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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what progress the Government has made in allocating additional support to (a) local authorities in Ashfield constituency and (b) other local authorities as part of its levelling up agenda.

The constituency of Ashfield is benefitting from a range of Government investment. Kirby-in-Ashfield, Sutton-in-Ashfield and Eastwood are continuing to receive funding from the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership’s £257.5 million allocation of the Government’s Local Growth Fund. Sutton-in-Ashfield and Kirkby-in-Ashfield were both invited to develop proposals for up to £25 million each from the Towns Fund and we were delighted to receive a joint Town Investment Plan from the two towns recently.

Ashfield District Council has also been awarded an in-principle offer of over £6.2 million from the Future High Streets Fund to help implement transformative high street plans and bring a much needed boost for the people of Sutton-in-Ashfield.

Investments like this will be built upon by our new £4 billion Levelling Up Fund which will be open to all local areas and allocated competitively. We will prioritise bids to drive growth and regeneration for places in need, those facing particular local challenges, and areas that have potentially benefitted less from Government investment in previous years. We will publish a prospectus for the fund and launch early this year.