Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what criteria were used to choose the towns which may receive funding of up to £25 million each under the Stronger Towns Fund; whether there was a long list of towns from which they were chosen; and if so, which towns were on that long list but not chosen; whether a ranking system was used in the choice of those towns selected to receive funding; and which bodies and persons were consulted on the final choice.

As part of the process of identifying the initial 100 places, officials have defined a town based on built up areas with a population of between 5,000 – 225,000.This is the definition of a town from the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

The 100 towns have been chosen on the basis of a robust selection methodology. This took into account various qualitative and quantitative indicators.