Where is Gloucester’s missing £11 million of Levelling Up cash?
In November 2023 headlines shouted about Gloucester landing a second lump of Levelling Up Fund cash - £11.5 million to transform its Greyfriars quarter. Where is that money?
Dear Readers,
Welcome to Monday’s edition of The Raikes Journal.
This will be our last planned edition until after the August Bank Holiday weekend, so we’re keeping it short and sweet today.
At the end of last week we took a look at what the University of Gloucestershire’s decision to sell one of its Cheltenham campuses might say about where the university and the sector it’s in.
We think it speaks volumes, and while it shows the kind of pressure the university sector is under, it also shows an insitution moving its feet to reposition itself and its business. You can read that here.
But today we take a look at a project that got rather overshadowed in Gloucester alongside the other exciting developments that have been taking place of late. This is the £11 million of Levelling Up Fund cash the city council won to build a cultural quarter in the Greyfriars area of the city.
The scheme was exciting and promised to have a dominoe effect on a number of other projects long in the in-tray of the city. The only problem is the money has never materialised.
We hope you have a great week and bank holiday weekend too!
Please send us your stories/ideas about companies/people/issues you think we should write about. Email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk or telephone 07956 926061.
Your briefing notes…
🏗️ We reported on this last week, and here’s the update on whether or not plans for what is billed as a £55 million development of 147 houses and apartments on the site of North Place car park in Cheltenham was approved. It was. Wavensmere Homes’ plans for the 75 homes and four-storey apartment block on the site just behind the Brewery Quarter include a commitment to provide 20 per cent affordable housing on-site, a contribution of more than £1 million towards upgrades towards local education, libraries and the Chilterns Beechwoods Special Area of Conservation.
🚂 After it lost a lengthy Court of Appeal case in February 2023, leaving it with legal bills of more than £200,000, it looked like Tewkesbury Borough Council’s desire to build a bridge over the railway line in Northway were no more. Ashchurch Parish Council had challanged the proposal, which the council said was about unlocking land near the M5 which could be used to build 10,000 homes. The borough council has now bought the land on which the homes could be built, changing the dynamic significantly. It is estimated the cost of removing the level crossing and replacing it with the bridge would be £20 million.
🤝 A charter has been signed by local authorities and house-builders to regulate the growth of Tewkesbury in as sustainable a way as possible. This is Tewkesbury Borough Council’s Communty Gardens Charter. According to the Office of National Statistics, the borough has seen the most rapid economic growth of any area outside London. Population has risen 10 per cent since 2015 and 2.5 per cent in 2020/21. Signatures on teh charter include Bellway, Gloucestershire Rural Communities Council and Northway Parish Council. Nine main principles are set out in the document, including prioritising interconnected ater infrastructre and green spaces.
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Where is Gloucester’s missing £11 million of Levelling Up cash?
In November 2023 headlines shouted about Gloucester landing a second lump of Levelling Up Fund cash - £11.5 million to transform its Greyfriars quarter. Where is that money?
By Andrew Merrell
When the University of Gloucestershire revealed itself as the new owner of the former Debenhams department store in the centre of Gloucester, its plans to turn it into a city centre campus came with the exciting caveat that the project had won a share of £20 million of Levelling Up cash.
It produced just the kind of headlines the then Conservative Government of the time wanted for its flagship scheme, with the city’s then MP Richard Graham front and centre in the pictures and with work beginning almost immediately.
What with the adjacent King’s Square renovation work and the £107 million The Forum development wrapping around it, the pending Food Dock (now delivered) and talk of the money also benefiting the Fleece Hotel it was happy days and smacked of momentum for a city on a journey of regeneration.
And then, hot on the heels came news of a second Levelling Up fund with - £11 million to transform the grounds of the 13th century Greyfriars monastery, an area between Brunswick Road and Southgate Street immediately adjacent to the rear of Eastgate Shopping Centre.
Then Gloucester MP, Richard Graham, said: “It’s another great sign of confidence in our plans to improve Gloucester and will encourage more private investment alongside this substantial public investment.”
Councillor Richard Cook, the leader of Gloucester City Council, called the £11 million “fantastic news”, describing it as “Christmas come early for Gloucester”.
The scheme caught the imagination of many with its plans to create a space for dance, music, fitness, cinema, community and leisure events and a covered outdoor space with an orangery and outdoor dining area within the remains of the Greyfriars Monastery.
Gloucester Culture Trust, which exists to help drive the cultural development of the city, was also very excited about the project and its possibilities.
The only problem is that the £11 million has never arrived and when Raikes asked the Government when that would happen it admitted it was unable to say - or to confirm it ever would.
And it looks like it’s not the only local authority short-changed either.
“We understand local authorities are seeking clarification on levelling lp funds. We will update further details on that in due course,” a spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities told The Raikes Journal.
When we asked the city council for comment it gave us this statement: “We are expecting further details on the funding soon, but other than that we don’t have any comment to make.”
We understand that although the local authority was told by the former minister Michael Gove, then Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, that its bid had been approved, it is now unable to get any confirmation from the new Government and is unsure the money will be coming its way at all.
And if that happens, the project will be put on ice.
It also means the long-running desire to relocate Eastgate Market, an area of the shopping centre given over to an indoor market – described as a bid to rejuvenate the fortunes of the store holders – will also be put on hold with other potential knock-on effects too.
A BBC report in March this year claimed that only 10 per cent of the promised levelling up finding had actually been spent and that the Public Accounts Committee had been criticised for a lack of transparency in how the money was allocated too.
What we do know is that the Levelling Up Fund awarded £1.7 billion to projects in October 2021, £2.1 billion in January 2023 and another £1.1 billion in 2023.
In a Government report into the scheme published in March 2023 it said local authorities had been able to spend only £1.24 billion, just over 10 per cent, of the promised £10.47 billion from the Government’s three Levelling Up Funds (as of September 2023) and the department had given £3.7 billion to local authorities out of the total allocation.
“The department knows that many projects are struggling so it has provided flexibility to local authorities to extend the deadlines to complete projects under the Levelling Up Fund Rounds 1 and 2 and the Future High Streets Fund.
“The department told us that in December 2023 it had written to all Levelling Up Fund round one and two projects asking for a status update, as well as to Future High Streets Fund projects where it had concerns the projects may be at risk of missing the programme deadline of September 2024,” said a House of Commons Committee report published on 15 March 2023.
“We are concerned these extensions are masking problems and backloading expenditure. The National Audit Office (NAO) reported the majority of projects were ‘underway’.
“But the department confirmed that this does not necessarily mean construction work has started on site.
“We were also concerned to hear that out of the 185 projects that had commenced under the Future High Streets Fund, 19 (just over 10 per cent) had been paused and so risk not being completed.”
Watch this space.