DCLG to take control of EU regeneration funding
New local enterprise partnerships will have only a limited role in shaping the delivery of European regeneration funding after the government confirmed DCLG will run the programme.
The European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) teams within each regional development agency (RDA) will transfer to DCLG. There, they will continue to administer the 2007-13 ERDF programme along existing regional lines.
The move means the local enterprise partnerships set up to replace the RDAs will only have a limited role in influencing the delivery of the programme.
A briefing note sent by DCLG permanent secretary Sir Bob Kerslake to stakeholders and seen by LGC, confirms the decision was down to the European Commission’s nervousness “about a regional level programme being administered by bodies with boundaries that are not coterminous with those of the current ERDF programme”.
Mr Kerslake said this was “not least” because councils were concerned about being responsible for paying any fines levied by Brussels for breaches of the regulations that govern ERDF spending.
He added that the department had received “consistent feedback from individual local authorities and from the Local Government Association that there was no appetite among local authorities to accept responsibility”.
Instead, the ERDF teams will likely remain within the regions and could be co-located with the regional offices of the Homes & Communities Agency so that they “are not left isolated”.
Mr Kerslake said the transfer would be completed by 1 July. In London the Greater London Authority will continue to operate the ERDF.
The note added that the reforms would replace existing Programme Monitoring Committees (PMC) - groups of key regional stakeholders that oversee each region’s programme - with Local Management Committees.
These will be chaired by a DCLG director, the note said, with a “significant local figure as deputy chair”. LEPs would be given a presence on these committees, the note said.
But Simon Hooton, a director at economic development consultancy Regeneris, suggested the move from PMCs to LMCs looked like a renaming exercise.
“One does have to wonder what the point of the change is. Local authorities and sub-regional partnership are already represented on PMCs and in many cases are the same people who would represent LEPs. It looks like a new set of name plates on the same structures,” he said.
www.lgcplus.com 13/01/2011
