Coastal Communities Fund
(asked on 15th January 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, (a) what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the administration of round five of the coastal communities fund for England, (b) if he will publish the names of those winning bids for that fund, (c) how many complaints he has had about the administration of that fund and (d) how many requests he has had to halt the distribution of those funds.
(a) A competitive tendering exercise was held to appoint a contractor to help my Department administer Round 5 of the Coastal Communities Fund. This was managed by the Crown Commercial Service under their Grants and Programmes Framework Agreement. Groundwork UK were appointed to the Framework following a rigorous selection process and met all due diligence requirements. They were selected to administer the Round 5 grant application and assessment procedures following further competitive tendering under the Framework. They have demonstrated effectively that they can deliver the detailed administration requirements of the Fund in a fair and unbiased way, drawing on their extensive experience of administering other competitive grant programmes.
(b) To date 16 Round 5 ‘fast track’ applications worth £6 million have submitted successful bids to the Fund. A full list of the winning bids can be found at the gov.uk web site using the link below:
We expect to announce the successful Round 5 main round winners by Spring 2019.
(c) and (d) Two complaints have been received over the administration of Round 5, one of which also asked that the distribution of funds under Round 5 is halted until an independent audit of the application process is undertaken.