The £300m pot of money over three years is intended to encourage and facilitate business growth and start up in deprived areas like Brighton’s Moulescoombe and Marine wards.

Brighton & Hove submitted a bid for funding in both the first and second rounds. In the first only three local authorities won funding – Hastings, Barking & Dagenham and Croydon.

In the second round £157m was allocated to ten locations none of which were south of Norwich but the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) insist that the awards were given on merit not on a regional basis.

For more information on the Round Two winners click on the link below;-

www.neighbourhood.gov.uk/page.asp?id=1698

ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP COMMENT

Part of the problem of winning the funding is that although the objectives are clear – to release the economic and productivity potential of deprived local areas through enterprise and investment - the basis on which it is awarded is not.

Apart from a vague notion that bids have to have a “wow factor” and not just be continuations of existing projects it is difficult to see why some fail and some succeed and the concentration of winners in the north of the country doesn’t help to clarify the situation.