Southport is one of a number of towns to apply for Town Deal funding, a government scheme now found to be questionable in its impartiality according to a special committee.
A number of opposition groups have openly declared the national scheme ‘politically corrupt’ as the committee warned a lack of transparency by central government would fuel claims of bias in its selection of towns to get funding.
On a local level Southport Town Deal bid has been carried out with full transparency involving a number of consultations, while Sefton Council has been placed as the bid’s accountable body.
Billions of pounds have been handed out in the process that has every appearance of having been politically motivated, a cross-party committee warned when looking into the Town Deal selection system.
They have now called for greater transparency into the process.
The cross-party Commons Public Accounts Committee said the process for selecting communities to benefit from the £3.6 billion Towns Fund was “not impartial” and risked undermining the integrity of the Civil Service.
In a scathing report, it said ministers in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) had picked towns on the basis of “scant” evidence and “sweeping assumptions”, first reported in the London Economic this morning.
The committee said it was “not convinced” by some of the reasons given.
“The selection process was not impartial,” the committee said.
“The rationales given for the selection of towns from the medium-priority group are scant and appear based on sweeping assumptions.”
The committee also complained that the reasons given by the MHCLG for not publishing more information about the selection process were “weak and unconvincing”.
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.
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