Recommendation 19

The Department has developed a funding profile for the Towns Fund over the next four financial years but does not know yet whether it aligns with towns’ individual investment plans. The Department explained that it wants the profile of funding over time to be led by what works in terms of project delivery and that, as part of its assessment process, it wants to properly understand the profile of the individual projects that towns have put forward.43 Once it has this understanding, it will consolidate it at programme level to see if the funding profile is appropriate. However, the Department explained that the availability of this information requires towns to draft individual business cases for each project and that it would probably be well into next year before it had detailed financial profiles across the individual towns, and then at programme level.44 Alignment with other funds