A decision to award Rishi Sunak's wealthy constituency with nearly £20m of Levelling Up cash while the deprived Huyton area was rejected for funding again "stinks", according to Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram.
Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram was speaking alongside other regional mayors at the Conference of the North today. He joined other Labour leaders in castigating the government's controversial Levelling Up fund, which made its latest round of awards last week.
In Merseyside, where local councils have been hollowed out over the past decade's austerity cuts, the majority of Levelling Up bids were rejected - including bids aimed at rejuvenating some of the poorest parts of the country.
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This included Huyton in Knowsley, which missed out for a second time on vital funding to regenerate its village centre. Bootle, Liscard and West Everton were among the other deprived areas to see their bids rejected. This is despite the area being considered by the government as a high priority in terms of where funding is needed.
Meanwhile Rishi Sunak's wealthy Richmond constituency, which will be used to transform the “Catterick Garrison town centre. In the last round of awards, then Chancellor Sajid Javid's constituency of Bromsgrove was handed nearly £15m.
Commenting on the issue today, Mayor Rotheram told the ECHO: "Levelling Up funding is supposed to go to areas that have been left behind and need to Level Up. But because there is an opaque nature to the methodology used to make these decisions, areas that have been identified as being high priorities - like Huyton in Knowsley - have got no pounds and no pence from a total of four bids they have made in two rounds.
"Now if it's a bad bid then you could understand that, but the government have said it was a good bid. But in comparison to what's happened in Huyton and look at the former Chancellor's (Javid) constituency, they got £147 per person and the current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak's constituency has just been given £19 million. Huyton put a bid in again and got rejected - that can't possibly be levelling up."
Asked what he thinks was really going on with the funding awarding, Mayor Rotheram added: "Something stinks doesn't it in regard to the whole system. If there was a clear and transparent formula for the methodology then you could challenge that, but we can't see why people have been successful or unsuccessful and obviously something is wrong with the methodology because it doesn't level up and that's what this is supposed to be about."
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