Recommendation 13

We reminded the Department that when we reported previously on the Towns Fund we had raised concerns over the opacity over some of its decision making.34 In November 2020, we reported that the selection process for awarding the Towns Fund had not been impartial. We said that a lack of transparency over the selection process, which had relied upon Ministers selecting which towns had received funding from a ranked list prepared by officials, had fuelled accusations of political bias.35 At March’s evidence session, we 27 Qq 101–102 28 Q 104 29 Qq 103–105 30 Qq 103–104 31 Qq 45, 49, 50, 53 32 Q 49 33 Q 53 34 Q 54 35 Committee of Public Accounts, Selecting towns for the Towns Fund, Twenty-Fourth Report of Session 2019–21, HC 651, 11 November 2020 12 Local economic growth explained that there were still lots of MPs who still did not understand why their area did not get funding under Town Deals and queried what safeguards the Department had put in place to stop the political influence of Ministers in the current suite of funding.36