Following the announcement of Round 2 of the government's Levelling Up Fund, MV looks in detail at where the money will be spent.
Levelling Up Fund Round 2 sees £2.1bn in grants to 111 projects, up from £1.7bn and 105 projects in Round 1.
£3.8bn of the original total of £4.8bn announced for the Fund has now been committed. MV understands from the messages received by unsuccessful Round 2 bidders that there will be a Round 3, with up to £1bn still up for grabs.
Before the results of Round 2 were announced it was reported that there were 525 bids, implying that just 21% of Round 2 bids were successful. (In Round 1 we know that there were 105 successful bids from a total of 293 'eligible bids', a success rate of 36% - although it is unclear whether these figures are exactly comparable.)
Mutual Ventures supported three projects to secure more than £56m for their local communities in Lewisham, Caerphilly and Staffordshire Moorlands. Read more about the successful projects here.
Mutual Ventures' detailed analysis shows how the spending breaks down. This includes how the funded projects were divided between regions of the UK and the priority designations (Category 1-3) for England, Scotland and Wales, published during the process.
Key findings are:
78% of the funds were committed to projects England, 3% in Northern Ireland, 8% in Scotland and 10% in Wales.
A total of 111 projects were funded, 80 in England, 10 in Northern Ireland, 10 in Scotland and 11 in Wales.
In England, Scotland and Wales, of the 90 funded projects in unitary or district councils, 59 were in areas designated as priority Category 1 and 27 Category 2. Only 4 were Category 3.
The table below presents the raw figures:
Many congratulations to all the local authorities that secured funding. The full list is published here.
To find out how MV can support your local authority make a bid for Round Three of the Levelling Up Fund get in touch with mark@mutualventures.co.uk.