Regeneration: Stoke on Trent

(asked on 19th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to support regeneration (a) Burslem and (b) Tunstall.


Answered by
Luke Hall Portrait
Luke Hall
Minister of State (Education)
This question was answered on 27th November 2020

This Government is committed to driving the regeneration of towns across the country and particularly so in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

We have an ongoing programme of interventions. The Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) is already benefiting from £121 million of Local Growth Funding which is funding projects such as Etruria Valley.

In July we announced that Stoke-on-Trent & Staffordshire LEP would receive £23.7 million from the Getting Building Fund. This will support a number of projects, including £120,000 for a Digital and Construction Skills Project at Stoke College and £2.8 million for the Powering Up Enterprise project, which will see the creation of modern, digitally enhanced workspace in Stoke-on-Trent through re-purposing and refurbishing underused and vacant floor space.

The Government-backed Ceramic Valley Enterprise Zone is making a big impact, enabling redundant and long-neglected brownfield sites to be re-developed, including Chatterley Valley East, Highgate / Ravensdale and Tunstall Arrow, in Tunstall.

We have provided £10 million of Housing Infrastructure Fund Marginal Viability Funding to transform nine long-standing vacant sites in the Burslem and Middleport areas, helping to breathe new life in the town.

The £3.6 billion Towns Fund aims to deliver long-term economic and productivity growth to towns and high streets. In September 2019, we announced the initial 101 towns Government would work with to agree Town Deals. A further Towns Fund competitive round will be announced in due course.

In addition, the High Streets Task Force has launched a range of online resources to provide support to places across the country, which can be found here: https://www.highstreetstaskforce.org.uk/products-and-services/support-for-all-high-streets/.

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