to deliver quickly on the ground. I am an MP for North Wales, which often feels forgotten by the Labour Welsh Government in Cardiff so, for me, this decentralised approach is particularly welcome.

I welcome the UK Government’s provision of an additional £220 million funding through the UK community renewal fund to help local areas prepare for the launch of the UK shared prosperity fund in 2022. I welcome the fact that the community renewal fund, which is largely revenue based, aims to support people and communities most in need across the UK to pilot programmes and new approaches, and that it will invest in skills, community and place, local businesses and supporting people in employment.

I have seen the benefits the levelling-up fund could bring to my own constituency of Clwyd South through the bid currently being prepared jointly by Wrexham County Borough Council and Denbighshire County Council, which focuses on projects along the Dee Valley, including the regeneration of the Trevor Basin, as well as improved travel connectivity and investment in Chirk, Llangollen and Corwen. It provides a unique opportunity for the councils to access funding from the UK Government to bring forward significant development and regeneration opportunities, which both councils have been developing since the inception of the 11-mile world heritage site in 2009, making the most of the Llangollen canal and steam railway.

The levelling-up fund is a game changer and will help to deliver a fundamental shift in aspiration, confidence and opportunity. That is all the more important to an area with a desire to emerge from the worst recession in living memory and a worldwide pandemic with a renewed vigour and determination to put the world heritage site where it belongs: at the heart of the visitor economy in the region and at the centre of the drive for prosperity in north Wales.

I am very pleased that at least £800 million of the total £4.8-billion levelling-up fund will be invested in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and that, for the first round of funding, at least 5% of the total UK allocation will go to Wales. That is as much as, if not more than, what would have been received through the Barnett consequentials. Further to this, of course, each of the 22 local authorities in Wales will receive £125,000 in capacity funding to help build their relationship with the UK Government and draw up top-quality proposals. Wales has proved to be at the leading edge of those councils putting forward proposals, with 13 out of the 22 local authorities in Wales having applied in the first round of funding—the highest percentage of any part of the Union.

The UK Government intend to create careers, not just jobs. Their objective is to make sure that wherever you are born and grow up, you will have a fair opportunity to succeed in life and do not have to leave your home town to find a good career.

In conclusion, levelling up is about not just the physical infrastructure of communities, but the social infrastructure, supporting local transport, high streets—[Interruption.]

Christina Rees Portrait Christina Rees (in the Chair)
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The hon. Gentleman seems to be frozen and I do not think we will get him back.