Select committee: Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee
Recommendation 16
Sixth Report - Supporting our high streets after COVID-19
Published 10 Dec 2021
Paragraph 93
Addressed to Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee Supporting our high streets after COVID-19 All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Government should keep to its commitment that the UK Shared Prosperity Fund will at least match receipts from EU structural funds. It should ensure that areas that would have been classed as objective 1 areas had the UK remained in the EU do not 70 Supporting our high streets after COVID-19 lose out on additional funds. As we recommended in our report on the progress of devolution in England, the Government should increase the total amount of funding for the UK Shared Prosperity Fund to ensure that English regions that would have been eligible for greater sums of structural funding had the UK stayed in the EU, and if the Government had strictly followed the EU’s former allocation of funds, do not lose out as a result of the Government’s guarantee to retain the existing amounts of funding for other parts of the UK.
From: Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, Sixth Report - Supporting our high streets after COVID-19 (HC 37), paragraph 93, 10 December 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 29 March 2022 (deadline 10 February 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government says it welcomes the Committee's report and "shares many of the Committee's key concerns", responding point by point with a mix of agreement, existing measures and commitments to publish further detail.
- On a lessons-learned review, the government "agrees with the Committee on the importance of learning lessons" from the handling of the pandemic and "is committed to doing so", pointing to the public inquiry due to start in Spring 2022.
- On funding, it recognises "the complexity in the existing funding landscape" and "will set out a plan for streamlining the funding landscape later this year", including a commitment to help local stakeholders navigate funding opportunities.
- On changes to the Use Classes Order, it does not accept a sequential test, saying adding one "would undermine the flexibilities introduced to support high streets". It aims to respond on permitted development rights "in due course".
- On an online sales tax, the government "has not decided whether to proceed" and will consider the Committee's issues as part of a consultation open to 20 May 2022.