Recommendation 10

The Committee has persistently sought clarity from the Government about how the UK Shared Prosperity Fund will work. The Government has had over four years to design and bring forward a coherent alternative to the European Development Funds that will completely end in 2023. This delay has been unacceptable and requires an accelerated approach. The Government should bring forward as soon as possible its proposals for how the UK Shared Prosperity Fund will work, including the funding profile to be controlled by combined authorities or local authorities. The majority of the funding should be allocated as block grants with local and combined authorities empowered to allocate the funds within the general principles of bolstering regeneration and tackling unemployment and skill shortages already announced by the Government. The Government should confirm that the £1.5 billion, equivalent to that formerly provided by the EU, will be increased to retain its real value over time. It should also 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 by its guarantee to retain the existing amounts of funding for other parts of the UK.

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