Council plans round two bid for Levelling Up funding

Published on 24 June 2021

The Council has confirmed it will be submitting a Levelling Up Fund bid in round two and responded to allegations that it missed the deadline for round one.

Councillor Anthony Mckeown, Leader of High Peak Borough Council, said: "Council officers and members have a long, proven track record of bidding for and gaining external funding.

"It's a disappointing misrepresentation to say we missed the deadline for round one of the Levelling Up Fund.

"The true picture is that in order to make sure our bid meets the strict criteria and requirements to be successful, it needs additional support and investigation. This need for support and investigation has been recognised by the Government who have made funding available for Councils to do that.

"This funding was not made available to Councils until after the closure of round one and, in common with many Government funding schemes, this Fund has a number of strict criteria and requirement that must be met before a bid can be made.

"In addition, some of the schemes we are investigating require support from Derbyshire County Council who, as well as not bidding themselves in round one, were not able to provide that support to meet the timescales for this round.

"Additionally, submitted round one schemes needed to be at the 'shovel-ready' stage in order to meet the deadlines by which funding would need to be spent - our potential schemes are not at this stage yet.

"We will now use the time to prepare our bid and I would urge our MP, as agreed when we met, to support us in this and to work with us to try and secure changes to part of the Treasury assessment so that it better reflects the social impact a successful bid could have.

"We are committed to taking every opportunity to secure funding to invest in improving facilities, amenities and infrastructure across the High Peak, and we have written to the Government to confirm we will be making a bid in round two."