The Government's Town Deal process for choosing which towns in England (including Southport) can benefit from a £3.6 billion fund was "not impartial" a cross-Party group of MPs has declared. The House of Commons spending watchdog warned that a "lack of transparency" over how money has been awarded could "fuel accusations of political bias".

In September 2019, the Government published a list of the 100 towns that would benefit from the fund, including Southport.

But Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick came under fire when it was revealed that his own constituency of Newark would receive £25 million from the fund and other Tory seats had also been picked ahead of more-deserving towns. Mr Jenrick told the BBC that the decision to give the money to his own town had been taken by his department's junior Minister Jake Berry.

While he himself had decided to grant funds to Mr Berry's own constituency under the scheme, COVID-trecker Mr Jenrick said this process was "perfectly normal" and insisted he had had no involvement in the decision to select Newark as one of the beneficiaries. But Mr Jenrick has nevertheless been accused of depriving more-deserving towns of funding so he could funnel it into Conservative target seats ahead of last year's general election.

In its report, the Public Accounts Committee says that it is: "not convinced by the rationales for selecting some towns and not others", adding that justifications offered by ministers were "vague and based on sweeping assumptions". The report also said some towns were picked by ministers "despite being identified by officials as the very lowest priority . . . . This lack of transparency has fuelled accusations of political bias in the selection process, and has risked the civil service's reputation for integrity and impartiality."

The committee said the communities department should be transparent about how funding decisions were reached in order "to avoid accusations that government is selecting towns for political reasons".

As part of the selection process whittling down the potential bidders to 1010 towns, ministers picked from a pool of 541 places which had been ranked by officials based on local need and growth potential. Twelve "low-priority" areas (including one town ranked 536th out of 541) were picked by ministers to get a chance of cash ahead of "medium-priority" towns.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi...T4vrBO_7uqo7Wo
https://www.nao.org.uk/report/review...ction-process/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...s-constituency
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-lockdown.html

Gosh!
Can you believe it?

our Damien

What? Jenrick involved in more dodgy goings-on?

Is The Pope a Catholic?

Is there some confusion about Southport being a Town in England? I know there are similarly named towns in Australia and USA but why the (including Southport) remark was inserted when I should think a large %age of our residents know we are in England.